Should I Quit or Stay at My Job? A New Perspective -Life After College

Deciding Whether to Stay or Quit Your Job

“Should I quit my job?” I too have been faced with this question. To most effectively answer it, let’s analyze the situation on the economic concept of opportunity cost. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines it as “the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen.” In other words, what are the costs of choosing Option A over Option B? My goal is to help YOU make the most effective decision that fits with your value system and resources.

First list out what are the pros and cons in your work place.
Next, list out what are the pros and cons if you don’t have your job.
Weigh them and see if one gives you the better benefit.

That’s sound simple right? Not really…

You can easily identify what pros and cons you have in your workplace at the moment. But, it is very hard to figure out what will happen if you don’t have your job (the second step). It is a hypothesis and it requires a lot more from you. To tackle this problem, you need to start from scratch and recreate YOU.

Analyzing Your Career from a Different Perspective

To help you manage your emotion from this exercise, lets imagine you are CEO of your company with only one Associate (YOU!). As a CEO, how can you make the best decision for “your company” and your Associate? Let’s start:

Step 1: What is Your Mission Statement?

(Why are you in “business?”) This step is very important. It identifies your strongest value that you bring to society. (This is a value that you provide without any support from others.)

Step 2: What are your “Must Have” Work Values that you Cannot Live Without?

With this step, you can identify who you want to work with and do business for. These values are also a support and power system to keep “your company” running.

Step 3: How Can You Maintain and Evaluate Those Values?

This step will help you plan actions to nurture your values and upkeep “your company” performance.

Step 4: How do You See “Your Company” in the 5-10-29 Year Future?

This step will help to guide your action and adjust accordingly if you lose track. Note that with this step, I recommend you to dream big. Set goals. This will set a forward energy for “your company’s” momentum. Don’t underestimate yourself.

Congratulations! You have already created your first “company.” Remember, since “your company” size is very small, you can always recreate it as much as you want so that you don’t have to think about quitting (yourself)! 😉
Now you have “your company”. Let’s reevaluate your resources and plans.

Does your current job help you to archive your future goals?
Does your job violate your values?
How much job function that you are doing at your job is related to your mission statement?

As CEO of “your company”, your job is to keep the company on track to fulfill your mission and reaching your life goals. Sometimes, working at a job that mainly provides income is fine for a short period of time. Be aware that if your Associate (you) starts to feel lack of motivation, the work performance goes down and your company’s (YOUR) reputation will be damaged.

Deciding What to Do: Quit or Stay?

At the beginning of the article, I mentioned about Opportunity Cost. At this moment, I think you have enough information to make your decision. The question is: “Will it cost my company more to carry on this assignment than to stop?”

This way of thinking can be both used for the employer side as well as employee side. Remember, we are all equal and interdependent on each other. It’s our responsibility to make unbiased decisions for ourselves. With this article, I hope you can make “C Level” decisions for “your company” which will help “your company” succeed and elevate “your company” reputation.