Originally appeared on: http://web.archive.org/web/20220626054913/https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/business-career/careers/dream-job-101-how-to-prepare-for-a-career-change
Job getting you down? Quit and become a surfer. Really.
August 14, 2018
In the interview, Mike shares the major phases of orchestrating the jump. While there’s a lot of literature about leaving employment to strike out on your own, much of it deals with the Grand Big Picture Issues. Mike addresses these, and also the much smaller, practical elements of taking a big leap.
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Some key things to remember:
Listen. Any major jump starts with listening to your “little voice.” We’re bombarded these days by everyone else’s voices, to the point where it makes it hard to hear our own. Twenty years ago, we had free time to think and ponder while standing in line, or waiting for a meal. In those times, we might get in touch with our inner voices. In modern times, between smartphones, headphones, podcasts, and notifications, we never have the time to tune in. And it’s that little voice that will tell us it’s time to jump.
Make a plan. When you’re jumping, of course you don’t know how things are going to turn out. Otherwise, it’s not a jump, it’s a casual mid-afternoon stroll. But there are some things you can plan in advance: you can make some intelligent plans about finances, so your jump doesn’t bankrupt you. You can make sure you have safety nets in place for when things go sideways. And you can make plans to practice and investigate your new direction before you actually make any major changes in your life.
Get lucky. While you can’t make specific luck, you can certainly behave in ways that increase your chances of finding luck. You can seek out people, places, and activities that are more likely to connect you with the kinds of opportunities that make you succeed.
Don’t look back. You’re skydiving. You’re falling rapidly towards the ground, ready to pull the ripcord on your parachute. This is not the time to look back at the plane and wish you’d gotten an extra little packet of peanuts before your jump. Once you’ve decided to jump, commit to it. Regret and speculating on what might have been is just a distraction from making the present be all that it can be.
For the full interview with Mike, listen to today’s podcast episode. And if the job you have isn’t the life you want, it may be that taking a jump is the way to work less and do more.
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Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the Get-it-Done Guy podcast, an iTunes top-10 business podcast, from 2007 to 2020. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a degree in Computer Science from MIT.
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