Good Stuff from Rene: Volume 5 – Shit’s About to Get Real

If you were here last time, you may remember that I promised this newsletter would be about quitting.

Did you get the hint? Were you excited? Have you been counting down the hours with me, anxiously awaiting this email?

Well, here it is!

I quit my job Monday! (Technically I’m still here until the 23rd, but after that I’m flyin’ solo baby!)

It was just like you pictured:

Just kidding! It wasn’t exactly like that. It was more like this…

The Universe Conspires

Last year I read The $100 Startup.

I liked it so much that I gobbled up Chris’s other books – The Happiness of Pursuit, Born for This and The Art of Non-Conformity.

In one of them, Chris says to resign your job every year. If you’re not sure you’re on the right path, if you’re not completely confident that staying put is the best possible choice, quit.

It’s a radical thought.

And honestly, it scared me when I read it, even though at that point I was already unhappy with my situation.

At first, I didn’t do anything. I just kept reading.

But then, on October 17, 2016, I wrote it down. I committed to quitting my job the following year, on October 17, 2017 unless staying put was the best possible choice for me at that time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”

And it did.

Feelings on Quitting

This is not my first rodeo.

At times I’ve been confident that the decision to quit was the right one for me.

But other times… I’ve felt like a restless drifter. Was anything ever going to fit? Were my expectations out of alignment? I’ve envied friends and coworkers who have worked with the same company for years. They’ve made friends, moved up, did the thing that some part of me seems to think we’re all supposedto do.

Just the idea of quitting is seen as a bad thing (unless it’s quitting smoking). There are tons of reasons why we don’t like to quit.

“On a very basic level, we are taught that persistence means success and quitting means failure. We are taught that moving forward is progress and stopping is defeat. The truth, however, is a bit more nuanced.” Sometimes it’s okay to quit.

We don’t often think of it this way, but maybe we should “celebrate endings, for they precede new beginnings.” Thanks Jonathan Lockwood Huie.

Here’s to new beginnings!

Sunk Costs

In the link above about resigning your job, Chris also says to ignore sunk costs.

If you’ve never heard of sunk costs, they are costs (time or money) that have already been incurred and cannot be recovered.

Read the first example from this article.

You shouldn’t consider sunk costs when deciding how to move forward, but we all do. Especially if we put a lot of time or money into something.

If you ever find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

And lastly, related, on life plans. (This totally cracks me up.)

As always, thanks for reading! 

One of my favorite parts of writing this is getting emails back from you. Drop me a line any time.

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