Jevy's Blog

For the past three years I’ve been working as a project manager in the government meeting with clients to solicit requirements, writing contracts and doing some basic budget management.  I have my own office with my name on the door, I attend multiple conferences/courses a year, work with interesting people, have the latest equipment to do some prototyping and can play my trance music as loud as I want.  Oh yeah: the $$$ was really good.  The problem?

I Wasn’t Happy

I was bored out of my mind.  To keep the creative juices flowing, I took up interesting challenges outside of work:

• My wife and I (with hired help) converted a single family home into a rental property.
• I started a web application company, got some government funding for it and hired a bunch of people.

I then spent a couple of evenings over a period of two months objectively looking at my life with these three questions (with some answers):

What don’t I like about my work?

• I don’t feel like my job is important.
• The work isn’t fun or interesting.
• People constantly back-bite and gossip about one another.  It’s not positive!

What are the priorities in my life right now?

• To do meaningful work to make a difference.  I don’t care how!
• To do some awesome problem solving using technology.
• Work with a team of people who have a common purpose, who enjoy each other and are collaborative.
• Work the flexible hours I want and the amount I want.  i.e. if I did great work and I want to leave at 1pm I can.

After I did this, I spent a good while researching possible alternative options for money.

1. Work for someone else – A company with strong management, who hire great people.
2. Build a product – Start my own company and hire great people.
3. Consult – Work as a consultant who only works on interesting projects.
4. Start a muse – Work at home to start a muse (a la Tim Ferris), and code for fun.

So what did I do?

As of June 24th, I’m starting my own software consultancy called “Quickjack Solutions” working with local and remote companies to help them to great things!  I’ll post more about more details how I got started later.

What about you?

If you’re really not happy about where you are in life, I would highly recommend you take a really hard look at your life.  What are you passionate about?  If you could do anything in the world what would it be? Some books that really help me come to this conclusion are below. All excellent books:

• Tim Ferris – The Four Hour Work Week
• Gerald M. Weinberg – The Secrets of Consulting
• Steve Pavlina – Personal Development for Smart People

I have a contract lined up for the next three months and then after that is a big question mark.  I’ll be spending lots of time “getting out there” networking and building some open source software to get my name out there.