Mobile Technology and Managing Your Portfolio Career

I’ve posted before about how I’ve used mobile technology to help me keep track of a hectic portfolio career. I asked Heather Gibson, a writer and mobile technology enthusiast to share her views on the subject…

The concept of a portfolio career is something that a lot of people don’t even understand until they actually look into starting one. Throw in the fact that the concept is continually evolving and expanding, and if you’re not careful it can become difficult to keep up with. These days, more and more highly skilled and professional people are consciously choosing to create a portfolio career in which they perform multiple roles concurrently - a feat of organization that mobile technology makes so much easier.Naturally, there are thousands of different combinations of work that can technically fall under the heading of a “portfolio career.” Talented, professional portfolio careerists are masters of handling several different roles at once. Getting this to work means its important to avoid getting overwhelmed. A portfolio career can mean managing multiple jobs and responsibilities at once. Because portfolio careers are constantly evolving, the expansion of mobile phone technology has been an ideal aid to helping portfolio careerists keep pace and adapt with their chosen portfolio elements.

Pick any smart phone from any provider, like this example from O2 and it will boast all the smart technologies that can help keep a portfolio career organized. There are ingenious ways to use a smart phone’s capabilities from apps for automatically inputting information from business cards, to office suites on to go and new ways to get online and share collaborative projects with colleagues and clients.
Smart phones have helped speed up the way we communicate which is great if you’re juggling different aspects of a portfolio career. You can easily separate different groups of contacts, manage multiple email account and calendars. You can also have powerful notepads and collaboration tools on your phone relating to your different areas of work. Calendars, task management and reminders on Smart phones help you keep track of a busy diary on the go, helping you to get more done and stay effective and efficient in all areas of your portfolio career.

Portfolio careers can really flex our mental muscles with a lot to remember and keep on top of; switching between roles at a moment’s notice and keeping on top of your game in each aspect of your portfolio takes practise. Smart phones let you keep the multiple ‘offices’ of each aspect of your portfolio career in your pocket and maintain your productivity. So often branded with a bad name for making us 'always available' - like any productivity tool, smart phones can in fact reduce the amount of time spent on organising and managing your portfolio career, leaving you with more time free to leave the portfolio behind when you want to.