Quitting The Day Job

Quantity Does Not Equal Quality

Once long ago, in a dismal, dirty building with a tin roof left over from WWII, I was being introduced to my new project manager.  An exhausted looking woman who was barely able to tear herself away from her computer monitor to greet me in a monotone voice with the following pearl of wisdom:  “You won’t be bored here.  We have a lot of work.”

I don’t hide my emotions or expressions very well, but I did in this case.  My immediate thought was “Quantity does not equal Quality.  Just because you have a lot of work to do does not mean it is interesting.”  That really was a turning point in my life.  I realized that there were people who DID see “staying busy” as equating with “interesting”.  Not me.

In the years since, this theme has repeated itself over and over in my life.  Various managers or MBA drones from other departments…all fired up and excited over….what…Gantt Charts?  power points?  spreadsheets? or presentations that would put a room full of Red Bull drinkers to sleep?  No, I see through that.

But my theme does hold true.  Especially in quitting the day job.  You don’t have to do a lot of work to escape, you just have to do a few items and do them well.  Let’s look at an example.  Blogging for dollars for example.  Let’s say you want to create a blog and write and on a subject that interests you and make a few dollars from affiliates or Google ads, etc.

Do you need to make a long “to do” list of your items and wait to finish them before you start blogging?  NO!  Do you need to post every hour of every day and churn out as much content as possible? NO!  Do you need to make sure that your content is interesting?  YES.

Let’s take the quantity approach.  You could create a list of items to do (short list here, don’t want to bore you!):

-Get hosting service

-Get blog software

-Research affiliate programs

-List out best affiliates

-Plan out a strategy of promotion

-Plan out a list of topics for blogging

-Build site.

-Yawn…I’m bored now too.

Actually that is a pretty good list, but you don’t have to build a Donald Trump worthy business plan!  In this instance, just get yourself a blog, self hosted or free-hosted, and start blogging.  Then later come back and fill in the other pieces.

The above was just an example, it doesn’t apply to just blogging.  It can apply to anything if you want to quit the day job.  Whether you want to do landscaping, painting, or dog grooming.  But in a world where I.T. Vice Presidents think that outsourcing to India makes sense because “they can generate so much more code”, you will have to buck the trend and make sure that what you produce is Quality.