“Why the hell did you quit your job?”
I get this a question a lot. I know it’s a blessing to have a job that pays so well. And I worked so damn hard to get to where I was.
The simple answer: I wasn’t happy. I was an executive at a Fortune 200 company for eight years. Sure, I had a positive impact on others’ lives, especially in helping to improve the bottom line for the company and shareholders, as well as employing others (including personally hiring some people I am proud to say are my friends). The money was great – and I was very blessed to have been earning that much. But at some point the costs outweighed the benefits. The equation tipped the scale towards the option of walking away in three ways: freedom, time, and purpose.
Freedom: Golden handcuffs are still handcuffs
A common analogy used for executive compensation is the image of golden handcuffs. Yes, an $800,000 is as valuable as gold. That’s a lot of money to receive annually; and even after tax, that’s a lot to have to make anyone’s desires come true. But there are definitely strings attached – hence the handcuffs. I lost my sense of autonomy. Sure, the higher you get in the organization, the less it’s dictated to you how you go about doing things. There’s less and less time other people spend looking over your shoulder telling you how to complete Step 1, followed by Step 2. But at the executive level, there are far more people making sure you deliver your results. And that level of accountability – and all the stress associated with it – of delivering results to problems that often are not your own but perhaps something someone else left for you (to clean up) – that is largely outside your control.
I also lost control of my schedule. What actually excited me about my career – the problem solving, analytics, and storytelling parts of it – was less and less of my day. Meanwhile, the managerial aspect of it grew and grew to the point that I spent likely 80-90% of my days in meetings, listening to others’ recommendations, asking questions about their work, and challenging their assumptions. As a Vice President of a publicly traded company, it’s astounding how much time I spent in meetings invited by other people. Feeling like I was stuck in back-to-back meetings all day, I asked my Executive Assistant to block out times every day so that I could actually do work (e.g., write speeches, develop my own insights, generate ideas). This was to prevent such time bleeding into my evenings so that I could actually be present with my family – and not, as it often was the case, compel me to fire up the laptop and do my work until late into the night.
Time: At some point, time becomes more important than money
My Dad repeated several axioms in my childhood and one of them that stuck was ‘time is money.’ And while it’s true that one trades their time to earn a wage, when was the last time you have heard someone trading their money to buy their own time? For every hundred people who decide to spend their $100,000 annual salary on a brand new Tesla X, is there even one person who decides to take their hard-earned $100,000 and take a year off from work?
For me, the equation was very clear. I was earning far more money per year than I was spending. I had more money than I had time. And if I wanted to exchange money for time, I could do it. And the equation was tipping more and more towards time. For every annual salary saved, it became perhaps 2 or 3 years of time that I didn’t need to work. And it grew and grew to the limits of now being able to basically last for the rest of my life.
It was a no brainer for me. I had millions saved up. Did I open Door #1 to choose a bigger house, a fancier car, a private jet to fly me to different Board meetings in my 60s and 70s? Or did I open Door #2 to buy my time back – and spend it however I see fit – for the rest of my life? I chose Door #2.
Purpose: Be the happy fisherman, not the greedy investment banker
In Tim Ferris’s 4HWW, he shares the parable of the Mexican Fisherman and the Banker. There’s an eloquent vision shared by the fisherman of sleeping late, playing with his children, sipping on wine and playing his guitar with his amigos.
Since my college days, I had this vision of my life. I would be living by the beach, waking up to my wife, checking in on a few of my small businesses, and spending the evening with my friends and family.
The investment banker’s ambitious dreams seemed seductive to me as an Executive. But the more time I spent in the organization, the more I realized what the Fisherman realized – why not be happy now? I asked what the C-suite executives would do in retirement, and they said they would do what the Board Directors would do. And what did the Board Directors do with most of their time? They spent it with their grandkids at their retirement homes, enjoying golf or fishing or philanthropic efforts.
What if I told you that you have enough now to live the vision you have of your happy day in retirement? What if you could live that life every day for the rest of your life? Would you have the honesty (and the courage) to give up all the ambitions of what the investment banker tells you to pursue in order to live the life you promised for yourself? Would you choose your own happiness over someone else’s story of what would make you happy?
I chose to be the happy fisherman. And I’m enjoying my days now.
~Lester T