Friday was the last day of my first job out of college. I quit.
I really liked my job. All in all, it was a great experience. The people were great. It was a great mix of technical work (i.e. coding) and real, human, “soft skills” kinda stuff. My whole job was about using code to bring real-world solutions to genuine problems my clients were facing. That may sound boring to some, but in a lot of ways, that is the original reason I got into coding. I never wanted to learn to code for the sake of coding. I was always just looking for ways to build new things, and often that lead me to learn new skills because the “new things” I wanted to build required more and more complex coding.
All that to say that I liked my job. This isn’t the story of the overworked, underpaid intern who storms out, chanting ‘I QUIT! I QUIT!’ as they march down an aisle of cubicles, flipping off their good-for-nothing boss. No, on the contrary. In some ways, it felt wrong to quit. When I first started my job back in August, I told myself I’d give it at least 1-2 years before looking elsewhere. So leaving after only nine months seemed short.
Now, if you read my last newsletter, you know why I quit (recap: I sold a company, and I’m going to be working for the company that bought it). In other words, I quit because of a really amazing, once-in-a-lifetime kind of opportunity. I know it was the right move because of what quitting will allow me to achieve elsewhere.
Now, this begs the question, when is it okay to quit? And I don’t just mean quitting a job, I mean quitting anything: a job, an exercise routine, a goal… So, in what circumstances is quitting… okay?
From this case, the easy answer seems to be, “when the thing you quit is stopping you from achieving something else”.
The issue I see with that, especially from personal experience, is that any new thing can then become enough of an excuse for quitting anything you’re already doing, so long as it seems more exciting at that moment. And since the new is always more exciting than the old, then you end up quitting a lot.
So the key is to make sure you’re quitting for something better — be that better financially, educationally, or even just that it is a better experience or something you are truly more passionate about.
Still, quitting is never ideal, especially when it’s quitting something you’ve really wholeheartedly invested yourself in. But if you weigh that against the possible gain of fully investing yourself in something new, with its own amazing potential outcomes, then quitting can be the right thing to do. That’s how I rationalize it, at least…
So now, bringing this idea back to the purpose of my newsletter: are there any goals that I should consider quitting?
The one goal which I’ve been considering quitting is that of posting TikToks. Especially in the last month, when my mind has been fully set on selling the company and managing the transition between my two jobs while still trying to excel in both, posting on TikTok completely left my mind. I was not drawn to it anymore, and it became more of an added stressor (“yet another thing I’m late on”) than a fun thing to look forward to.
So should I quit?
Based on my above definition, I would say no. I wouldn’t be quitting TikTok because it would allow me to replace it with something bigger and better. No, I’d be quitting it for the sake of quitting, before even trying, just because I lost motivation. So clearly, no, I shouldn’t quit.
I should, however, change my approach. TikTok, just like Youtube in the past, became too much of a hassle. Even though it “only” takes 30 minutes to edit and post a TikTok, the “mental mountain” of actually sitting down to do that is still too big. I need to find a way to make TikTok easy. Not just easy, but as easy as it possibly can be. I need it to become something so easy that not doing it would feel like more trouble.
I think that’s possible. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but it’ll just take a little rethinking and restructuring of my current process.
So that’s my main focus for this week. Make TikTok easy — and in the process, fun — again.
Speaking of focus, last week’s focus was catching up on my reading. I’ve done more than that! I’m now close to a week ahead on reading, and I finished two books this week! I’ve officially read 10 books in 2021. That, in itself, makes me really proud of myself. I don’t think I read more than 10 books (that hadn’t been assigned to me) in all of high school, and now I’ve read 10 books in the span of 4.5 months! That’s insane. I’m happy this project of writing a dumb “accountability newsletter” every week is actually working. Who would have thought? As always, thank you, the reader, for being there to read this. I couldn’t have done it without you.
Anyway, don’t quit on your goals. But sometimes, if it is the right thing to do, quit the things that may be keeping you from your real goals. Or something like that, I don’t know, I’m not a writer…
Reading
Finished since the last newsletter:
“The Handmaid’s Tale”, Margaret Atwood.
“The Great Gatsby”, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Currently reading:
“The Compound Effect”, Darren Hardy.
“The Little Book of Common Sense Investing”, by John C. Bogle.
“The Hobbit”, J. R. R. Tolkien.
Please leave any book recommendations in the comments and add me on Goodreads.
(Note: I’ve stopped writing thoughts about the books in this section because it got annoying. If you want my opinion about the books, check my Goodreads.)
Statistics
Year progress: 37%
Newsletters posted: 14 (+1)
Newsletter subscribers: 24 (thank you ❤️)
Hours read this year: 70 (+9) - 2 ahead of target
Workouts this year: 27 (+2) - 8 ahead of target
TikToks posted in 2021: 9 (+0) - 10 behind target
TikTok followers: 121 (+2)
Thanks again for reading my newsletter. As suggested by an avid reader of the newsletter, here is a new section of the newsletter, the “meme palette-cleanser of the week”:
Anyway, if you haven’t subscribed yet, and you want to help out the lost cause of keeping me accountable for my goals, or you just want to see what meme I’ll find for next week, then please subscribe:
Thanks again for reading. See you next Sunday ❤️
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