I quit my job in October 2010 and tried various things for a year before taking up another job offer in November 2011.
What I actually did:
Professional: Tried to set up a consulting firm with a friend with the intention of being able to work at my own pace and earn as much money as I needed for my daily living expenses and a little bit extra for travel and not too much more. This was fairly successful, we got one project with a large company. The clients were pleased with our performance and wanted to give us more business. However, I found business development cycles were longer than I expected and my friend was too risk-averse to quit his well-paying job for this full time. I also found that I was not motivated enough to work on the business without some sort of peer group and support network. In the end, we had to say no to more business coming our way and shut shop.
Post this I was courted by a friend to join his start up developing a Natural Language Processing product. However, I did not find his business model compelling and the product was similar to many others already available in the market. At the end of this second experiment I took the first job I was offered in my old line of work.
Physical fitness: I lost about 10 kgs in this year mainly through dieting and doing Kalaripayattu- a form of Indian martial arts. I’m more than pleased with the fact that I stuck with my Kalaripayattu training despite a lot of skepticism in my social cirlce—most Kalaripayattu artists start very young- at seven, and here I was, starting off at thirty. I’m far more flexible and fit than when I started out and much more comfortable with the way I look.
Other: Took up sketching. I’ve not done this after school and even in school I was not considered good. I was surprised at how well this has worked out though. Turns out drawing really is mostly about observing! Who’d have thunk?
Buoyed by the success of the sketching experiment I decided to try and learn the piano. This did not go well at all. I managed to look up some youtube videos and then lost steam pretty quickly. Shall be attempting to restart this again. I guess what went differently in this as compared to sketching was that I did not get as many compliments as soon as I was starting off. Not too many people can be impressed with “mary had a little lamb” on the piano.
There were lots of failures. I had planned to try different jobs—teaching, volunteering at NGO’s etc before deciding to move back to a regular job. However at the one year mark of leaving work I panicked a bit and started interviewing for jobs. Once I got a job it was rather difficult to say no.
I had planned to do a lot of studying. I ended up reading/studying about 10% of what I planned. So that went badly too.
Even tried organizing Less Wrong meetups in Bangalore. (life took over after the second meetup and there hasn’t been one after August. So that should count as a failure.) On the whole, although it looks like I’m back where I was in 2010, I’m happy with the way things went. Before I attempt something similar again though I’ll take JoshuaFox’s advice to “produce something in your offhours to prove (to yourself) you’re serious.”
I quit my job in October 2010 and tried various things for a year before taking up another job offer in November 2011.
What I actually did:
Professional: Tried to set up a consulting firm with a friend with the intention of being able to work at my own pace and earn as much money as I needed for my daily living expenses and a little bit extra for travel and not too much more. This was fairly successful, we got one project with a large company. The clients were pleased with our performance and wanted to give us more business. However, I found business development cycles were longer than I expected and my friend was too risk-averse to quit his well-paying job for this full time. I also found that I was not motivated enough to work on the business without some sort of peer group and support network. In the end, we had to say no to more business coming our way and shut shop.
Post this I was courted by a friend to join his start up developing a Natural Language Processing product. However, I did not find his business model compelling and the product was similar to many others already available in the market. At the end of this second experiment I took the first job I was offered in my old line of work.
Physical fitness: I lost about 10 kgs in this year mainly through dieting and doing Kalaripayattu- a form of Indian martial arts. I’m more than pleased with the fact that I stuck with my Kalaripayattu training despite a lot of skepticism in my social cirlce—most Kalaripayattu artists start very young- at seven, and here I was, starting off at thirty. I’m far more flexible and fit than when I started out and much more comfortable with the way I look.
Other: Took up sketching. I’ve not done this after school and even in school I was not considered good. I was surprised at how well this has worked out though. Turns out drawing really is mostly about observing! Who’d have thunk?
Buoyed by the success of the sketching experiment I decided to try and learn the piano. This did not go well at all. I managed to look up some youtube videos and then lost steam pretty quickly. Shall be attempting to restart this again. I guess what went differently in this as compared to sketching was that I did not get as many compliments as soon as I was starting off. Not too many people can be impressed with “mary had a little lamb” on the piano.
There were lots of failures. I had planned to try different jobs—teaching, volunteering at NGO’s etc before deciding to move back to a regular job. However at the one year mark of leaving work I panicked a bit and started interviewing for jobs. Once I got a job it was rather difficult to say no.
I had planned to do a lot of studying. I ended up reading/studying about 10% of what I planned. So that went badly too.
Even tried organizing Less Wrong meetups in Bangalore. (life took over after the second meetup and there hasn’t been one after August. So that should count as a failure.) On the whole, although it looks like I’m back where I was in 2010, I’m happy with the way things went. Before I attempt something similar again though I’ll take JoshuaFox’s advice to “produce something in your offhours to prove (to yourself) you’re serious.”