How I Prepared for Quitting

Deciding to leave my high-paying, comfortable job — with nothing in sight — was hard. But there were a few things I did that helped me be more decisive and prepared.

When the thought of leaving my job became strong, the first thing that came to mind was interviewing in other companies. I believed I needed to have something lined up before I decided to quit. Being a Software Engineer, getting interviews was easy, so I set two up. Although I did bad in the interviews, they helped me realize two critical things. Firstly, that it was possible to be genuinely excited about a job, as I saw from several interviewers. I hadn't seen that at my workplace in a long time. Secondly, that I didn't want to jump straight into a job where I would be working on solving somebody else's problem. I thought I would eventually end up in the same position I was in.

Following this realization, I reached out to the people I trust most and asked for their advice. I spoke at length with my partner, close friends and family. The support I received was important as it helped me not feel alone. It helped me understand they shared my views. They also believed I could figure out a way to make money eventually. Having other people believe in me helped me feel more confident about quitting with nothing lined up. There were some who thought my idea was crazy, and somehow dismissed it by hoping I would find a job soon. At first, I tried to make them understand that I wasn't even going to be looking for another job. Eventually, I stopped caring.

I know emotions come and go. When my mind is clouded it's hard to find clarity of purpose. I didn't want this to be the case, so I relied on a tool that had been helping me tremendously: journaling. I decided to write a clear note articulating my reasons to quit. This would serve two purposes. Firstly, it would help me gain clarity. I had been journaling every day for almost a year and it was incredible how much easier it was to understand what was going on in my mind once I put it on paper. Secondly, it would serve as a reference. If I got any sign of doubt after having formally resigned, I could go back to this note and eliminate doubts. Ironically, after formally resigning, I started to like my job and question my decision, likely because I no longer felt stressed. I returned to this note several times and was grateful I had written it. Later, I captured the themes from the original note in this post.

Another important part of the process was getting my finances in order. Up to then, since graduating, I had always received a salary on the last working day of each month. I invested a chunk of it and used the rest for my expenses. But that would change in two months time, and I needed to be prepared. This caused some anxiety because my savings and investments, which had been growing for years, would start to shrink. To ease the anxiety, I wanted to make sure I had enough cash to survive for at least one full year. So it was time to sell some of my investments for the first time. I reasoned that by selling my financial investments, I was making an investment in myself. Once I had a year's worth of cash set aside, my financial anxiety eased. This is a basic summary of my financial plan. I'll explain more in a future post.

With a financial plan in place, I looked into structuring the free time I would soon have. Having a lot of it could be a blessing, but I was afraid it could also be a curse. What if I ended up with lots of free time and nothing to show for it? I didn't want to look back after having had a few months or a year off work and have done nothing I was proud of. I was afraid of throwing my time away. So to avoid wasting time, I prepared a list of activities I wanted to pursue. The list included trying new sports like Muay Thai, volunteering, writing, reading, socializing more, learning new skills like Figma, data analysis, and starting personal projects My plan was simple: whenever I had a free day, I'd pick an activity from this list. Activities like writing, reading, or sports are flexible and contribute to personal growth. If I had multiple free days, I could focus on these activities and make good use of my time.

Together with recreational or personal growth activities, working on personal projects to solve problems I cared about was also part of my plan. I began brainstorming, jotting down ideas, and outlining what it would take to execute them. Sharing these ideas with friends made them feel more real and helped refine them. During this process, I realized the value in meeting friends to talk about work and project ideas. I used to dislike work meetings because they often felt pointless, but this was different. So I set up some recurring 1:1 meetings with friends to talk about work, industry developments, and just talk as I would with colleagues at my job. The goal was to pick each other's brains. This was great; it grounded my ideas and began to add some structure to my life after leaving my job.

After missing a meeting due to silent notifications, I couldn't find a calendar widget on the Google Play Store that met my needs. So I decided to build exactly what I wanted, a minimalist calendar widget that would help me see my weekly schedule and not miss meetings in the future. Building it was fairly straightforward but it helped refresh my skills in some Android areas I hadn't touched recently. Things got interesting when I needed to create an icon and feature graphics for the Play Store listing. Usually, a team designer would handle this. But now I was alone. I researched tools, settled on Figma, learned a lot, and created a decent icon and graphics. The biggest realization of the whole process was if there's something out there I want and is not available, instead of waiting or complaining, I could build it. If there's a skill I needed but didn't have, I could learn it. I realized I was fully independent, capable of doing whatever I wanted, a feeling that's hard to top.