Quit
At the age of 26, I was a nobody. Graduated from college for 3 years, I switched jobs multiple times. A financial consultant. And an event coordinator. If you were a HR manager and had managed thousands of resumes a day, you would see a large number of this kind of nobody. Mediocrity thrived in the society, everyone was doing the same thing. So did I. At a certain point, I started to doubt what life truly was, my dream started to dissipate. I didn’t want to be a billionaire anymore, because I truly believed that I couldn’t become one. I learned powerlessness over the years. A stupid college-grad, who was ambitious enough to change the world, wanted to just live through the day.
Have a corporate job, please the boss, waste 80% of the time wandering in front of a computer, leave office at five, hang out with friends at night to prolong college life, tell myself I’m still a 20ish, I have time for fun. Is that you? That was me.
Once you pass a certain age, you will realize something. Time flew. My girlfriend was still my girlfriend. My friends were still my friends. My happy Friday was still my happy Friday. Even though I had switched jobs multiple times, the daily routines haven’t changed much. Same old same. I really wanted to change, but I felt hopeless. I did exactly what Steve Job recommended in the commencement speech he made at Stanford University.
“Keep looking, don’t settle.”
The simple idea led me to watch the commencement speech again. Steve Job was as charming as he was. I listened to every word in the speech religiously.
There was a story about death. When Steve was 17, he read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on him, and since then, he has looked in the mirror every morning and asked himself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, he knows he needs to change something.
I needed to change something.
At the time I was working as an Officer in a local chamber of commerce where a number of SME bosses flocked together, my job responsibility was to organize events for them. The office was small with only three colleagues. I was one of them.
Once a month, there’s going to be a director meeting. All three of us would prepare everything for the 100+ people meeting, at the expense of three full time employees’ time plus a well equipped office which could run a sufficient startup.
For the sake of effectiveness, I had learned we could outsource everything, even my job, to prepare for the monthly event. I did a simple calculation of this and summed up how we could save the chamber a few hundred thousand bucks per month. But I didn’t propose anything to the chamber. It would not only kill my job but also my colleagues’. So, here I was, 17 months in a row, not 17 days in a row, doing the job that I felt like doesn’t maximize my potential.
"If today were the last day of my life,” Steve Job whispered in my ear, “would I want to do what I am about to do today?"
I needed to make a choice. I needed a change. I quitted.
Read the next chapter: The Door
Or table of contents: The Game