6 Tips When Transitioning from Day Job to Dream Job

So you hate your day job and you just want to say goodbye to it right away and start living your dream life. Well, DREAM ON! It’s not that easy for regular folks like us. Want a good advice? Get stuck in your day job…until you’re financially, skillfully, emotionally ready to lose that source of income.

Your day job is actually more of a patron for your dreams than a mortal enemy. If you rely on your day job as your source of income, you’d be able to focus on building a strong foundation for your career or business rather than having to grovel and take every job that came along just to pay the bills. So instead of hating and looking down on your day job, be grateful for it. But for Christ sake, start working on your dreams right away.

Remind Yourself of Your Goals DAILY.To prevent your day job from making you forget about your dreams, it’s important to make time remind yourself of your dream, even if it’s just setting aside 30 minutes everyday to devote to that. Remind yourself of your goals, make a vision board, ask yourself where you are right now and how you can transition to the life that you want.

Develop Traits While Doing the Transition Rather than After Quitting the Day Job. Starting a music career or a business as a side-hustle while keeping your day job is a great way to charge up your self-discipline, determination, patience, and diligence which are all very necessary if you want to work for yourself. You just cannot quit without getting a full tank of these traits. And if you still haven’t transitioned, that means you’re not yet ready. Keep trying.

Look for an “easy” day job. Your day job can help you achieve your dream job only if it’s not too demanding and soul-draining. Look for a day job that doesn’t give you plenty of stress but pays fine. If not, look for a day job that’s a bit stressful but is still in line with your dream job (i.e. working for a magazine and your dream job is to have a blog).

Budget Every Second Wisely. Time is money and money is time. Right now, you may not have that much money to quit your day job but you certainly have time (if not, please find another day job).Try sitting down and, just like you’d come up with a monthly or weekly monetary budget, come up with a monthly or weekly “time budget.” Make sure you devote a certain number of hours for your dream job. There’s no other way to do it. You gotta roll up your sleeves and do more work even if you’re tired from work.

Not the time to Relax and Become Contented. Push yourself more than I used to by staying up later, using my “down time” more productively, and reminding myself as often as possible that I’m putting in all this effort now for a big payoff later.

Choose your Battles. If you have a 2-year-old kid and you’re trying to transition to your dream job AND you’re an obsessive neat freak, you’d get cranky before dinnertime if you want to achieve perfection in all these aspects. To save your sanity, you have to let go of some things. You can’t have it all at once, apparently. So instead of obsessing about the dishes in the sink or the laundry piling up, let it slide a bit and be “o.k.” with a little bit of clutter. Instead of taking your child to the nearby park everyday, just do it twice a week. This way, you’ll have more time to work on your goal. If you feel guilty for a dirty house and less time with baby, channel this to achieving your goal. Your laundry can wait, and your kid will understand.

Test the Waters Safely. People tend to always have a “grass is greener” mentality. This just means that you might be envious of something you don’t have, but once you do have it, it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. Remember that you don’t want to quit your job and go full force into something else only to realize that you’re even more unhappy in the new situation. Do what you can to research and participate in your new plans to make sure that it’s the right path for you.

Quitting your day job requires a lot of preparation and timing so don’t just submit a resignation letter without thinking it through a hundred times. Quit only when you’re ready. This may seem like a lousy advice but I suggest you quit only when it is already safe to quit. And that requires a lot of hustle and self-discipline on your part.

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