Why I quit my amazing job
Passion. Jealousy. And the desire to be able to just say no (or yes).
I have been lucky. When people ask me how I ended up working in digital product invention and design and I tell them “by accident.” I didn’t even know product design existed until my friend Emily Folstad introduced me to the industry. I always thought I would become a psychologist of some kind but I quickly discovered that I loved the people part of design — understanding what they want, need and are motivated by. I also loved the coming together of creative and analytical minds: designers and engineers working together to make things that previously didn’t exist.
I worked in the industry for 10 years. I was happy at GoKart Labs where I spent the past 6. We not only built new products for our clients, but created some of our own in-house: part incubator, part services firm. I had a chance to work with talented people every day.
It wasn’t easy to quit my amazing job but I did it and here’s why:
Passion…
I was doing what I loved but only some of the time
At GoKart, a part of my job was to lead teams through collaborative design sprints to solve customer and business challenges. We created new digital products or refined existing products that were already in market to make them more usable and lovable. I saw the power of getting people together in a room to commit to solving together. So much headway was made in just a few days vs. when the problem solving and decision making were dispersed.
When we didn’t commit and solve problems this way, it took much longer and I saw lots of unneeded churn.
People would lose focus and momentum
Someone would change his or her mind / forget the decision that had been made earlier
A team or stakeholder change would occur
This isn’t atypical and happens in all sorts of industries but in the digital product design world, we are seeing more use of focused design sprints as a way to make progress and put something out in the world. I wanted to work this way all the time.
Nothing made me happier than seeing people commit to solving a problem, create a solution, and plan to bring that new idea forward.
I believe that if you find the thing that you are passionate about and lean into it, your capacity will grow and you will bring more energy and power into the world.
So I tapped in to this thing that lit me up and said “I want to do this all the time.” And then I said “Why not?”
Jealousy…
I was jealous of my friends who had their own businesses.
The second reason I quit my amazing job was I have always been envious of other people who have their own businesses. I was envious of the people I worked for! If you are jealous of people — for whatever reason — it’s easy to say “but they have…” or “I don’t have…” and sometimes it’s true. Absolutely. We are all presented different circumstances, gifts and challenges.
More often, we are our own biggest obstacle. We stop ourselves from pursuing things before they’ve even started by limiting ourselves in our own minds. When I find myself jealous of others I stop and say “What is it that they have that I want and how can I go get it?”
I found myself consistently envious of people who were “doing their own thing.” Previously, I’d limited myself by saying “I need security, stability, more money saved.” But then one day I said to myself, “What’s really getting in my way?” The biggest obstacle was that I needed to truly believe that it could be me. I could do my own thing. “Why not me?”
Just saying no…
I wanted to be able to choose which clients and problems I work on.
Working for other people is a gift. Especially if they are good people. I am grateful for all of the good people I have worked for. They have given me the opportunity to learn, grow and get paid. The drawback of working for others in a service business is that they get to choose which clients and problems we tackle.
I wanted to have 100% control over saying yes and no to work. I believe that we are what we make in the world. Our legacy is our energy and actions and creations. We are all contributing to and creating our future with every action or inaction we choose. I wanted to be able to work on the types of problems and products that I believe in. The only way I could gain this autonomy was to be the boss. So I quit.
Now, I’m out on my own running collaborative design sprints for clients to solve problems and come up with new ideas for products, services or experiences in the world. Some of my favorite work has been far afield from digital product design. I’ve been working with educators to help them tackle challenges they face in the K-12 education setting.
If you are excited about something, jealous of someone or have a desire to say no so that you can say yes to something else, ask yourself: “How you are standing in your own way?”
Not everyone needs to quit their job. But if more of us followed our passion, I bet we could make a whole lot more good happen.