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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
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Quitter summary
Jon Acuff
Closing the Gap Between Your Day Job and Your Dream Job
18 mins
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Quitter
Summary of 9 key ideas
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Key idea 1 of 9
Finding your dream job doesn’t start with quitting your current one.
A survey in the United States in 2011 showed that 84 percent of employees planned to look for a new job that year. That’s a huge number, isn’t it? You might’ve even been one of them!
Yet how do you go about finding this dream job? By quitting your old one? Well, no. Don’t quit your day job. If you quit right away without planning what to do next, two things could happen.
First, you might replace your old boss with new mini bosses that were previously hidden. That means your electricity bill, your water bill, your health insurance – in short, bills. When they rule your life, there’s not much chance of being your own boss.
Second, your personal relationships can be put under pressure. Worrying about money leads to an unhealthy and neurotic mind-set. You might find yourself shouting at your partner for spending too long in the shower and causing the water bill to go up, for instance.
There’s a wiser way to find your dream job: keep your day job. Well, at least initially.
Why? You run less risk of getting sucked into a opportunity that isn’t actually good enough. You don’t have to feel forced into accepting any old offer just because you have no others.
Jon Acuff’s first book contract, for example, was terrible. A publisher offered to buy the book for nothing, keep 100 percent of the profits and then sell copies back to him so he could then sell them via his blog. Luckily, he had work at the time, so he could reject the offer. Imagine if he’d been unemployed and desperate. It probably would’ve been a completely different story.
Of course, staying in your day job also helps you maintain a disciplined and healthy lifestyle, whereas being unemployed can lead to procrastination and unhappiness. And we want to avoid a negative state of mind.
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What is Quitter about?
Finding out where you really want to be in life requires patience, hard work and planning, but anyone can do it with the right dedication. Filled with many personal anecdotes from a 12-year span of job-hopping, Quitter shows you the smartest way to quit your day job for your dream job.
Best quote from Quitter
Fact: Ryan Gosling got a job making sandwiches in a deli to keep structure in his life after the success of the film The Notebook.
—Jon Acuff
Who should read Quitter?
- Anyone seeking to transition from their day job to their dream job
- Anyone still searching for their ideal career
- Anyone who feels a bit lost in life
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