Take the leap. You’re done with your job. I want to help you quit.

There are a lot of reasons why you might feel ready to quit your job.

Understanding them is probably the best first step. It certainly was for me.

I have my list of Reasons Why written down in a notebook. It’s dated November 7th, 2018. There are thirteen of them.

It took me six years from making that list to making the decision to leave my job, and over that period I revisited my list regularly.

And what became clear was that my list kept being true. It didn’t change, at all, with one exception: I added one item to it (more on that later).

But apart from that, the original thirteen reasons I wrote down didn’t change in six years.

And on 30th March 2024, I finally quit.

When you’re making big plans, you need a notebook. This was mine.

Most of my coaching clients are either looking to get more out of their job, or alternatively, looking for a way out because, for one reason or another, they’ve just had enough.

Obviously that’s an oversimplification, but in those coaching conversations, we spend a lot of time on one of the two options. We may spend some time exploring in between, but those two extremes, more often that not, feel like the two outcomes in play.

This article is about the quitting part. There’s plenty of content I’ve written on keeping, and succeeding in, a job (see here, here or here for examples). But this week, we’re talking about how to quit.

And we’re talking about the “how” because the “how” is the hard part.

Anyone can come up with the “why”, although, in my experience, it is entirely personal (we’ll get to that) but even most personal reasons can fit into the more generic ones. These are, in rough order of prevalence:

1. Poor management - the number one reason why people leave. This is established in a lot of easy-to-find empirical evidence; I can also confirm it anecdotally from having interviewed hundreds, if not thousands, of candidates for jobs, many of whom talked about some challenge with their leaders which was making it feel like time to move on.

2. Toxic culture - Favouritism. Gossip. Gaslighting. Dishonesty. Etc. You’d be surprised how long people will put up with this, but eventually, the chickens come home to roost and patience runs out.

3. Lack of balance - aka, spending all your time at your desk and none of your time doing things you enjoy. Tolerable for a surprisingly long time if you love the work; otherwise, very quickly becomes unsustainable.

4. Compensation - meaning, not enough of it. Nuff said.

5. Hitting the ceiling - characterised by there being nowhere left to go in the organisation, or - more often than you may think - the realisation that you don’t want your boss’s job anyway.

You may recognise some part of your own situation in one or all of these reasons. But a lot of the time, on their own they are not enough of a push. Why? Because they’re external. They’re circumstantial. Whereas real conviction and determination to take back some agency in your life comes from within.

And that’s why you need to make your own list of Reasons Why. Just like I made mine back in 2018.

At the time, I thought I was simply writing down why I needed to make a change. What I didn’t realise was that I’d taken the first step towards the how as well (and a step that would maybe turn out to be the most powerful of all).

Having a solid Reasons Why list is the first step in figuring out how because done right, it’s personal to you. It should speak to deeper, more meaningful questions you have about your purpose, your goals, and what you want your life to look like.

Done right, it creates an accountability that is impossible to ignore.

Done right, it holds you to a standard that you can’t help but want to meet.

After all, this isn’t generic data from the open market about someone else’s crappy boss or the toxic culture of their environment. It’s your emotional data. It comes from your heart and your soul and it tells a story about the future you want.

So write down your list of Reasons Why. Print it. Laminate it. Keep it somewhere you will see it regularly.

That’s the first step.

After I quit, we took a three month road trip. But the reality is it took six years to make this happen.

There are several more, of course. And, like I said, it took me six years to figure them out.

You might be prepared to wait six years. But if you’re not, and your situation is more urgent than that, then get in touch with me.

I’m launching a completely free group called Escape Pod. It is designed to help you finally make that decision you know you need to make and have been putting off for too long.

I’ll be sharing my Reasons Why. Helping you write yours. And taking you through the rest of the steps to making that change. We’ll work as a small group to create accountability and share success. It’s going to be good.

Escape Pod, launching soon.

Why is it free? Because this is something I care about a lot. There are too many people stuck in jobs they don’t like. And a lot of the time, there’s nothing wrong with the job. You just don’t fit in it anymore. That was my experience. And guess what? Your team has noticed. Your boss has noticed. Your spouse has noticed. Your kids have noticed. Your friends have noticed. EVERYONE HAS NOTICED. Something’s off.

So, for your sake and everyone else’s, isn’t it time to do something about it?

I mentioned I added one extra reason to my list after that first draft I made in 2018.

Because one of the big things that changed in my life between 2018 and 2024 was that I became a father. And I didn’t want my daughters growing up seeing, by my example, that work was something to endure, not enjoy.

So item number 14 on my list:

14. My girls need a better model than this.

And that was probably the most powerful reason of all.