Posted on by Rugged Troubador

Should You Quit Your Job?

In Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest For Work You Love, he provides an algorithm to be used in order to find out whether you should quit your job. I’m quoting from memory:

There are three criteria:

  1. You really hate the people you work with.
  2. You feel that the job is not helping people or doing anything good for the world.
  3. There is no room for innovation.

The first criterion is more or less black and white – you either do or you don’t hate the people you work with. The second two are far more subjective. Who’s to say if the world is being made a better place? And as far as innovation goes, are we talking within the confines of the job itself, or innovation outside of the workplace as well?

Most people aren’t interested in the second two criteria. They’re most likely already good at their job, or they don’t have any other source of income on which to fall back. But for those of us who are, it might benefit us to contemplate them if we’re not entirely certain that our current jobs will hold much promise in the long run.

Posted on by Rugged Troubador

Pushing Up

The job I have now is an interesting beast. I’ve wrestled with it now for, well, as long as I’ve been doing it – about seven years. I’ve never encountered anything so emotionally challenging, nor something that has forced me to adapt with such immediacy.

What strikes me the most about it is how I am always needing to adjust my perspective. Sometimes my emotions can get the better of me, but when I take a step back and look at how good I have it, my perspective is slanted towards the positive. The most challenging thing is not being able to see the forest for the trees.

I think this can extend to all walks of life  – not only jobs, but also activities, or moments or stretches of time when we are just “not feeling it.” It takes quite a bit of discernment to know if it’s worth it to push through, or if it’s not. If it is, pushing through is smart. If it’s not, you may have no choice – pushing through may still be required.

Good for those who have reached a point to where they don’t have to deal with the emotional roller coaster. But I’m sure that ride still exists for everyone – even those who have graduated to doing work that resonates with every fiber of their being. Come to think of it, do those people even exist?

I guess perspective is not as important as I thought. Sure, it may make the pushing through easier, or harder, but the perspective is always going to be what it is at the time. So what’s left? Whatever is left is the stuff to be dealt with. It’s the dirty stuff – it’s the stuff that can be tough to swallow. But it’s also the stuff that makes us stronger, makes us grow.

We won’t get stronger or grow, however, if we don’t push up and not through. If we spend all of our time pushing through, we just might stay on the same ride for longer than we bargained for. If we push up, we might make a bit of our own luck, and be able to switch to another, better ride.

Posted on by Rugged Troubador · 2 Comments

Passion, Creativity, and Freedom

I thought I’d kick off the week with a brief post about Passion. Some of you might have seen/heard my song, Passion Play. I love that expression because it is indicative of what so many of us go through who are on a creative path. We feel the turbulence, the unrest, that is natural for someone who is making something out of nothing.

Of course, such a life, until it pays for itself, must be tempered with financial obligations. Some of those obligations include the all-known “working a job.” The “job” is anything that is not your love, your dream, your Passion, but that is necessary for you to support your love, your dream, your Passion. Until your Passion can pay for itself, you must do the “job.”

A funny thing about the “job” is that, while in some cases it can be directly related to the Passion, it is usually not the strong point of the creative person in question. In fact, to use myself as an example, I’ve been through several jobs, having either been fired or quit, clearly because they were not what I was designed for. It’s not uncommon for creative people to not be able to hold a “job.”

This is sometimes seen by the outside world is impulsive or irresponsible. “Why can’t you keep a job?” “Don’t you want to be stable?” There is something seen as “wrong” with the creative person. The truth is, the creative person just wants to be creative. The “job” is the opposite, in most cases, of the creative person’s nature.

The creative person then has to work around the rigid demands of the “job” until such point that he or she can break away and have the “job” be the “Passion” (entrepreneurialism). This makes the “job” an interim necessity for the creative person. Problem is, most people do not see jobs as “interim necessities,” but as something that you’ll always have to do, or even a “career” (love that word). “You need to make money!” “Gotta have a job!” And the idea of the art paying for itself gets swept under the rug, because the art ain’t payin’ the bills.

I believe that we are all naturally creative. If we weren’t, there wouldn’t be cars, houses, or clothing. The man-made objects we’ve grown so used to would not exist. There would be no such thing as music or painting. The very fabric of reality is based on creation (birth). The grass is green, the sky is blue. A species is threatened, it finds creative ways to survive.

Does it follow that we would all be naturally entrepreneurs? No. There’s only a handful of people who even want to be. But I do think that we all want to be free – free to be creative, free to be debt-free, free to eat Doritos and watch television on the weekends. OK, maybe the Doritos thing is a notch or two below the “creative” impulse, but my point is that freedom and creativity are bedmates.

Passion has a price. You can’t just show up for work, then go home and eat Doritos. Passion hurts. Passion stings. Passion makes you get slapped around.

This is a touchy subject – I realize. But hey, I never said I would sugarcoat anything, did I?

Are you a creative person with a Passion? Do you find that your “job” is in harmony with your passion, or simply a means to the end of supporting your passion until your passion can support itself?