I quit my unicorn startup job to face my existential crisis
Why I quit and what I’m doing now
Last year, I was gainfully employed at Lyft, but I faced existential crisis. On a bi-weekly basis I’d freak out and ask myself: “What am I doing with my life?” and “Is this the best way I can contribute to the world?” I love Lyft and could not have asked for a better team, manager, or company to work for, but I still felt like software engineering wasn’t my calling.
I did stay. I stayed through 2016 still working hard on my team conducting user research, making and testing prototypes, building the region-configuration tool, ramping up new-hires, updating our internal tools platform, etc. In the meanwhile outside of work, I tried to figure out if there was some way to find or make a calling/passion.
Let’s list all the things I tried to do last year to see if I would find something I liked enough to solve my existential crisis.
In January through May, I was a Hackbright mentor to give back to the community. In February through March, I took iOS for Designers through Codepath to see if I would enjoy programming in Swift. In May, I bought an electric violin and went to bi-weekly jam sessions. In June through August, I took Experimental Sculpture at SFAI to re-ignite my artistic side. In September through October, I took a flash fiction course at SF Grotto. In September, I asked to be switched to the Android team to see if I could get out of feeling stagnant at work and learn something new. In October, I started climbing training with a friend.
I finally decided that if I couldn’t figure it out, maybe it was because I need to cut out the 40+ hour commitment every week to really face the existential crisis head on. The existential crisis would torment me until I actually quit to do the cliché of “finding myself.” I looked at my finances to be sure that I could spend a year off work, and gave my two weeks notice in January 2017.
Just like with design thinking or lean start-up methodologies, finding a solution to “what do I do with my life” is about:
- Establish needs. Figure out what your needs and values are.
- Explore. Do lots of different things to see what sticks.
- Focus. Dive deeper into a few of the things that stick.
- Move forward or iterate. Decide to move forward (commit to one thing that you focused on), or go back to step 1 having understood a little more about what you like and dislike.
I decided to break up 2017 into quarterly focuses and create personal OKRs each quarter to define measurable goals. Q1 was about grounding by focusing on health & fitness and exploration. Q2 is currently about expression, focusing on creative output and sharing. Each quarter determines the next quarter’s focus, which leaves Q3 and Q4 undefined.
I get asked this a lot. When you don’t have a job, it’s just called “time.”
Daily “todayidid” journal
…the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest.
— Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
The biggest fear about being funemployed was that I would turn into a squishy human mattress topper. I was afraid that a year would whisk by without anything to show for it except an ever decreasing bank balance and an ever increasing body mass index.
To tame that fear, I started journaling by listing everything I did that day, so that there could be no regrets about how I spent my time.
Running and Climbing
Fitness does wonders for regulating emotions and boosting self-esteem, which is why I made it my Q1 focus. My goals were to run a 10k in under an hour by the end of March and be able to top-rope on-sight a 5.12a indoors. I ended up falling 30 seconds short of the running goal and on-sighted two 5.11c’s on lead instead of top-roping very much. Although I was already a daily gym rat, forcing myself to focus on fitness goals kept me motivated to maintain a routine that got me out of bed at 7am each day.
Try everything
Step 2 of my plan was about exploration. I tried as many interesting things to do as possible to see what would stick. These things included jiu jitsu, filipino martial arts, aikido, capoeira, krav maga, aerials, pole dancing, jazz dancing, painting, improv, singing, starting an Etsy shop, drawing, animation, and writing. I also tried finding a life coach/therapist, but in the end felt confident in my ability to self-motivate. Trying a lot of different things that were out of my comfort zone allowed me to hone in on what I like and dislike to understand myself better.
Reading
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants
— Isaac Newton
A lot of my reading selections came out of a desire to shift my way of thinking about life or creating meaning in it. To that effect, Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl changed my views on life significantly. Siddhartha made me feel more at ease with life with the idea that it was only through switching life paths several times that he was able to finally reach enlightenment. Man’s Search for Meaning made me think of each moment as an opportunity to rise to the challenge that life gives you.
Volunteering
One way to find meaning is by helping others and creating community. I started volunteering at ScriptEd teaching under-resourced high school students how to code and even joined the curriculum planning team. I also became a tea volunteer at The Center to become more connected with a community that’s less techie than my usual crowd.
Travel
Everyone says to travel. It isn’t something that can really be overhyped though. The benefits are obvious, and it’s an easy way to shake things into perspective. Because of my volunteering schedule, my travel time was limited to weekends and spring break. In that time, I went to Thailand for 10 days, Portland/Smith Rock for a weekend, and the East Coast for 8 days. In the East Coast I met with the incredible humans of Liminal and now have a trip back to New York planned for June.
This is a one-year experiment to directly address “what do I do with my life” and I’m already a quarter of the way through. I’m only in the first iteration on step 3 of my plan to dive deeper into expression (writing, drawing) and so far, I’m pretty satisfied with the direction I’ve taken. Instead of freaking out about what I’m doing with my life, I can choose what I want to do. On that front, it’s been successful. If I haven’t found a calling by the end of the year, I’ll have a retrospective to see what I learned and decide to either start another trial run of the experiment, or go back to the working world in tech with a fresh mind and heart.
