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Between return to the office mandates and 996 work schedules, employees might be trying to decide if it’s time to look for a new opportunity. It reminds me of a reader note I answered years ago titled “3 Reasons You Might Want to Consider Leaving Your Current Job”.
I’d like to believe that we all realize there are parts of our work that we love and other parts that …well, we tolerate. That’s totally fine. I must admit that sometimes I’ve learned just as much if not more from some of the more frustrating tasks I’ve had to do in my career.
Being able to balance the good parts of our work with the frustration is the reason I wanted to talk about quitting today. One of the things that’s important to remember is quitting should not be viewed as failure. Whether you quit a job, give up on a hobby, etc., quitting is okay if it’s done for the right reasons and at the right time. For example, we really should quit doing things that are unsafe. When you’re thinking about quitting something, here are three questions to consider:
Am I quitting too soon? Sometimes we might be tempted to walk away at the first sign of difficulty. If we quit too soon, it is possible that we might miss out on a tough, frustrating, challenging but incredibly valuable learning experience that we wouldn’t have learned any other way.
Is it too late? Yes, there is such a thing as quitting too late. Maybe we keep hoping a change will occur, so we stick around. Meanwhile, our colleagues have seen the warning signs and made other plans.
Are we concerned what others will think and we don’t quit at all? Unfortunately, there are times when we might feel some pressure to stay in bad situations because we don’t want to be considered “disloyal” and don’t want to be labeled a “quitter”. Sometimes this works and sometimes we get hurt in the process.
I wish I could say these are easy questions to answer. You’ve probably figured out that they’re not. They involve a tremendous amount of self-awareness and honesty. And let me add that coming to the answer of “yes, I need to quit” and being able to do it are sometimes two different things. There could be internal or external factors that impact our ability to act right away.
If someone decides to begin a job search, it’s possible they would benefit from taking a class (or two!) to make themselves more marketable as a candidate. Or maybe they need to save some money so they can comfortably take some time off between jobs. Hopefully, once someone recognizes that they need to quit something they can start putting plans in place to make it happen.
There are lots of inspirational quotes and sayings that want us to believe that quitting is bad or wrong or a sign of failure. It’s not. Sometimes quitting is the absolutely right thing to do. Ideally, it’s good to quit with a plan, so we can learn from the experience. That’s why quitting isn’t a sign of failure. Because we learned something along the way.
Image captured by Sharlyn Lauby while exploring the streets of Lake Buena Vista, FL
The post JOB SEEKERS: Quitting Is Not a Sign of Failure appeared first on hr bartender.
