Just Quit: July Inspiration

It’s been a few months since the last monthly roundup of quit inspiration. Between an executive coach training, turning 40, and Paris heatwaves, I was too busy to think about how great quitting is.

The following posts are compiled to get you pumped about quitting. Not in a giving up kind of way, more in a I’m-so-inspired-I-can’t-go-on-in-the-same-way kind of way. Change how you think about career, change the way you consider what’s next, change the way you structure your work days. And if you’re so moved, quit it all and start from scratch. Sounds exciting.

You complain about going to work? You have a choice. There’s a world where you skip work, get in your car, and drive to Arizona if you wanted to.

This post from Angel Marr of Online/Offline Club is essentially one half of my inner monologue ever since I went freelance. There is a constant battle between the side of me that thinks I have to sit at a desk from 9:00-18:00 to be considered worthy of a living, and the other side of me that remembers the point is to work as little as possible. Her tips for how to enjoy life by structuring it intentionally, and sticking to that structure, are what every freelancer needs to hear.

I’m talking about what have you uniquely been placed here to do with your skills, with your interests, with your intellect? What can you find joy in doing and also have disproportionate impact?

I get some kind of masochistic enjoyment from being told my dreams aren’t big enough. Yeah, the problem isn’t that I want too much, it’s that I’m not thinking big enough. Love that. This post from Active Ingredient makes the case for looking at your work through the lens of solving humanity’s greatest problems. Isabelle has a great point: many of us strucuture our careers in terms of our own life and hapiness (guilty), but we might be shortchanging ourselves (and the rest of the world) by not thinking at a world-changing scale. Mind blown.

Solving the most impactful problem (you decide the measure) is a arguably the biggest responsibility you have towards yourself. And once you figure it out, do it so well and for long enough to get noticed.

Who even came up with the notion that any career is linear in the first place? Sounds like some patriarchal propoganda to me. I’ve made two career changes so far in my life, from journalism to marketing, then from marketing to advising/coaching. The quesiton I asked myself each time was not “what title do I want?” but instead, what do I want to do/solve/create for people? In this post Moayed Almoayed provides similar decision criteria for “what is next” that have less to do with what is the “right” move, and more to do with picking focus areas that matter to you.

Just as in networking, following up is important. Everyone’s busy, and if you’ve just moved to a new city, you’ll undoubtedly have a lot of life admin on your plate. That said, don’t forget to follow up. There’s nothing better than meeting someone for coffee, having a great click, and then getting a text after saying “it was so fun to see you - let’s do something again soon?”.

Everyone thinks that spinning off from corporate to freelance is all about tools, learning how to invoice clients, your website, your accounting. That’s the easy stuff. The real secret sauce is the connecting part. Building relationships to find and maintain clients. Building relationships with other freelancers so you don’t lose your mind. Phoebe Dodds of Connection Pending has several good ideas for how to create and maintain connection—her focus is adult friendships here, but I would posit that the same techniques work for professional connections, too.

Thanks for reading and supporting Just Work. Learn about my fractional brand advisory services and executive coaching; let’s get you feeling better at work.

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