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Peter is in his mid 20’s. He is innovative, smart and popular among his coworkers. He has big aspirations and he wants to achieve them. However, he is in a situation where he is stuck in between his choices.
He wants to switch his job like many of his friends are doing. But, his conditions are different from others which is quite obvious because everyone has different sets of problems to face just like all the fingers of a hand are different. So, he lists down what he has and what he wants to have in order to get a workable solution to his dilemma.
This is his list:
1 — Pros of his organization
1.1- A very decent pay compared to the amount of work done during office hours.
1.2- Family/love of life lives close by to the place where he lives currently.
1.3- Supporting and helpful colleges.
1.4- Manageable workload
1.5- Awesome city, awesome weather and easy transport.
1.6- A really cool infrastructure to work in.
1.7- Proper work-life balance with flexible timings.
2— Cons/ Things that make him wants to switch his job.
2.1- Quality of work sucks.
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After clearing the interviews of several organizations, he is getting a very low increment compared to his present income. Those increments will not matter since moving to a new city will obviously be hard and expenses will increase.
What would you do if you were in Peter’s place?
Would you switch for the job that is in your hand?
Would you wait for a job of your dreams fall into your lap on its own?
To be honest, what are the criteria for switching of a job?
Is it only that the quality of work matters and nothing else matters. That you need to adapt to the conditions and live miserably for some time because work is all that matters?
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What if I were in Peter’s shoes, what if i was also stuck with my career and work?
BTW, I am the curator of CODESMYTH, a platform for Breaking Myths and simplifying complex beliefs & codes in the world.
As mentioned earlier, this job(Peter’s Job) is providing me everything else that I can aspire for a healthy and a cheerful life. Of course, the quality of work matters, but what if I provide an alternative solution for it. An alternative solution because you can’t stay in this job (since now you are frustrated by the same repetitive work) and other organizations providing offers to you are not very lucrative.
We can’t waste any time sitting around here since opportunities are not going to fall in your lap because life’s not that kind.
If we are walking on a road and we encounter a not scalable mountain in front of us, then instead of drilling through the mountain or climbing it, we can also think about going around it.
Hear me out first before jumping to any conclusions.
Instead of worrying about your work which is producing the primary income without any problems[I mean you have a stable primary income], you should start working in the field where your passion lies or you should create a secondary income.
Instead of waiting, we can develop our skills or build a brand whichever is more beneficial, since it would definitely add up something to the pursuit of our dream job.
Here some things we can try to make our current job interesting.
1- Google Summer of Code Mentor — Mentor a student who is selected in Google Summer of Code(GSoC). That way, your mentoring skills will improve along with the knowledge. For this, you just need to prove to the organization, that you know their code and you believe in their cause.
For this, you just need to start working with the organization and start fixing their code and implementing new features as per requirements.
2- Mozilla Winter of Security — It is similar to Google summer of code but it is organized in the fall of the winter by MDN. Find out more about it here.
There are tons of projects like these if you will search for it on the Internet.
3- Find your favorite coding language. Find your favorite domain like Cloud, Big data, Data Mining, AI, ML etc. After this search for organizations working in these fields using that language on Git Hub. Find at least 3 such repositories. one is enough for beginners. Introduce yourself to their mailing list and then start contributing
4- Try to start your own brand for a side business. This may involve a start-up, a blogging website for tour, travel or food, anything which you feel has a shot of working in the real world and people do crave for it. For initial years, do not expect any income. Try building your brand first. Once your brand will be built, then there will be no stopping of the cash flows. You may then leave your primary job too.
5- Start Freelancing or Go to Gym.
[An image from unsplash]
Some facts that need to be clarified:
Summarizing the findings:
1- The work that was happening in Peter’s organization was repetitive. Of course, it was good at first, then it became repetitive. After some time, there is nothing new to learn.
2- Switching in a hurry is not the solution to your problem. The same problem may repeat itself at your new job and it may be even worse in comparison to the previous one. Future cannot be predicted.
3- Start accepting that whatever is happening is your fault and take full responsibility for it. You will definitely become happy.
4- It does not matter that the income should come only from our primary work. Most successful people have many sources of income and you should also try to get one passive source of income too.
5- If family/love of the life is not an issue in his life and he is getting his dream package, then he should switch but continue to work on his side income/project or anything that he likes.
I didn’t mention anything about work-life balance in detail because work-life balance is not something that the organization provides. It is something that comes from within. If you are chill AF, then the work-life balance is awesome AF. The workload does determine it to some extent, but in the end, it is the state of the mind that persists matters.
There are tons of Project that needs to be completed, Competitions to be won, Challenges to be overcome, Ideas to be implemented and brands to be built. We just have to keep our eyes and mind open looking for opportunities.
Off course you may point out that I can give all constructive and productive arguments as i m not in Peter’s position. That is exactly my point , as sometimes picture become clearer when seen from distance.
All complains and excuses are not going to change any thing, so may be few ideas can be worth a shot.
Cheers and Be your Best.
Sport it out — Unsplash