Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs without anything planned. How did it go?

In that time I travelled with my wife, found and nurtured a passion for guitar, and in retrospect it's been one of my favourite and most satisfying years in memory. I say in retrospect because I find it incredibly hard to recognize "happy times" in the moment. The hard parts of life always seem more apparent day to day. Also, it took me about a month to start feeling anything other than emptiness after I quit.

Having savings was SUPER helpful. It's taken a lot longer to find a job than I thought it would. I have a new one lined up, but at the moment I'm a little worried it's too soon.

My wife was enthusiastic about it and gave me the confidence to quit. Until then I'd been looking to get the transition locked in before quitting, which wasn't happening and probably never would have. At the time I was working in corporate finance and my first child had just been born.

I think the added pressure of being scared or uncomfortable gives you a huge edge when learning new skills, taking calculated risks and trying new things, and working super hard. Working hard in a grind or dead-end is sole destroying (I think), working harder on something you chose, with tangible personal benefits is exhilarating. My career took a new direction and a much steeper upwards trajectory.

That was 3 years ago. I've become a freelance data-scientist, working remotely in a new country, with a much higher quality of life.

I wrote a couple of blog posts at the time reflecting on corporate life in London with a young family. https://johnmathews.is/corporate.html, https://johnmathews.is/london.html

Spent the following seven months making an Android game. I wasn't expecting to make any money from it, but really wanted to build and launch MY GAME :)

Following that, I spent two to three months interviewing... And I'm now employed at a foreign, fully remote early stage startup. So everything turned out just I wanted it to.

I have no children nor any loans, so all my finances were very flexible and manageable.

I was fortunate to have little debt, plenty of savings, and a supportive spouse. I ended up playing a lot of Counter-Strike Global Offensive and other computer games. I attended more meetups. I applied and interviewed for jobs that sounded interesting. I turned down two offers and accepted a third. In total, I took 9 months off work.

There's a piece of me that wished I had been more productive during that time off. But it was relaxing, and I attribute that time off as my best career move yet. The job I finally took paid 2x more to start and I still feel like I am thriving at my "new" job 5 years in.