After seeing the awesome reach and positive response that my article “7 Valuable Lessons I Learned Working a Job I Hated for 2 Years” got, I decided to give you a glimpse of some of the most important lessons I learned by quitting said job as well.
Before I move on, I would like to point out that I didn’t quit my job cold-turkey.
I took the time, a lot of time, to find another job first. I went to several interviews throughout the period of some months and when I got hired at a job I thought I’d like better than my old one, I then went ahead and quit it.
For the majority of people, this is the optimal course of action…
I always say that it’s much better to find a job before you leave your current one rather than leaving your current job and then have to deal with the stress of finding another one while your savings, if you even have some, keep running out because this way you might take a job out of fear and necessity and end up in a way worse environment than your previous one.
On the other hand, some people might find that the stress of working their current job, is worse than the stress they’d have to face if they left themselves with no income for a while.
If you believe that this is the case with you, then quitting your job without having another one lined up might be the best choice for you. And you’ll figure out the rest later on.
After all, whatever comes at the cost of your wellbeing, is way too expensive.
Anyway, here are the 6 Beneficial Lessons I Learned Quitting a Job I Hated for 2 Years.
6 Beneficial Lessons I Learned Quitting a Job I Hated for 2 Years
1 • Start Saving Some Money Before You Quit
The most important step before quitting your job is to start setting some money aside.
Either you decide to quit your job cold-turkey or to take your time and find another job first, like me, having a cushion aside is going to make you feel much more comfortable, less frightened, help you deal with the unknown much more easily, as well as enable you to take better decisions.
When I knew that I would eventually have to quit my job, I started putting aside as much money as I could.
I stopped buying crap, eating take out daily, going out for drinks every weekend, buying toilet paper, etc. I also started using my bicycle more while running my errands and I washed my clothes in the river (just kidding about the clothes :P)
In just 6 months I managed to gather more money than I expected and that definitely gave me the extra push to start acting towards quitting my job.
2 • Better Do it Sooner Than Later
If you hate your job, quit it…
Once I told my boss I was out of there, I couldn’t fathom why the fuck I didn’t do it sooner.
Don’t get me wrong… I don’t mean like quit your job right now, but at least start taking the necessary steps to eventually get the hell out of there.
Stop settling. Stretch your comfort zone in order to escape that awful job. Pee against the wind!
If you don’t, you’ll probably reach the end of your life regretting spending its entirety or a huge chunk of it hating half or even more of your waking hours.
That’s fucking bad.
And the worst part is that then, it will be too late to actually do anything about it. You get no do-overs. You just get to live this one time.
So make sure that you do something to start improving your situation right now.
3 • It’s Unlikely That You’ll Regret Quitting
Deep down, most people who want to quit their job believe that they are going to regret it if they do so (okay maybe not that deep down).
- “You’ll regret it”
- “You can’t find better”
- “Everywhere else is just as bad”
- “You’ll turn homeless”
- “You working that job is the glue holding the whole universe together”
are some of the thoughts that will keep bombarding your consciousness once you start considering quitting your job.
However, none of those negative beliefs are actually true.
Truth is, that the worst case scenario you keep playing in your head which is holding you back from quitting your job is NEVER going to happen.
Second truth is, I’ve NEVER heard of one person who had regrets about quitting a job they hated. Not a single one.
And even if you do end up regretting it (which you won’t), so what?
Always know that it’s much better to regret about something you actually did than regretting about something you didn’t do (except maybe that “something” you did was drinking poison).
4 • You Can Never Know if Your Next Job Is Going to be Better
I am sure that you’ve heard a lot of times that no job is perfect.
This is such a cliche, right?
But it’s also so true.
Before leaving my current job, I needed to find the most perfect one.
And it took some time until I did. Or at least until I thought I did…
Truth is that most of the time, a job might seem perfect on paper as well as during your first couple weeks to a month working there but the more you stay there, the more annoyances and deal-breakers will start appearing under your radar.
If you’ve changed a couple or more jobs during your lifetime, you know exactly what I am talking about.
For instance, my new “perfect” job which took me months to find, was way better in term of duties and management than my old one, but it was a lot further from home and it had a lot of overtime most of it still going unpaid to this very day.
My point is this…
Don’t spend years trying to find your perfect job in order to leave your current one because that new job is probably going to have its downsides as well.
Don’t go for perfect… Going from working a job you hate to working a job you don’t hate is an enormous improvement.
And you never know…
A job which you don’t hate might eventually become your the job you love. And your perfect job might eventually become a job you hate.
5 • Take Some Time Off
While quitting a job cold-turkey is not the recommended course of action, sometimes it might be highly beneficial before actually moving on to the next one.
You see, working a job you hate is like being in a bad relationship.
In order to recuperate and healthily move on to the next one, you have to be by yourself for a while and let all this accumulated negativity settle.
Sometimes, this is the only way to make a healthy decision towards which direction you should move.
The next time I quit my current job, which will be pretty soon, I will definitely allow myself to rest for a couple of weeks or maybe a month before I even start looking for another one.
And that’s exactly why you need to have some savings on the side as I’ve talked earlier on!
6 • There’s No Better Feeling in the World
It’s true…
That adrenaline rush that you get when you finally walk up to your boss and tell right in their face that you quit is almost as good as having sex.
You feel like you’ve regained your power… You had to feel such power for a very long time. It feels like you finally took back control of your feelings and your life. You are the master of your fate. You are the captain of your sails. You call the odds not your boss, not your colleagues, not your family and friends. YOU!
The feeling is so good that I am actually considering getting hired in jobs just to quit them and keep experiencing the same feeling over and over again.
I am really not kidding.
Conclusion
I know that quitting a job is no easy decision to make. After all, that’s why it took me 2 years to actually quit a job I hated since day one.
However, it’s something that needs to be done better sooner than later… And you know it!
Let go of all excuses and start acting now. Now is the only time you have to improve your life. Not tomorrow… Not next year… NOW!
Think about it this way: What’s the worst that can happen?
Did you get it? Good!
That worst-case scenario is never going to play out, period.
To motivate you even further, go ahead and take a look at The #1 Reason You MUST Quit The Job You Hate. And here are 21 more!
For how long have you been working a job you hate? What is holding you back from quitting it? What do you imagine as the worst-case scenario if you quit your job?
Let us know all about it in the comment section below.
If you have any questions or need any further help or guidance from me, please email me at harry@dearboss-iquit.com or drop me a PM on my Wealthy Affiliate Profile.
I’ll be thrilled to help you out.
Harry,
dearboss-iquit.com
12 Responses
Well, I know that awful feeling of hating my job.
I think I hold it for almost 6 months before finally telling my boss that I want to quit for good. I got sick and almost depressed because I can’t cope with office politics and my boss’s behavior. I remember he took a long breath when I said that, and I just got really happy after resigning.
There was no sign of regret whatsoever 🙂
One thing that I failed to prepare much is saving money. But I learned my lesson and I will prepare better when I will quit my current job at some point in the future.
Thank you very much for your precious insights.
It’s no secret that working a job you hate can negatively impact a lot of aspects of your overall health.
The main negative effect my job had on me was that I was constantly feeling drained and tired not so much physically but mentally and spiritually.
Once I quit, it felt like I got my life back and to this day, there are no regrets.
Having saved some money made my decision to jump to another job much easier because I knew that even if the new job didn’t work out, I would still have a cushion to break my fall and be able to pay some bills and eat until I find another one.
But to tell you the truth, even if I had $0 saved, I would still have quit.
Thank you for sharing your story with us 🙂
Harry
Self-love and self-care are so important! You can’t be your best on both a personal level or professionally if you don’t enjoy your career. And while money is a necessity to live your desired lifestyle, it is not a necessity to live. Don’t let it dictate your happiness! I too was at a job for about 2 years that I hated. Every day I was ready to walk out. The freedom and relief once I moved on were priceless!
So, I have to ask. You said you stopped buying toilet paper to conserve funds…..Was there an alternative used like washing after? LoL
I totally agree with you Sherry.
The optimal way to live is having a job which allows you to have a good work-life balance. And it is highly unlikely to have a good work-life balance while working a job you hate.
To tell you the truth, I still haven’t managed to find a way to be able to live without money. I believe that the one who does figure this out is going to be truly free forever.
The next best thing might be to do a job you love. After all, working a job you love won’t seem like actually working but more like having fun, at least most days…
What was the main reason that you hated your job? And how did you manage to quit it?
I would love to know more about your story.
P.S. Thankfully there indeed was an alternative to whipping haha 😛
Most of us can identify with the idea of hating a job as well as quitting one. There is nothing better than quitting a job you hate when you have another job or at least a good alternative plan.
In my personal experience, I have quit only one job in my forty or so years of working. God knows I wanted to quit more jobs than that but could not see any alternative, so I stayed.
If I had come across your site back then, I might have had the resources to quit more easily.
I recently signed up to Wealthy Affiliate and I am very impressed by the potential to help people while building an online business of your own.
Such an awesome opportunity.
So, you are still working all the jobs you’ve found throughout your life simultaneously??
Wealthy Affiliate is indeed a great opportunity for people to start an online business on the side of their job, and scale it until they are making enough money to not need their job anymore.
This is exactly what I am doing and while it requires a lot of time and effort, the possibility to become my own boss is just too damn captivating that for me, there’s no other option than achieving it.
All the best to you and your online business.
Harry
There is no better feeling in the world than quitting your job.
But leading up to that is incredibly nerve-wracking. There is so much uncertainty that comes from quitting it can cause you to think and re-think your course of action several times over.
For me, it was always benefiting. It is tough to walk away from health coverage in a country that doesn’t have it for all their citizens. But once you get past it and just do it, it’s invigorating!
Tell me about it… When I quit my job I had a smile so wide that my colleagues thought I was on drugs 😛
Truth is until you take that step, you will think it, and think it, and think it a little bit more. But thinking things through doesn’t really help, at least not me. It just held me back…
If you hate your job just make an escape plan and start executing. The sooner the better.
Not having health coverage can be an issue but working a job you hate is not the only way to get it… You can always find another more tolerable job and still have your health coverage…
Harry
I’m with you on everything. After some things that happened last summer, I promised to myself that I’m never staying into a job I hate. I’m never going through this kind of stress again- especially for the salary I was getting.
Life is too short to worry about people who are miserable enough to treat others badly. I quit my job and I didn’t regret it at all. I felt AWESOME! 🙂
Way to go Kate!
I have made the exact same promise to myself.
Whatever costs my well-being is way too expensive and just isn’t worth it…
For me, there’s no better feeling in the world than quitting a job I have been hating for so long. It was freaking exhilarating and I thank myself for having the guts to actually go through it.
The only thing I regret is that I didn’t actually quit sooner.
Harry
I know I am not alone in wanting to quit cold-turkey-ish… But we’ve got to have a plan otherwise we would be homeless.
How many people have the courage to quit first before figuring out what to do? I guess very few. I agree that saving money is one of the most important things to do, but also, you might not have enough to save. Another option will be to find residual income, no matter how small it is. The first step always matters.
Thanks for the helpful highlights.
Quitting a job cold-turkey is a hard decision to make especially if you have obligations, bills to pay, and nobody to help you out.
I have actually quit a couple of jobs cold-turkey in the past but it was while I was younger and was still living with my parents.
Since I moved out, quitting cold-turkey seems scary to me because I am afraid that if I screw up, I will have to move back with my parents and have to deal with a lot of their shit on top of my own shit 😛
Anyway, there a lot of ways to replace one’s income so you don’t have to quit your job without having anything else lined up.
You just have to devote some time and stretch your comfort zone if you want to eventually improve your situation.
Building residual income is a great way to escape the 9-5 forever but it either takes a ton of time, a ton of money or both.
But it’s definitely worth the try. That’s exactly what I am trying to build with this very website 🙂
Harry.