Monday 26 February 2018

Decision Time - Do I Quit or Double Down?

It is coming up to 8 months since I withdrew from the formality of the Corporate World and set out to make a living in an entirely different way.

I was never looking to make a fortune. I was merely seeking to preserve existing capital, pay the bills, live a little, travel a bit and then have a some left over.

It is reasonable to say I have paid the bills, lived a little, travelled a bit but have not generated sufficient to have any left over.

Subsequently I have a decision to make.

Do I quit or do I double down?

I have spent much of the last three days writing and have produced a massive volume of words, sentences and paragraphs. All hand written and all (now) catalogued.

Motivated by a speaker at a Queensland Entrepreneur event at the Valley Precinct last week, I sat down and fully reviewed my activities of the last 8 months.

This was very much a write and destroy exercise as I often slipped in to writing about intentions rather than actual activities, actions and outcomes. 

Having satisfied myself I had recorded a true and correct account of the past 8 months, I continued to the next phase.

I explored, and I mean really explored what it is I want to achieve and what it is I want to do to achieve it.

Again, much was written and destroyed. As easy as it may sound, being brutally honest with yourself is as hard as it is valuable.

It was then time to determine if what I want to achieve and what I want to do are actually compatible with each other.

If these are not fully compatible, what compromises need to be made and are they worth it?

My writing may have some common themes across it, however I have no theme or subject matter that I claim to write to.

This doesn’t help me present or sell my work. For example, I was talking to another attendee at the event on Wednesday and when asked what I write about, I could only answer “anything and everything”. I suspect he is more inclined to contract a specialist who can more specifically reference their work.

So, if I am to continue, I will need to compromise the freedom I have granted myself to write about anything at all.

I determined the compromise worth it so I continued my project.

The next step in the process was to outline in detail, exactly what it is I need to do if I am to continue down my current path.

As before, much of what I recorded was discarded and the remainder subjected to a strict prioritisation process based on the contribution each item would make towards the objective.

A detailed action plan was prepared and finally a costing exercise conducted.

With all that behind me, I had a decision to make and now, a very well-informed decision too.

One significant realisation from this assessment and planning exercise is just how much I have learned these last 8 months and how much I have discovered about myself.

It also occurred to me that the exercise I went through would be valuable for employees no matter what their role, trajectory of their career path or seniority as an employee.

As for my decision; do I quit or do I double down and add the necessary investment to my self-employed enterprise?

It is Double Down time.

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