How I Almost Quit My Job, and How Being Selfish Saved Me#
Every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out
– Mark Watney, The Martian
Leverage and the loss of ego#
Positions of leverage feel great, but result in self-sacrifice and burnout.
When in a position of leverage, a small amount of your work helps others a great deal. Sacrificing minutes of your time saves days of someone else’s, so of course you sacrifice. You’d be a monster not to. Sacrificing for others is part of being a human; we’re social creatures and helping others is deeply rooted in our DNA.
And helping other people feels great! Especially when it’s so easy. This feeling makes you work long hours, and squeeze extra time from the odd corners of your day, helping unblock as many people as you can. Unfortunately, your personal life and ego can fade in service of your project.
Sometimes this fade results in repressive or self-destructive behaviors
“I’ve put on a few pounds sure, but I don’t really have time to go running with this new project starting”
“Yes, this person’s behavior makes lose sleep, but if I show how I feel it’ll cause chaos because of my position”
“My partner doesn’t like it when I work after they come home, but there’s a really important project going on, and all they’re doing is watching TV.”
There are natural release mechanisms like venting anger or taking time off that stop making sense day-to-day when you’re in a position of leverage. Your time and position are too important to let loose. When these release mechanisms no longer make sense day-to-day, your leverage swallows part of your identity and, eventually, you break (or at least I do).
This breaking point is an interesting moment because it’s at this point where the entire project is at risk unless you fix a very important problem, yourself.
You can’t fix yourself through more sacrifice. You can only fix things by selfishly prioritizing your needs. This is a rare moment in life where egotism and altruism are perfectly aligned. However, prioritizing your needs doesn’t mean “do less work”. Often you can achieve far more effective interventions than just “work less”. You can reshape your relationship to work in more creative ways than by just stopping.
This is the moment when you say “Fuck it” to your colleagues and start working from the beach or while motorcycling across America (or whatever). It’s either that or you and the whole system break down.
Personal Examples#
I’ve almost quit my job (running an early-stage tech company) several times in the last five years. Rather than actually quit, I’ve instead decided to make changes like the following:
I have no recurring meetings
I don’t log into Slack
I’ve checked out of work for a month, focusing more on running and yoga than customers or team morale
I’ve bailed on conference talks and company travel for six months
These actions are selfish, but they’ve also improved my life tremendously and saved my relationship with work, giving me the space to continue high-leverage work. If I didn’t figure out these creative ways to be selfish, I would have broken and everything else would have broken for others around me.
Every time I made a change, I came back with more energy and more impact. These changes improved everyones’ outcomes, not just my own.
Optimize for Yourself, Creatively#
No one has full freedom over their worklife, but everyone has a lot of freedom, far more than they exercise.
Most founders and other leaders I run into are stressed out. Most question their relationship to work. My advice to them (and to you) is to be selfish, creatively. Don’t just stop doing work or helping others; figure out very specifically what you want and design work around what you want. The higher the leverage of your work, the more power you have to tailor your work life to suit your needs.