Now that I’ve got your attention, here’s a talk I gave at the Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival on May 9, 2018 in New York City. It’s been viewed close to 200,000 times, I guess the subject resonates.
Quitting your job, isn’t actually about the act of quitting. Instead it’s an exploration into our relationship with money, status, identity, and meaning – topics we inquire into each week in the RadReads newsletter.
Want to dig in deeper?
I deconstruct this talk below, here’s a slide-by-slide annotation of the presentation.
My story
- Meet Khe Hy: Oprah for Millennials (CNN)
- The Wall Street Guru (Bloomberg, paywall)
- I stopped being a passive participant in my life
Quitting comes with questions
What does it mean to retire?
What do you do about money?
- Why are successful people so scared of being broke?
- Why the number is a bunch of BS (QZ.com)
- You’re thinking about financial security the wrong way
- Pros and cons of wealth (Ben Casnocha)
- Daniel Kahneman’s paper on $75,000
- Preparing your finances to leave your job (Video)
How to reinvent your skills
- The unbundling of the career
- Venkatesh Rao on the Free Agent economy (podcast)
- Why side hustlers should learn Stripe
- Four types of side businesses to start (Justin Mares)
- Create your own luck – with a writing practice
Keep that spending in check
Why are identity and achievement so intertwined?
How do you stop caring about what other people think?
- Yes, it’s possible to control your thoughts
- How to challenge the status quo
- An introduction to eastern philosophy and non-attachment
What do you do about money?
- You’re thinking about financial security the wrong way
- Why I stopped setting goals for myself (QZ.com)
Be your own category killer
- The U-Bend of happiness
- A simple equation to explain happiness (hint, it involves expectations)
- Caroline Webb, a behavioral economist on defying labels (podcast)
And a huge shout out to @wallernikki and @kimlast for making this happen.