Your Blueprint to Quit Your Unhappy Job in A Year
Your future self will thank you for this.
First, you’re not too late, and yes, it’s doable. Stop talking yourself out of it by cushioning yourself with excuses.
How is life going for you with excuses, anyway?
Probably not as satisfying, which is why you’re here. Because you feel that something is missing and are just exhausted from spending your days as though they’re pre-engineered.
I feel you.
I feel you because it was a little over three years ago that I wanted to quit my job. I was just 24 and everyone dismissed it as a ‘phase’ of disliking the corporate sector because I was junior-most. Fast forward to today, I’m a solopreneur living 4-hour workdays.
I did all this by writing online, and you can too.
1/ Create Part-Time
I used to write after work and edit before work. Some people write on weekends.
Listen, do what works for you.
But there’s no excuse for not being able to take 3 hours a week to write. Write long-form or write short/mid form on Twitter/ LinkedIn. What matters is that you work on your skills.
If you want to pick up a different monetisable skill like video editing or graphic designing, this applies there too.
2/ Test Out With a Few Gigs
I became confident about my skill when people happily paid me for it.
Hop on to Upwork (it’s saturated, but what isn’t?).
Apply for gigs.
Ask for money.
This will help you become confident about your skill and the fact that you can potentially earn from it. Once you make your first buck online, your mindset about making money will change forever.
Which obviously brings me to…
3/ Mindset
If you think
- only those who are lucky change their life
- you are destined to be broke and unhappy
- everyone lives this way and so shall you
Then it will happen because your thoughts control everything — your belief systems, self-image, confidence, actions, and behaviour.
The best thing about mindset is that it you can work on it entirely.
That's what I did. I read books and heard podcasts.
I come from a country (India) where everything is competitive because of our sheer population. Naturally, we think that only one person wins. Whereas in the real world, there's plenty of space for everyone to grow doing their unique diddy.
Today my investments + fixed expenses equal to 3x of my corporate income. Something I couldn’t even dream of two years ago!
4/ Experiments Can Earn You Big Bucks Sometimes
Please have fun, and try out new things. Experiment to see what works for you in a world where everyone has their advice because you can't follow them all.
Here are my random experiments and their results:
- Randomly posted about quitting my job on LinkedIn → got viral
- Tweeted if I can help people become consistent at writing → created a cohort-based course where I’ve taught over 150 people at the time of writing this
- Tweeted if people want a side hustle resource → The checklist has over 8000 downloads today
- Interacted with my audience and solved pain points via products → My Medium Guide and LinkedIn Playbook have done exceptionally well
Everything has led to me make some money.
And this only happens when you try, experiment, and let go of being overly strict about advice and other so-called rules.
5/ The Deal breaker
What separates winners from cribbers is staying at it for long enough.
It’ll take you 12 months only to start seeing some traction. And I know it's not easy to be in an empty room for months when nobody likes and comments and claps.
But think of it — the bar is pretty low. All you have to do is show up because that's what most people miss out on.
And it's doable once you create a routine that works for you.
6/ Do This
And once you create enough, you aren’t just carving your skill but also building a portfolio of your work simultaneously.
Do gigs to earn money.
And keep experimenting so freelance isn’t your only way to earn.
When you realise that there’s enough money coming in, call it quits.
My [Short] Story
I started writing articles in October 2020. I also did some freelancing gigs from Upwork.
In April, I was making enough money, so I resigned and started serving my 3 months of notice period.
Then, my client ghosted me and so my source of income went. I cried all day, but I didn’t want to get back to my job and revoke my resignation. So I stayed at it. Kept writing, kept applying for work and got some work too.
In July, I became self-employed and also got more consistent on LinkedIn.
In October, I randomly experimented with a cohort-based course, which is going to run its tenth cohort in 12 days at the time of writing this.
I then released some products every few months, and am now working on my one big product, so I don’t need to juggle multiple ones.
That’s all.
All the best. Do it for long enough and make your future self proud.
A better life is just on the other side of good habits and new things done for long enough.
You got this!
