Knowing when or when not to Quit

Don't let the title of the book fool you, Jon Acuff doesn't want you to quit your day job. Well, actually he does, just not right now. Writing from his own experience of repeatedly quitting, Acuff's book Quitter is an encouragement not to quit yet. We all have dreams of the jobs that we'd like to have and it seems like that pesky day job just gets in our way, so we think about quitting. As a writer and public speaker, Acuff gets it. He has toughed out (or at least tried to tough out) his fair share of jobs that he did not like. The problem is quitting often brings more problems than it solves. Quitting causes us to answer to all the bills and costs that were covered by that job that we didn't like. While quitting your current job to pursue your dream job may sound wonderful, it often makes it harder to pursue your dream. Instead, Jon Acuff shares his experience of finally learning to tough it out in a job that wasn't his dream in order to get to his dream. He offers advice on how to work your dream around your day job and how to look for ways for your current job to prepare you for your dream. Rather than dreading your job and wishing you could quit, you are instead laying the foundation for your dream job so that you can be ready for it when it becomes possible.

While listening (because I "read" the audio book) to this, I didn't think that it applied to me because I'm not working in a field that is so far off from my own. What I began to learn, however, if you're not in your dream job, you shouldn't just sit around and wait for it to happen. As a fairly recent graduate, I can tell you I had high hopes of graduating and then finding my dream job. Unfortunately,  that hasn't happened. Listening to Quitter, I realized that you need to pursue your dream job even if your not getting paid for it, and if you're not getting paid for it then you will have to work some other job in the meantime. While that may sound discouraging to some, Acuff does a fantastic job of walking through the process of "falling in like" with your job so that you benefit from that experience and "hustling" to work on your dream when you're not at work. If you're not in your dream job, you should read Quitter. I would also highly recommend listening to Jon Acuff's book (or any of his books) because he's funny and super enjoyable to listen to. He also adds in extra commentary that doesn't show up in the book. Either way, you'll benefit from spending some time with Quitter.