Phil Garland

“I’m taking a year off of school”, “I’m traveling Europe”, “I’m quitting my job.”

“Why?”

“To find myself.”

The Finding Yourself Reason

Finding yourself is a commonly used reason to get out of almost anything you don’t want to do. It’s almost unanimously accepted by society and looked at as a learning experience. Plus, you can post pictures of yourself doing cool stuff while everyone else is working.

I am in no way bashing this mentality. I have traveled across the country trying to find my next city to live in, thinking a new city would bring me salvation. I’ve quit jobs that didn’t make me happy thinking the next job would. I’ve traveled to other countries thinking my experiences would change how I see the world. Yes, I learned a lot from traveling and quitting, but the search didn’t result in me finding myself.

Sacrificing Happiness

When I started the job I am now quitting, I put my heart-and-soul into making it work. My motto became FILO (first-in/last-out, an accounting joke…). I spent mornings sipping coffee while watching the sunrise as a reflection on my monitor. The day would pass and I’d watch the sunset. I thought to myself “This is what hard work is!” “I’m doing it. I’m going to be successful!”

I thought I had it all figured out. Working long hours, developing new processes, coming up with innovative solutions. These were the things employers wanted and startups were supposed to do. No one talks about the other side. My personal life struggled.

I had to say no to nights out with friends, weekend hikes, and hanging out with my girlfriend. When I did hang out with people I either talked work the whole time or didn’t talk because I was too stressed out with the more pressing matters. I spent Saturdays in the coffee shop trying to get more work done, not enjoying life.

My Great Realization

A couple months ago, when I first started blogging, I came to an amazing realization. I don’t have to do things to find myself. I’m finding myself each day I’m alive. Whether at work, hanging out with friends, in the mountains on a hike, on a date with my girlfriend, or traveling. I am finding myself. I’m finding what makes me happy. What I hate. And I’m finding out what I want to do with my time. I had been so stressed out trying to be the person society wanted me to be that I forgot that I answer to myself.

Living life, and enjoying the life I’m already living, is the greatest realization I’ve ever had.

Truly Finding Yourself

The phrase “finding yourself” triggers an image of wanderlust. “If I just travel and see things, everything will fall into place.” This was my thought for the past four-years. Once I started blogging, and focusing on the things that truly make me tick, things started falling into place.

It has taken a lot of hard work getting myself into a truly happy situation. Running from my problems didn’t make them go away. The only way I started finding myself was by creating. The act of creation helped me find what makes me happy, or not-so happy, and made me acutely aware of the amazing life I already have.

Finding yourself isn’t something you can search for, it’s something that happens once you give up searching.

Last week I gave my two week notice. I didn’t have a plan. I’ve done more interviews in the past three weeks than I have ever done in my life. I have talked with tons of people on my next step. Each time I think I convinced myself on my direction. Each time I have a sense it’s the wrong step. Today during my walk home, I started assembling the pieces.

Puzzle Pieces and Songwriters

I wrote a business plan last July and put it on hold. While walking home today I revisited it. I thought of the puzzle pieces written on my moleskin and started playing the air drums while composing a business idea in my head. And then I thought, this must be how songwriters feel. They hear the tune, they see the lyrics, they’ve come up with some clever rhymes, but the pieces haven’t been assembled. The words, verses, and melodies are floating in the air as they walk. That’s how I felt today.

The pieces to my business idea were dancing as I took each step. They were jumbled. Scattered over the sidewalk, in the blue sky, bouncing off the mountains. But they were there. My business idea was right in front of me. All I needed to do was capture the notes and chords, and the how-to’s. Now, I need to dump the puzzle pieces onto the ground and start assembling.

From Jumbled to Assembled

Thinking up a business idea seems like the easy step. Acting on the idea seems much harder. But I have always had a knack for putting myself into difficult situations and finding a way to swim against the current. Although it may be easier to get a full-time job, the road to self-employment spoke to me today. The path may be jumbled but it’s right in front of me. The game (songwriting, puzzle-assembling, or whatever you want to call it) has begun.

 

 

Whether you’re a high school student contemplating college, a college student contemplating dropping out, or a college graduate thinking about leaving your current job, quitting is the beginning. When you take a running dive off a cliff that means a) you have confidence in yourself and b) you better find something before you go splat.

Confidence Breeds Success

From personal experience, every entrepreneur I’ve been around, and each person that I deem successful, has been faced with a decision to take a running leap into the unknown. But they’ve accomplished it a) by tuning out noise to develop confidence in themselves and b) by finding a means to be successful while hurtling to the ground. Being a successful dropout (or “quitter”) isn’t about having a unique idea or revolutionary product. It’s about having the confidence to throw yourself off a cliff.

Tune Out Noise

A couple days ago I blogged about tuning out noise (link above). Most of the post focused on creating a noise barrier to block out the news and other distractions. Confidence is another advantage of tuning out noise. When there aren’t outside actors influencing your thinking, decisions come from within. Having confidence in yourself, and the decisions you’re making, allows for the first step towards a sprint off a cliff.

Limited Time

There is nothing better than giving yourself a limited amount of time to figure something out. Why do deadlines always get put-off until the last day? Because they’re not pressing until we realize we have a finite window to get them done. When we’re faced with a rocky surface below we have to figure something out, in a limited time. Yes, it’s scary, but having the confidence in ourselves, and the short time period to figure it out, combine together into an opportunity to create success.

Quitting as a Step Forward

Quitting isn’t failure. Doing something you hate because society says you should is failure. Diving into the unknown is the most enriching experience. Do the thing, you’ll figure it out while plummeting to the earth.

About 30 minutes I ago I woke up from a 2(ish) hour nap. That wasn’t at all my intention, I was intending to take a 26-minute, “nap zone” nap, but apparently my body needed more sleep.

A year ago I read a book called Brain Rules. In it, the author, John Medina, explains 12 principles for improving yourself through your brain. Brain Rule #3 is Sleep well, think well. I went back to the book and read through the brain rule looking for quotes to pull but the information is one long story that a few quotes wouldn’t do it justice. You should really read the book!

Here’s a brief summary of Brain Rule #3:

1. The brain has two armies. The sleep army, and the awake army. One army wants you sleeping all the time while the other army wants you awake at all times. The longer one stays in control, the less likely it’ll be strong enough to hold off the other army. This is what creates the circadian cycle. And our need to sleep/be awake.
2. Scientists don’t know how much sleep each person actually needs. It varies too much by individual, and other characteristics like age, to determine the perfect amount of sleep. On average, 7-9 hours is the amount of sleep we ideally need. Without getting the required sleep, we will form sleep debt that’ll be hard to make up in the future.
3. Naps are powerful. Mid-afternoon drowsiness is the natural battle of our sleep armies versus our awake armies. There is no going around it. We are all affected by a tiredness sometime afternoon and before evening. Medina hypothesizes this is why siestas are commonly used in other cultures. LBJ, our 36th president, took a 30 minute nap each day. NASA did a study that 26-minutes (link above) is the perfect amount of sleep. The mid-afternoon drowsiness is the “nap zone.” Although we might not all be capable of napping during this time, we should make sure we don’t schedule meetings or do important tasks in our nap zones.
4. Sleeping on it. Although we’re asleep, our brain is still trying to solve lots of problems while we’re dreaming. If we have challenging tasks it may be wise to sleep on it. A lot of great thinkers have slept on it to solve major world problems. It is a tactic that can be deployed to accomplish difficult problems.

I used to look at sleep as something holding me back from accomplishing great things. We all hear stories about startup founders, CEO’s of billion-dollar companies, world leaders that only get 4-5 hours of sleep a night. We look at them as someone to emulate. But they’re actually doing themselves a disservice. They are taking out a sleep loan that they’ll probably never be able to fully repay. They’ll end up with heavy interest rates that actually make it harder to think.

Our society looks at napping as being lazy. But it’s anything but lazy. If I hadn’t taken a nap my body would’ve been in a sleep debt to start the week. I know my body. I spent too much time trying to fight the sleep army. But I don’t need to. Now I know, sleeping well is what leads to thinking well.

 

Praxeology, the study of human action, focuses on the micro. We are our own individual actors and no macroeconomic model can aggregate individual choice into foreseeable patterns. Having a firm foundation on the idea of praxeology allows one to tune out noise.

There is noise all around us. Work gossip, political squabble, news media, family opinions and social norms. These all create the bubble we are trained to live in, the norm bubble. The only way out is to reject the norm bubble and form a noise barrier.

My Noise Barrier

Sometimes my noise barrier is headphones. At work I put my headphones on as a means to both get work shipped and avoid office gossip. But my main noise barrier is listening to me, not others. Not listening to other people includes not reading news, staying away from media outlets, not paying attention to politics, forming my own opinion on what I should do (like quitting) and keeping myself focused on what makes me tick. As fascinating as some people find political “battles” or conflict overseas, that doesn’t have an impact on my daily life. What does have an impact are the things I can control.

Focusing my energy on things that I can control limits the amount of noise that infiltrates my daily life. Instead of reading the news I read blogs that make me think. Instead of listening to what happened in last night’s football I put my focus on my tasks ahead, and how I can have an impact on the world around me. It has taken a while to become in control of my thoughts, and choose to be in control of me, but it’s the most valuable noise barrier I have developed.

Like Wearing Headphones

Creating your noise barrier is about knowing that your individual actions create a difference in your life, and only your life. Being able to listen to your conscience is the most important thing in building your barrier. Once you have developed your barrier walking around in society will feel like you’re wearing headphones when you’re merely highly in tune with your thoughts.

Details Are Key

Last week I read a FEE article titled “Your Pile of Dishes Proves You Will Fail at Entrepreneurship.” At first I thought it was a bit whiny. I thought it was an article by a jaded old man who was sick of seeing millennials taking on Silicon Valley. But the more I think about it, the more I realize the author of this post, Antonio Manno, is absolutely brilliant. The proof is in the details.

Taking care of your well-being, your kitchen’s well-being included, is an important aspect in success. The details, the tasks that only you can accomplish, need to be ironed out. You need to make a concerted effort to pay attention to the little things. Taking care of the tedious tasks are what lead to success.

Doing Chores

My kitchen is almost always clean. I guess my mom trained me well. But my bathroom isn’t. Today I took the time to clean my bathroom. What seems like a long task only took 10 minutes. I had been putting it off because I didn’t think it was that important. But it is. As is going to the dentist, going to the doctor, getting your oil changed, and many other “chores” millennials roll their eyes at.  In order to achieve the great things we need to pay attention to the little details that are necessary for our well-beings.

Details are the things we avoid by doing mindless other tasks. Instead of focusing on getting our houses in order, we usually focus on how many likes we have on Facebook. That isn’t a bad thing, when we’re doing it in our free time. But being proactive about keeping your life tidy is more important than Snapchat filters. The focus on living free is keeping your house tidy, your teeth cleaned, and taking responsibility for yourself. Taking care of the details is an important part in that.

Living Free

Being able to live free means being able to look yourself in the mirror each morning and believing in the man (or woman) that’s looking back at you. It’s holding yourself accountable for your actions. And living free is about taking responsibility for everything you do. Paying attention to the details, like a clean kitchen, allows us to focus our energy building something amazing, while being able to look ourselves in the mirror with pride.