Work is for Jerks
How I quit my job to grow faster ?
Why quitting my job was so important? It’s simple.
“Growth is never by chance; it’s the result of taking action further than your comfort zone.”
My name is Jose Aljovin, Husband, Father of two, and UX designer; and I wanna share my experience about leaving a promising (and safe) position and starting a family as well as a decentralized design team.
As always, not as disclaimer but as a dedication, this article has been written with pure love to a previous version of myself, to share insight before taking action, so if you are in a same position or have something to ask, add me to your contacts, seriously.
The scene went like this, my wife was leaving the office to take care of our newborn child Daniela, a precious baby girl, so I decide to stay at work to keep the family income safe. Two years later, when we were specting our second child, we received an miscarriage scare, the next day I dumped the office and jumped to be home full time to take care of my wife and firstborn child.
With less available hours, and more responsabilities, I had to hack my professional growth pace and effectiveness ratio and do it as fast as possible.
These are the 5 Lessons I learned from those beginning days.
1. Take vacations to write a plan for the upcoming months
Nobody will plan your life for yourself, and starting a business is a tough thing to archive, so yep, take vacations and plan without urgent things around, think clear, trace how to hack your life, define objectives, understand how to increase your professional value, and define if at the end of the journey you feel successful. (Oh! and enjoy the time, cause probably those will be the last vacations from a long season to come.)
2. Invest wisely. The payment of all wages and vacations
Debs or mortgage will make your road back to the office, pay them in advance, then buy a fresh set of business assets, make no room for sudden excuses to go backwards and keep the fresh air of a emergent business around you.
3. “Important” and “Urgent” are different but both must get done.
Getting important and urgent tasks done is easy as just not taking sleep. As an emerging family or business the daily challenge is keeping both tasks done, this takes a lot of motivation, so always invest in projects that fit your personal interest, if you love it even if you fail, you are still winning.
4. Don’t just work, make your life increase in value.
Economy is in fact stipulative, You can be a well payed MBA and still be Stupid, but if people look at your life and find value they will be doing business with you; accepting your fees and creating a deeper connection.
Your life is your main asset, people can’t buy your talent, in fact they pay for your hours and your story defines the price, not only your competences or titles but your character, vision and wisdom, these are developed daily and evidenced on the aspects of your personal life.
“Much of education is oriented, for better or worse, towards making a living rather to making a life” ―Logan LaPlante
5. Is easier to enjoy life if you believe in miracles.
Don’t get me wrong it’s not about luck, you must work hard and be brave to get things done, but you must believe in miracles to not give up in any circumstance. For example, the next miracle we are looking for is our third child, surely life will become more complex but we believe it will bring out our true potential. (When this happens I’m surely sharing the news with you, till then, please enjoy life.)
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein
