The 22 books to read before you quit your job

Cathryn Lavery
The Startup
Published in
7 min readAug 31, 2015

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I was recently visited by a good friend I went to university with. He’s still in the field of architecture, and it was the first time we’d seen each other since I’d given up on the industry in favor of entrepreneurship.

During his visit we talked a lot about the Architecture industry as a whole, our biggest problems with it, and why I ultimately decided it wasn’t what I wanted. I described moments at my job when I was working on designs for a high-end luxury apartment in the Lower East Side and thinking, “If I stay in this job, I will never be able to live like this.” Not that I dreamt of luxury penthouses and a $70,000 custom millwork closet (yes, this happened), but I did dream of financial freedom and travel, as well as working for myself.

As I mentioned in my previous post, when I was working at my job in architecture, I started a side project, Calm The Ham, which after 18 months of work was making decent money, especially compared to the $40,000 I was making at my job (which does not stretch far living in New York City). I was only able to work on Calm the Ham on weeknights and weekends, which slowly became harder and harder as I juggled this new life. In the 6 months prior to quitting my more stable job, I kept thinking what if I had the time and resources to make my newer venture full-time. What could I create if it was my only focus?

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