Life Lessons | Advice
3 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Quit Your Day Job
The many entrepreneurial benefits a day job can offer you
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Unless you’re in the top percent of entrepreneurs who have made it, you’re probably faking it.
Faking it is an admirable endeavour for many reasons, but one that comes with a lingering caveat. The need for a financial guise. For many of us, this means a day job.
I work a day job and I’m not ashamed to admit it — at least, not anymore.
Once seen as a financial faux pas, I’ve learned to embrace my day job for the many entrepreneurial benefits it offers. Sitting here today, I feel as though a day job will always have a place in my life and my heart. Here’s why…
1. The infernal power of routine
I used to hate the idea routines. I have vivid memories of driving to work, feeling trapped in an endless cycle of disappointment.
Wake up. Dread going to work. Go to work. Rejoice at finishing work. Go to bed. Repeat.
My entrepreneurial dream has always been to write in some capacity but my routine felt like the monotonous death of creativity. I vowed to quit my job as soon as I saved up enough money to do so. Eventually, I did… and I did.
Like a phoenix rising from its ashes, I was re-born. My creative flame was stoked by my newly wide-open schedule. I wrote vigorously for hours only to fall into a post-creative coma. My fiery bursts of creation were intense but short-lived. They required more mental fuel than I had.
My world was flipped upside down when I read “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. In particular, this sentence:
“Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort.”
Charles reinforced this point by asking me [the reader] to recount tying my shoes that day. Did I lace up the left or right one first? Obviously, I couldn’t remember as you probably cannot either. These aren’t things we normally think about. The mic drop came when he explained that it is the same shoe every time.
