Ten More Reasons You Need to Quit Your Job Right Now!

Photo: John Lewis

This is a cross-post from James Altucher‘s blog Altucher Confidential. His previous appearances on the Freakonomics blog can be found here.
I realized I had been a bit misleading. I looked at my blog post “Ten Reasons You Need to Quit Your Job,” I realized that I said 90% of people “should” quit their jobs and I gave 10 reasons for recognizing if now is the right time for you to leave. But that’s a little different than saying, you have to quit right now.
But the reality is, most people need to begin their exit strategy right now.
So here are the 10 reasons you need to quit your job right now. And below that I have the methods for doing it.
1)      Safety. We used to think you get a corporate job, you rise up, you get promoted, maybe you move horizontally to another division or a similar company, you get promoted again, and eventually you retire with enough savings in your IRA. That’s all gone. That myth disappeared in 2008. It really never existed but now we know it’s a myth. Corporate CEOs kept their billion dollar salaries and laid off about 20 million people and sent the jobs to China. Fine, don’t complain or blame other people. But your job is not safe.
2)      Home. Everyone thinks they need a safe job so they can save up to buy a home and also qualify for a mortgage. Mortgage lenders at the banks like people who are like them – other people locked in cubicle prison. Well now you don’t need to worry about that. Here’s why you should never own a home in the first place. Save yourself the stress.
3)      College. Everyone thinks they need to save up to send their kids to college. Depending on how many kids you have and where you want them to go to college it could cost millions. Well now we know you don’t need to send your kid to college. So you don’t need to stress about that money anymore.
4)      Their boss. Most people don’t like their boss. Its like any relationship. Most of the time you get into a relationship for the wrong reasons. Eventually you’re unhappy. And if you don’t get out, you become miserable and scarred for life.
5)      Their coworkers. See above.
6)      Fear. We have such a high unemployment rate, people are afraid if they leave the job they are miserable at, they won’t be able to get a job. This is true if you just walk into your boss’s office and pee on his desk and get fired. But its not true if you prepare well. More on that in a bit.
7)      The Work. Most people don’t like the work they do. They spend 4 years going to college, another few years in graduate school, and then they think they have to use that law degree, business degree, architecture degree and then guess what? They hate it. But they don’t want to admit it. They feel guilty. They are in debt. No problem. Read on.
8)      Bad things happen. All the stuff I mention in the post “10 Reasons You Need to Quit Your Job” start to happen. And it gets worse and worse. You don’t want to look back at your life and say, “man, those were the worst 45 years of my life.” That wouldn’t feel good.
9)      The economy is about to boom.  I don’t care if you believe this or not. Stop reading the newspaper so much. The newspapers are trying to scare you. Bernanke just printed up a trillion dollars and airlifted it onto the US economy. Who is going to scoop that up. You in your cubicle? Think again.
10)   Your job has clamped your creativity. You do the same thing every day. You want to be jolted, refreshed, rejuvenated.
*Note: some people love their jobs. This is not for them, but the 90% who don’t.
So, Henry and Aaron (of Yahoo) asked a good question: you still need to support yourself, you still need to support your family, you can’t just walk into your boss’s office and quit.
Good point. You need to prepare. Its like training for the Olympics if you feel now is the time to move on from your job. You need to be physically ready, emotionally (don’t quit your job and get divorced on the same day for instance), mentally (get your idea muscle in shape) and spiritually all ready.
To quit, at least follow the ideas in the first post. Here are the posts that will help you get ready to quit your job:

• How to be the Luckiest Man Alive in 4 Easy Steps
• What to do if you were Fired Today
• The 100 Rules for Being an Entrepreneur

In the above link, it’s not about starting a business. It’s about finding what your frontier is, how to explore it, how to test the waters and move beyond it. I’m not saying I can do this. I’ve hit my boundary so many times and bounced off that I have six broken noses to show for it.