Why you should quit your boring job
Even if you earn a lot of money 💰
I had this discussion so many times. And I’m sure you too.
What do you choose:
- a job that you love doing every single day, but don’t earn that much
- a job that you don’t find very interesting, but earn a lot 💰💰💰
I’m 24, and three years ago I decided to choose the first option.
As a matter of fact, today I really don’t understand how you can choose the second option.
Actually, I don’t understand how you can choose to do a boring job, whatever the reason.
Don’t get me wrong, at some point, we may all have to choose a job that doesn’t thrill us for a short period — because it’s the only way to get to your dream job, or because you don’t have money to eat and you need to take the first opportunity that comes.
I did jobs like these, just for the money and to buy myself my first laptop.
But what I’m talking about here is the long-term, how you envision your career. And I don’t understand people (who have the choice) who tell me they chose a job that probably won’t thrill them each and every day.
For me, it’s like they don’t get it
168 hours. That’s the time you have in a week.
− 7 hours sleep/night
− 3 hours/day for cooking, eating, taking a shower…
= 98 hours to live each week.
If you work 40 hours/week, you spend 40% of your time working.
And if you spend a lot of time in commutes, that you work more than 40 hours… you can easily spend more than half of your lifetime working.
So why on earth, would you like to get bored half of your time?
Maybe I don’t get it.
When I ask these people why they do that job that doesn’t thrill them, I regularly get 3 answers that I can relate to 3 types of people.
#1 - The Money Lover
“I do it for the money. I want to earn $400k/year, so that I can buy myself whatever I want, go anywhere on the planet, travel in business class, have a big house and 10 apartments on five continents…”
Well… according to CEPR, the average full-time US citizen gets 13 days of paid vacation and 8 days of paid holidays per year. So you work your ass off at that boring job to be able to enjoy those 13 days? You live your life to the fullest ONLY 2 WEEKS PER YEAR? And during the remaining 50 weeks of the year, you get bored at the office?
Am I the only one to think there is a problem here?
Now let’s say you live in the country where employees get the most paid vacation: Austria. You’re really lucky, you get 35 days a year! But even with 5 weeks of paid vacation, I still don’t understand. You still got those boring 47 weeks.
#2 - The Pragmatist
“that’s impossible, not everyone can do what they love for a living. We will need people to do repetitive and boring tasks so that the society can go on.“
If you see society as a whole, that’s true. You need people that do these tasks so that the whole society can exist as it is today. At least until the robots take over. But if you look at it from the individual perspective, I think it doesn’t apply anymore.
Simply ask yourself: Why would you be the one who needs to do the boring tasks? Why wouldn’t you be among the ones that love their jobs?
I want to be clear with that: I’m not talking about people that are in a survival context. Those that barely have the necessities, can’t have the luxury to choose a job they like. And I really feel sorry for these people because most of the time they didn’t deserve it. But that’s another debate.
Let’s say you have the chance to have the choice of your job. Why do you choose something that you realize is not exciting when you could be doing something that thrills you every single day?
But there’s one exception…
If you answer, “It’s temporary so that I can get my dream job next,” Go to #3.
#3 - The Believer
This is probably what I find the most dangerous. You know, these people that tell you “I have to do this shitty job now, in order to land my dream job next”.
Be careful with that.
Here is why
In French Business Schools, most of the time you do 1 internship of 3 to 6 months each year. So at the end of your studies, you have done between 2 and 4 internships, with up to 2 years of working experience.
I’ve had friends who chose to work for big corporations since the beginning of their studies. And to get to the top (like being a marketing or sales director or whatever) you have to climb the corporate ladder. From what I’ve been told, the path to getting there is very precise. You have to get one experience as a sales representative, then you can become category manager, to then become…
So this is what my friends did. First internship as a sales, then next step, and the next… Eventually, at the end of their studies, they did get hired by those big corporations. And that’s cool.
What isn’t cool though, is the following…
During their first internship, they told me how shitty the job was. They were BORED. But that it was the only way to become “category manager” or whatever. So basically, they spent hours doing something they didn’t like. Then, once they got that category manager internship, they were thrilled… during the first month. And again, they told me that their work was boring, but… it was the only way to the next level.
You see where this is going.
Why would you do 6 months (and generally it’s more 1 or 2 years) of a job that you define as shitty, boring or whatsoever, to be stoked 1 month about the new position you earned, and find it shitty again? It kills me when I see a 35–40 year-old who’s been climbing the corporate ladder since he graduated and that isn’t happy with his daily tasks yet. Still talking about how awesome his next job is going to be.
Happiness is not about where you are. It’s about how you got there.
Let’s say you want to be on top of the world. Literally. Mount Everest. You have the choice between climbing up there, or hopping on a helicopter (for free) that will drop you at the top (let’s imagine that’s physically possible). What would be the most rewarding for you?
Climbing, right?
Why?
Because you know it will take a few days, you will lack oxygen, you’ll be cold, you will walk in very dangerous places. You know it’s going to be very difficult. You’ll have downs, but you also know that you’ll have ups. You will see beautiful sceneries, astonishing sunrises, and you will have an objective in mind that few people have accomplished.
What’s incredible about the Mount Everest experience isn’t just physically being on top; it’s climbing to get on top. It’s a process, not a specific moment in time that you could capture with a picture.
You know it’s going to be hard, sometimes beautiful, but definitely not boring.
And climbing the corporate ladder, saying every two years “I have a shitty job now, but in two years, my next job is going to be awesome!”, is like getting on a helicopter that doesn’t have windows that will drop you on top of Mount Everest for 1 minute, and head down again. It’s f*cking boring!
Why would you do that?
Plus you’re not even sure that “dream job” is actually awesome. You said once you’ll be category manager your job would be awesome. You’re already bored after a month. By the way, don’t think I have something against category managers. I have friends that are thrilled with being category managers. It’s just that it’s the only term I know in these kinds of corporations, and what people have told me about.
So what’s the plan?
First, realize that happiness is not something you will acquire as soon as you will get that dream job. It’s about what you do every single day. If you need 10 years of doing something boring to get the job you want, you’d better make sure your actual tasks, once you’ll land that dream job, are going to make your daily life awesome. Otherwise, the only times you will be proud of yourself are going to be those dinners with friends, when you say you landed a job that thousands of people would love to have.
Be proud of what you do every single day, not of what your job title is. Or else you might be living for others, and not for yourself.
Working in a startup is awesome
Seriously. If you’ve been working for big corporations for years, and that you’re bored, try to work in a startup. There is so much positive energy in startups, everyone is working his ass off towards the same goal.
You can easily be in charge of a whole project if you show your motivation, and see very quickly if your work pays off. Everything goes so quickly. You want to implement something new and test to see if you can drive growth with it? Go test it right away and see the results. You might be the one who finds the recipe to scale.
I’ve never worked for a big corporation. I don’t mean to say that it’s not exciting. What I do know, is that most of the people I know who work in startups are thrilled about their jobs. So don’t hesitate to give it a try.
To not get bored, make sure you always learn.
I really liked Brian Balfour’s keynote at WMD 2016. Apart from the powerful growth marketing lesson that he gives, there is a part that I find especially relevant for this topic. And the graph above sums it up.
When working, you should always try to be in the green area. You should always try to have a little bit of “Unknown” in your work to always learn. And I can tell that if you do that, in a year you won’t be the same person as today. The amount of knowledge you will have gained will be unbelievable. And you definitely wouldn’t have had time to get bored at work!
The bottom line is
Wherever you’re working, in a startup, a big corporation, an NGO… just make sure you love what you do. You don’t have time to get bored 50 weeks a year. And money is definitely not going to buy you that time you’ve lost. So stop that boring job, try something else you’ve always wanted to try, start that company you’ve always wanted to start.
Just be happy when you work. It’s already the end of 2016. Make sure to make the most out of 2017.
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