My Unexpected Lessons Since Quitting My 9-5 Job 🤯
The five most important things I’ve learned in three years post-employment.
I scheduled a meeting with my boss one cold mid-March morning in New York City. Since saving up almost $40,000, I had started to taste freedom in my morning coffee. My courage came out of nowhere. I was about to do something crazy. I was on the edge, flirting with the real world. That morning, I did the dead. I quit my full-time job.
Three years have passed since that fateful morning, and this week, I hosted a party to celebrate that. As I sipped white wine with my friends, I realized that despite what the crunch of capitalism would want you to believe, I’m still here. I’ve survived for three years without a full-time job; I also moved to Mexico City and published a teen romance novel in the process. And in some ways, I’m thriving.
This article is for anyone in the corporate world who is curious about what I’ve learned in the chaos of building my new career as a writer, freelancing, and fun, which I’m calling my “post-employment” era. Here, I’ve distilled for you the five most important professional lessons that I’ve never shared anywhere else, as well as the most impactful things in other categories of my life.
Top Five Lessons for Post-Employment Professional Thriving 🚀
1. 1% of effort leads to 100% of the outcome. In my experience, the Pareto 80-20 Rule applies even more extremely in our real-world endeavors. Focusing your efforts on the exact right thing is more valuable than anything else. For example, I recently took 5 minutes to pitch a quote to an editor. That pitch landed me in Vogue, earning my first mention in a major publication. Whether you’re trying out a new hobby or building a business, spend your energy on the easier, highest-impact tasks first to catalyze your progress. When you find something that works, double down on it. Ignore everything else.
2. Things compound slowly. Arguably, it took me 30 years of being alive to land that quote in Vogue. The truth is, you’re going to work for a long time with no meaningful progress until your efforts start to compound. Eventually, you’ll achieve a critical mass and accomplish with one email what you struggled to gain in five years with 100 rejections. You have to stay strong and stay the course. Mark every little bit of your progress along the way. Celebrate your wins. That’s why I threw myself that Post-Employment Party, and why I celebrate my Author Birthday every year. Encourage yourself to keep going. You’ll need it.
3. It’s all about who you know. Nepotism, baby. You’re not above this! You’ll only land the consulting contracts you want if you know the right people. I have never gotten a job without a warm introduction to one of the higher-ups at the company. Last year, rather than spreading myself thin and applying for a bunch of random contracts across the internet, I nurtured one warm intro I got to the CEO of Clue, the leading period-tracking app and my dream client. I got shit done and won contracts with them for a whole year. Focus on writing that one email to that one right person, that warm lead you have.
4. Ideas that you think are absurd will lead to your success. When you’re building something new, you have no idea what is going to work, and you will fail constantly. Remember that humans are really bad at evaluating which of our creative ideas will succeed. For example, last year, I wrote a niche article called “What is it like to orgasm on psilocybin?” I didn’t expect much from it. But since then I’ve also made a couple hundred dollars in affiliate link sales of the Lioness vibrator thanks to the article’s unexpected success on Google Search. Keep trying different things because you really don’t know what is going to succeed. And don’t kill a creative idea without testing it first.
5. An idea means nothing without execution. Since I started my blog, many people have told me about the one rom-com script idea that they’ve had for 30 years or whatever, and yet they’ve never written a word of it. My own grandmother told me she wanted to write a book, so I invited her to a writing class with me. She declined my invitation. Fast forward three years, and my grandmother still hasn’t written a word, and I’ve grown this blog to 3,000 views every month and 500+ subscribers. The harsh truth is that unless you’re applying your ass to your chair and writing it or painting it or whatever, your idea means nothing. Also, there are a million good ideas out there. Stop shining your idea like it’s a precious pearl, and actually do it.
Top Three Personal Life Lessons 💡
1. Embrace the ebb and flow of friendships. It’s natural over the seasons of life for friends to come and go. Close friends move away. Others start new romantic relationships, and that becomes their priority. Try to meet these changes with love and acceptance. It’s better to let things fade naturally than burn bridges. If someone moves away, it just means that you need to cultivate new relationships. You aren’t an asshole for outgrowing some relationships, either.
2. Your happiness matters a lot. Time will pass whether you want it to or not. Don’t be one of those people who is stuck in your job or a relationship, and when people meet you, they can tell you’re unhappy. The more you can pursue projects, ideas, places, and people that make you happy, the more memories of pure joy you’ll have in forty years to cherish. That, in my opinion, is the definition of a life well-lived.
3. Own what you want. Discard the rest. This applies not just to material goods but also to your life decisions. For example, I’m happy living in a one-bedroom apartment; I never want to be married, I probably want to have two kids, and I don’t like skiing, so for me, it’s a waste of money. I’m proud of these aspects of my character. The more you can critically reflect on what you really want to own and what you do and don’t want in life, the more you can remove crap from your life that you don’t even like and bring in what matters to you.
Top Five Activities That Changed My Life 🏏
1. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing): This is a form of therapy that’s like 20x as powerful as a talk therapy session on steroids. I tried it last year and focused on processing a specific core memory of abandonment in my childhood. It’s super intense and not for the faint-hearted, where a therapist uses a simple gesture as you move your eyes, and you’re able to access your most traumatizing memories.
2. ITAA (Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous): I joined ITAA, a 12-step program, on August 2nd, 2022, after struggling for years with tech addiction, primarily to YouTube and reality TV. I’ve since quit both, and while I’m not perfect (damn you, Instagram!) I’ve gotten a lot of my time back, and I’ve learned how to feel my feelings instead of numbing them.
3. ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholic and Dysfunctional Families): This is another 12-step program, this time focused on dealing with the effects of family dysfunction. I have a daily ACA meeting where I can talk about what happened in my childhood and how it’s affecting me today. It’s basically free group therapy that has really helped me build my self-esteem.
4. Pickleball: Lol. I’m not ashamed to admit that playing pickleball is a breath of fresh air after running alone for years. I’m making so many new friends through it. I get to lean into my competitive side, and I get to exercise out in the warm sun in Mexico City. It’s super fun!
5. Learning Spanish: I spoke basic conversational Spanish when I moved to Mexico after studying it for years, and now I am comfortably fluent. Learning a language in my 20s has taught me so much about the importance of mindset, which is applicable to many other areas of life. It’s going to take you a lot longer than you think to become fluent, so you have to find ways to enjoy the journey. Stay curious. Have fun with it. Pick up new phrases whenever you can. Focus on improving over time. And don’t underestimate the value of ego. Once you start impressing people and receiving compliments, lean into it. Being proud of your Spanish, i.e., having an ego about it, is really motivating. You’ll start practicing extra so that you can keep getting complimented on it and feeling validated by others.
Top Five Books I Learned Most From 📚
1. The Creative Active: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin is a great modern guide to the creative journey.
2. The Loving Parent Guidebook by ACA WSO Inc. teaches you how to become your own loving parent, which is the solution for overcoming the effects of family dysfunction and a cornerstone teaching of the ACA program.
3. The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones et al. is an ode to Black excellence, and a retelling of US history centered on African Americans' contributions to the country’s foundation and definition of freedom.
4. The Five Women by Hallie Rubenhold is a fascinating murder mystery and a shocking reminder of just how shit life was for women less than two hundred years ago.
5. Patriot: A Memoir by Alexei Navalny is a shocking dive into his last days in prison and an eerie reminder not to trust Putin and his cronies.
Top Five Most Inspiring Places I’ve Been 🗺️
1. Valle de Bravo, Estado de México. It’s a Pueblo Mágico (magical town) that I like to call “the hippie Hamptons of Mexico City.” It has lush forests and is great for a nature-filled getaway.
2. Dennis Severs House, London. A museum where you can travel back in time to different parts of English history.
3. Bosque de Chapultepec, Seccion II, Mexico City, for Sunday walks to visit a tree with tons of hummingbirds. They make me so happy!
4. The mountains near Santa Fe, New Mexico, offer incredible 360-degree panoramic views from a small peak on Rising Circle Ranch. I felt so held.
5. Museo Anahuacalli, Mexico City. Went to an exhibition on nuclear disarmament, which inspired me to reflect deeply on how I can impact the world.
Top Five Most Impactful Musical Artists 🎵
1. Michael Kiwanuka. The best of modern British music.
2. Cuervo Cuervo. My favorite folktronica duo and my friends.
3. Joan Baez. For intense nostalgia while I’m writing my California love story.
4. Radiohead. Not very original of me to share, but wow.
5. Hermanos Gutierrez for a longing-filled instrumental road trip through life.
Top Five Tools for Post-Employment Work 🛠️
1. Reclaim AI, a new tool from Dropbox. It helps me plan my workdays in three-hour chunks as I try to achieve the perfect balance of a flexible schedule.
2. Opal to block apps on my phone and help me fight to steal a couple of hours of my time back from the bottomless pits of social media.
3. Stayfocusd does the same as Opal but on my computer.
4. Claude AI is my new therapist.
5. Loom. It’s how I screen-record professional presentations to my clients and deliver value as a remote worker. All from my desk in my sunny apartment in Mexico City!
Final Thought 🌿
I hope you found this montage of reflections helpful. For the record, I don’t plan on getting a 9-5 job ever again if I can avoid it. I’ll keep you updated on my progress in that regard!
So, what resonated with you? Let me know in the comments or reply to this email to share.
Lots of love and good luck!
Tash
