Thoughts and Suggestions on Leaving a 9-to-5 Job#
Have you ever thought about leaving your 9-to-5 job? Limited vacation, meager income, no free time, and having to report when there are family matters. It feels like you are burning your life every day to work towards someone else's dreams. But you are also afraid that after leaving, you will lose a stable source of income. What if your entrepreneurial venture fails?
Recently, I watched a podcast interview video with YouTube influencer Ali Abdaal and writer Dickie Bush. They earn millions a year and shared their experiences. Ali is a doctor in the UK, and Dickie is a trader on Wall Street. They both built a profitable business in their spare time before quitting their jobs to start their own ventures.
Here are my summarized methods for building a career without quitting your job, which will definitely be helpful:
1. Don't quit easily; try to transition within your job first#
We can categorize the ways we earn money into three types:
- Job: Exchanging time for dollars
- Career: Exchanging performance for dollars
- Business: Exchanging others' time and performance for money
In the initial stage, choose a job that allows you to learn skills. If possible, transition from a job to a career as soon as you can, looking for careers with some ownership or incentive mechanisms. This can bring you substantial rewards and help you accumulate initial capital.
2. Use your spare time efficiently to try developing a side business#
You need to understand the malleability of time. Even with a full-time job, you can carve out time for your own business through proper scheduling. Here are some tips:
- Utilize Parkinson's Law: Set a limited time for yourself to push the business forward; don’t let time expand or wait meaninglessly.
- Reasonable time allocation: Set aside two hours before and after work each day; early on, Pat Walls did this.
- Apply the 80/20 rule: Find the truly important things to do.
3. Choose the right direction to develop your business#
A good method is to use the two-year testing framework to find direction. You can review the skills, hobbies, life changes, work experiences, and other knowledge accumulated over the past two years, sorting out what is valuable, and then share it. What helps you is likely to help others as well.
You can also look ahead to what you want to learn in the next two years and document and share your learning process. Start by summarizing and organizing the knowledge and experiences of industry leaders, gradually forming your own content and framework through extensive reading and learning different viewpoints and frameworks.
4. Overcome the issue of lack of energy#
If you feel exhausted from your full-time job and lack the energy to develop a side business, you need to recognize that this may be a signal for change. Because once you leave your full-time job to start your own business, you will find that you need to be more disciplined. Learn to manage your energy, analyzing which daily activities drain energy and which activities can increase it.
5. Set reasonable goals#
If you plan to quit, it’s best to have enough funds to ensure you can live without working for the next year or even two. My advice is to consider quitting only when your side income reaches twice your full-time income and remains stable for 3 to 6 months. This is because side businesses often have volatility, and achieving double income can prove your capability.
6. Have your own product#
You must have your own product, which is the crystallization of what you have learned, done, and solved problems through. By continuously improving yourself, you will generate many crystallizations, achieving infinite development of the product. In the creator economy, you don’t need to worry about competition because you are always creating your own products and working on your own projects.