How to quit your job and still have work

I understand that it is hard to find a job. There are not many companies hiring new employees, high school students can’t find summer jobs, and many school districts are facing employment cuts.

However, despite the lack of jobs, there is plenty of work to do.

First, let me explain something that should not be news to you: there are no longer any jobs where you can rely on someone else to tell you what to do. If you have must rely on someone else to tell you what to do, you are going to be replaced. Maybe not today, maybe not this year, but it will happen because it is so easy to find mindless drones to complete tasks.

This shouldn't be a surprise if you have been paying attention to relevant data as opposed to watching the nightly news. Thomas Friedman told us that factory jobs were disappearing. In 2005, The US department of Labor told us that in 5 years, 50% of all jobs weren’t even created yet. People sat around and said, “Oh, poor Car Factory workers. They aren’t going to have any jobs in 2010. All of those jobs are moving to Mexico, India, and China. Oh well, I’m safe in my job. I drive a Dodge Stratus, and I’m a divisional manager at bla bla bla bla.” But everybody who said this was wrong. The new age of labor has not only eliminated factory jobs, it has eliminated ALL mindless jobs.

You can turn any type of work into a “factory job”. A teacher can do the same thing and teach the same lesson plans, year after year. A lawyer can defend the same cases in the same way. A journalist can write with the same limited vision, year after year. If your work has become a “factory job,” it’s going to vanish before your eyes quicker than a GM worker in Detroit.

Fortunately, there is so much work to do. There are students who fail out of school at abysmal rates. There are school districts who don’t know how to manage money. There are teachers who need to learn how to use a PowerPoint. There are principals who want to figure out how to utilize Facebook to communicate with their community. These are real opportunities, real challenges, and anyone who actually completes this work will be rewarded. You might not see your bank account increase right away, but I guarantee you that you are one step closer to becoming irreplaceable, and irreplaceable workers eventually get paid.

There is so much work to be done, but nobody is going to tell you how to do it. In most cases, nobody is even going to tell you that it is something they want. You aren’t going to find any of this work on a job board! But if you are sitting in a faculty meeting and you see a terrible PowerPoint lecture, you are witnessing an opportunity. If you hear that more students dropped out this year, you are witnessing an opportunity. Wherever you see failure, you are witnessing a need. Why can’t YOU provide that “something better”? I didn’t say it had to be perfect. It just needs to be better.

If you start doing things on your own, you’ll quickly find out that the standard is lower than you think. Most jobs are done poorly. Most websites are identical. Most companies have identically irrelevant mission statements. Unfortunately, people find it too easy to imitate mediocrity. This is where your work begins. Find mediocrity, find failure, and then go one inch further. Can’t you find something mediocre at your school, in your neighborhood, or across the street, and then make it just a little better?

Stop waiting for someone to tell you what to do. Stop waiting to act on what you know is right. Stop listening to people who only follow protocol. Stop procrastinating on your dreams.

Start being creative. Start taking initiative. Start doing things that you see need to be done. Start investing your whole self in your work.

Wherever you are at in life, it is imperative that you abandon mediocrity and start looking for work. Once you start looking for work, you will be overwhelmed at the possibilities.
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P.s. I can't promise that you will be employed for ever. You can do everything right and still lose your job. But you haven't lost your experience. You haven't lost your skill. You haven't lost your initiative. It's just going to take some time to find a new home for these irreplaceable gifts.

P.p.s. Comments, complaints, excuses, and reflections are welcomed. Why can’t you be the one who moves this conversation forward?