The Deliberate #65: Quitting My Job

This is The Deliberate and I’m Sam Spurlin. This is my extremely periodic newsletter about cultivating attention in a complex world, organization design, personal development, and basically anything else that catches my eye. I’m hijacking this edition for a very self-serving reason — I quit my job and I’m actively figuring out what’s next. Maybe that’s where you come in?

After just over a decade, I’m leaving The Ready. It feels weird, but right, to be typing these words.

There was no grand moment of realization or a messy falling out — just a gradual awareness that being at The Ready had become too comfortable, too familiar, and the best parts of myself were growing dormant in that lassitude.

In my announcement note to my colleagues in Slack I shared an anecdote from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Flow, in which he describes a Native American tribe that had a tradition of packing up their village and moving to a new location every few years. When things became too familiar and easy they uprooted their routines and their lives in order to challenge themselves by needing to learn how to survive in a new location.

I always admired this ethos and for a long time I was doing the same thing. I had a very short teaching career after undergrad before moving across the country and putting myself through graduate school. Then I started a PhD program and moved back across the country to start working at The Ready. And then the first five years or so of that job required me to basically put myself through consulting bootcamp/personal MBA in order to keep afloat. But eventually, things calmed down. And before I knew it, I’d spent 10 years in the same job doing largely the same type of work. I was no longer a member of a tribe who packs everything up and moves to an unfamiliar location. I no longer embodied that ethos. I only admired it from afar.

No more. I’ve put in my notice and will be deliberately wrapping up my time at The Ready over the coming weeks.

I don’t have a new job lined up and I don’t know precisely what I’m going to do next. I know it’ll likely be in the realm of what I’ve been doing so far (organization design, organizational effectiveness, leadership development, strategy etc.), but I’m open to “getting weird with it” if the right opportunity comes along. Right now, I’m trying to have as many conversations as possible to explore as many opportunities and digest as much advice as possible.

I know that whatever I’m likely to do next (if it isn’t starting my own thing, which isn’t completely off the table) is not because of a random job posting that I apply to, but because someone in my network is either directly connected to a cool opportunity or can point me in the right direction. If that’s you — even if that idea is only the half-formed — I hope you reply to this email with your thoughts or grab some time to chat with me.

I’m looking for a Sam-shaped hole in the world and I’m hoping you’ve seen one you can show me.