Over the past few years, much has been made of quitting your job.
Whether you hate the grind of 9 to 5, or 8 to 5, or you just hate that you aren’t your own boss, there’s an overwhelming amount of material available that encourages you to quit your job so you can do the thing you really want to do.
Whether the message is finding purpose in your work, or turning pro, or quitting your job, or living the life you’ve dreamed of, it all comes back to the idea that a full-time job often holds you back from doing what you were made to do.
And a lot this connects with me.
I’m self-motivated enough that I don’t need a cattle prod from a boss to keep me going. I don’t want every day of the week to feel the same, so I prefer to work from different spaces on different days of the week.
I want my life to have purpose, instead of the goal of work being clocking out.
Several writers have shared from their own journey encouraging others to pursue a similar path. I’m thinking specifically of both Jon and Jeff, who have written about this subject, and they are guys I have a lot of respect for (and you should read their stuff, because they’re really good), but I don’t think this “quit your job” mentality applies to most people.
I think most people should get a full-time job and then keep a full-time job for a long time.
Here’s why:
1. Trust is a long road, so grow deep roots.
Everytime I’ve taken a job post-college, I’ve told everyone around me I would be there for a minimum of three to five years. What if things fell apart? What if my boss tried to run me out of town? To just about all of these circumstances, I say stay the course.
I was at my last job for five years, and at the end of it I felt like I had just crossed the trust threshold. Sometimes you cross this faster than the five-year mark, sometimes longer. It doesn’t mean you can’t leave before crossing the trust threshold, or that you must leave when you do. Crossing the trust threshold allows you to have roots for meaningful relationships to grow from.
Just like you cannot dig up and replant a tree multiple times and still expect it to thrive, so too your life is less likely to thrive by uprooting too often.
