Free Agent Nation

Diversification—that is, an independent worker spreading her risk across a portfolio of projects, clients, skills, and customers—is the best hedging strategy. But there are other hedging techniques

Freedom and security are not necessarily trade-offs. Not only is it more interesting to maintain a portfolio of clients and projects than it is to answer to a single boss, it may be safer. The more clients you can assemble, the more projects you can land, the more nodes you can add to your personal network, the more secure you will be.

For free agents, work is often like virtue—it becomes its own reward.

The basic unit of this Free Agent Operating System—the 1s and 0s of the underlying code—is trust.

in the traditional workplace, authenticity is often neither condoned nor rewarded. As free agents around the country told me their stories, they repeatedly used the language of disguise and concealment to describe their previous jobs. They spoke of putting on “masks” or “game faces” at work.

And since no position is permanent—but other positions are usually available and destitution is not around the bend—you might as well enjoy what you do. Produce quality work that’s a genuine reflection of who you are. Use your freedom to accept responsibility for your work. Decide for yourself what constitutes success. And if you’re not having fun—

1999 study by economists David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College and Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick found that the self-employed have greater job satisfaction than any other group of U.S. workers. 23

In the traditional economy, the organization buffers the individual from the market. That means the slackers and do-nothings get paid more than they’re worth—and the workhorses and creative minds subsidize them by earning less than their own true value.

Genuine trust flows in two directions—which leads to the essential feature of the Free Agent Operating System: reciprocity.