Zen Assistant: How to Quit Your Job (Part 2 of 5) – Fear Setting

“Fear is a motivational factor, and often we’re not afraid of anything in particular but a nebulous phantasm. Fear is about managing risk, and what you’re trying to avoid is a negative, irreversible consequence. The best way to defeat fear is to define it. When you do, you find few things are actually negatively irreversible.” – Tim Ferriss, on Chase Jarvis live, minute 02:50

This snippet is my favorite segment of this particular interview (linked up at the end of this post, for your convenience). This mentality — define fears to see few things in life are irreversible — pushed me when I first started in entertainment, with no idea what a POD was, who runs which studio, or what a “mensch” meant.

And I revisit it often, actually. I think that’s really important when you work in the entertainment industry, which feels archaic at times, with unrealistic demands for a glimmering lifestyle and a standard of perfection that makes sending a single e-mail a paralyzing chore.

By being aware of the worst case scenario (and its reversibility) I realize there are many moments I’m better off trying many things, making small and correctible mistakes so I can barrel through the learning curve, versus laboring over a single act of perfection.

So how do we put this framework about fear (dubbed “Fear Setting” by Tim Ferriss) to work when it comes to quitting your job?

Amanda Pendolino covered it here on the Aspiring TV Writer’s blog, when a reader asked her: “I want to write for scripted TV but the company I work for only produces reality television. When is time to move on and find the next job? How do I move on with out my boss hating me?”

To sum up Amanda’s position, she offered these three nuggets:

1. It’s time to quit when you’re not learning anything and not making contacts. 
2. Don’t quit until you find a new job.
3. Get over the “boss hating me” thing.

How to “Fear Set” Quitting Your Job

The Fear Setting method helps us reach similar conclusions, but the methodology is more rigorous, which I feel provides the confidence to execute more succinctly. I’m going to continue using the above reader as our case study for Fear Setting:

1. Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering. How realistic are any of these outcomes?  

   You don’t have a new job lined up, or the one you had fell through. In fact, it takes you six months to a year to find a new job. Your boss, the reality TV producer, hates you and blackballs you. He screams at you when you give him your two weeks and tells you to get the fuck out. He makes it so you never want to work in reality again.

2. What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily? How could you get things back under control? 

   Before you quit, you could find your replacement and have them ready to be trained, to make the transition as smooth as possible. Before you quit, you could reach out extensively to your network and let them know you’re looking for a new role. If you needed money, you could waiter or bartend. Or you could use Craiglist gigs to make money in the meantime.

3. What are the outcomes or benefits, both temporary and permanent, of more probable scenarios? What are the positive outcomes? What would the impact be on a scale of 1 – 10? Have less intelligent people done this before and pulled it off? 

   How much of an impact on your career would finding a job closer to your desired role, in your long-term career trajectory (even with a 6-month or 1-year hiatus, while searching for the right gig)? Isn’t that worth quitting for?

4. If you were fired from your job today, what would you do to get things under financial control? If you quit your job to test other options, how could you later get back on the same career track if you had to?

   How good were you at your job before? If you absolutely needed to get work again, how easy would it be for you to get another job at a reality production company?

5. What are you putting off out of fear? What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do. 
6. What is it costing you – financially, emotionally, physically, to postpone action? Measure the atrocious cost of inaction. If you don’t pursue those things that excite you, where will you be in one year, five years, and ten years? 

   Again, think in the long-term trajectory of your career. What’s it costing your end game by not quitting right now?

7. What are you waiting for?

Here’s the Chase Jarvis Interview of Tim Ferriss. Enjoy!

#####

Photo Credit: notsogoodphotography