When do you just say "I'm done".

In My Humble Opinion
21

I decided I was done with my job when they announced yet another reorganization that looked to be like one of the previous incarnations. In conjunction with that, they were doing a RIF and lots of the youngest employees were about to be let go. I was one of the oldest ones there and I decided it was time to retire. I figured that by retiring, maybe one of the young 'uns would be able to stay on.

In my last 7 years, I’d had 14 different cubicles and at least 6 different bosses, maybe more. I’d been a gummint employee for 37 years, including my active duty military service, and I wasn’t looking forward to yet another reorg.

I stayed in touch with my last boss, and I know I made the right choice. I’ve had a few temp jobs in the last 3 years and I expect I’ll have others in the future. Retirement suits me - the freedom and flexibility are definitely nice. So I’m done with a career, but not done with life, thanks.

22

Professionally, it was a pre-planned decision in my case. When I started working I saw the position I wanted to be at in my field. I rose quickly and was in that position within five years. And then I stopped. I basically continued working that same job for the remaining decades of my career.

Which confounded a lot of my co-workers. When they saw me rapidly advancing at the beginning of my career, they assumed I was seeking to go as high as I could reach. So it surprised people when I got to the point where I had wanted to be and then stopped moving.

23

I don’t think there’s ever a single point at which I say “I’m done.”

Over my life, I have gradually said that about many ambitions. Like my childhood dream of becoming an astronaut went by the wayside when I realized that getting carsick on the way to the grocery would pretty much rule out jet fighters and zero-G environments for me.

For me, it’s a constant analysis of the costs/benefits/likelihood of achieving each goal. Getting older does change the math, but each goal has a different equation. Some of them are ruled out by age - I’m too old to revisit that dream of being an astronaut - but some of them are still quite achievable.

I’m still in my 30’s, so coasting into retirement is a long way off, but retirement is when I hope to achieve some goals, actually . Like, I’d love to spend a month touring Italy, getting off the touristy beaten path and really seeing it all. This is a perfect thing to do when I have time to study the language and don’t have to work.

Career-wise, I started in my 20’s building the career I wanted. I’m pretty much there now, but none of it feels like coasting or like I’ve settled for anything. Yes, I could be more high-profile or better-paid, but this is what I want.

24

I’d be interested in a tally of those who are done or not done on (1) a personal-satisfaction, career goal or achievement basis, and (2) on a financial basis.

That is, are you done, or not, based on your driving ambitions, or done, or not, because you have or haven’t achieved an acceptable living standard?

25

I had risen to the position of manager of a small department of about 6 other people. Within a few years, the bottom fell out of our business and one by one those other people left or were let go, and one was transferred to another department along with his duties for the sake of SOX compliance. I took on most of the other duties, which surprisingly I had time for since I didn’t have to manage people any more. I kept the title and the salary (although I never got another raise).

Then my boss left and I was idly hoping to get offered her position at least temporarily but that didn’t happen (I didn’t really try for it, I wasn’t sure I really wanted it). I guess that’s about 9 years ago, and that’s when I realized I had risen as high as I was going to. I was maybe 55 at the time, and I didn’t think seriously about trying for employment somewhere else.

Over the next 5 years after that, I felt lucky just to not be laid off. We finally reached a kind of stasis, and I wasn’t afraid of being laid off any more, and that’s where I’ve been since. My last boss but one systematically excluded me from getting into anything new or attending any meetings where higher-ups were going to be there, so in the natural course of things my duties have dwindled and I spend a lot of time with not much to do. That’s a major part of the reason I opted to retire almost a year before I was planning to. And now I’m even more glad I made that decision because I completely do not respect my current (boss’s) boss. I’ve said “I’m done” when people ask me if I would be interested in coming back as a consultant as needed. Nope, thanks but Nope. I’m done.

That’s work. With life, I hope to do a lot of interesting stuff during retirement as long as I am physically able, and I don’t plan to give up easy.

26

Usually about three minutes after I start.

27

For myself (in my mid-30’s here) I’ve pretty much arrived at the career goal I wanted. I’ve had to sacrifice some personal goals to get there, so I see the next few years as focused on improving work/life balance. And I have lots of things to pay off - business debts, mortgages, etc.

So I think my daily job and cash flow can achieve a steady state while my overall net worth keeps growing. 20 years of that should have me ready to “retire” a little ahead of time. (Though I don’t intend to ever retire 100%. If there’s any benefit to working in taxes, it’s that you can always find work four months a year during the winter and then go back to having fun in the summer. In the truly ideal scenario, I sell my practice for a half-million dollars to pad my retirement with, and include a contract provision that will give me $30k a year to work the tax season.)

28

In my 20’s and early 30’s, I had so many dreams, so many things I wanted to do. Every one of those dreams has died a painful death thru the years.

I can’t put an exact time of death on it all, but eventually I just couldn’t watch another dream die, and that was the point I said I’m done. I stopped dreaming, I stopped trying, I stopped caring.

I miss dreaming. I miss the person I used to be, who thought there was some chance that it would all work out OK, somehow.

29

I tend to agree with this. Interests change, priorities change, the valuation you give to specific achievements changes and you develop a sense of realistic accomplishment: to seek to do what we do in a mannner that is satisfying and rewarding both materially and intangibly rather than get hung up on a specific title or award or some idealistic gal. Seek to make the most of the path and if we get to the destination, hey, bonus! We make allowances for a secure source of income, for protecting our reputation, for giving more time to our kids, for securing the long-term cause rather than short-term fame.

Which we all must, given the finite space at the top of the mountain. You become aware fast that only a handful of people become President or Astronaut or NBA all-star or top-billed film actor or leading Alt Press trivia columnist or Commandant of the Marine Corps or top ten Tennis/Golf tour seed or Fortune 100 CEO or Cardinal of the Church or Victoria’s Secret Angel. But those people need legions of support troops. So you adjust your point of aim. I may not become a cabinet secretary but I may get awards from national organizations for doing my public sector jobs excellently. I’m not President but I helped finance making some guy barely two weeks my junior be President. I’m not an astrophycisist but I will support science education and space exploration. I may not party at The Mansion with Hef and the Girls but I can hang out at pretty good venues with a bunch of perfectly fine human beings. I can’t play basketball to save my life but I can buy seats to watch how LeBron does it and support youth leagues in my hometown.

(Which does not mean that if I get a call that they’re looking for an Assistant Deputy Undersecretary I won’t have my resumé in their inbox before the call is over, but at this point in life I’m not knocking myself out stepping over others to get there.)

I don’t see myself truly and completely being “done” in general. I can see myself saying “I’m done with THIS, it was a good run” about any number of specific things, but I may then seek something else to occupy my mind and time and will seek to do that in a manner that’s most rewarding and satisfying.

30

As you said, when we are younger there are things (call them X) that we want to do. Careers, hobbies, travel, bucket list items. After age 50 (I’m now 60) I started to realize that some of those X things would take longer to achieve in the manner I wanted than I expected to live and gave up trying to achieve them.

For example, ever since I was 7 years old I’ve wanted to build a model railroad. Life happened. By age 57, when I decided I had the space, funds and time to do this X I also realized it would take me ten to fifteen years of enjoyable (as opposed to forced) effort to achieve it. So I said exactly what the premise of the OP said: “I’m done. This X isn’t going to happen.”

Experiencing these reminds me that life ain’t forever. I’m also glad that I’ve only had a few of those “I’m done.” moments.

P.S. For those of you who will comment on age 57 not being too old there are family genetic health issues involved in my projected lifespan.

31

Same here. I think I have almost given up on dreaming, the pressures of earning enough money to live are getting in the way.

Plus I have no idea what I want. I had dreams and when I started accomplishing them I realized I didn’t really want them. So now I don’t even know what I would want if I had my dreams. The dreams I do have are totally unrealistic (be a wealthy philanthropist devoted to neurohacking. Yeah, that’ll happen).

32

I gave up a job in management to go back to school to be much closer to a technical and policy expert. You are not alone!

I knew I wanted a change, but it took some pretty major events to get my ass in gear. I don’t think there was ever an “I’m done!” moment, just a creeping realization that I wanted something different and that I had the perfect opportunity to change everything about my life.

Best decision ever. :slight_smile:

33

I was very involved in my career of teaching. When I retired, after about a 6 month hiatus, other interests called, and presently I am heavily involved in botanical interests. I get off on the intellectual rewards of research, even though I am in my seventies.

Sometimes our natures continue to call all of our lives

34

at 425

35

My comment wouldn’t be about your age per se, but on thinking about the journey, not just the destination. If it would be 10-15 years of *enjoyable *effort, then why not get started? Even if you die 5 years in, it was still an enjoyable 5 years, right? And if you unexpectedly live 20 years, then so much the better.

Now, if it would be 10-15 years of miserable work and you’d only enjoy the final outcome after that, I would advise differently (though I still tend to think people underestimate their life span more often than they overestimate it).

36

I said it yesterday afternoon with a client. Well, I said it to myself, then I told her I thought it was best if we part ways. She needs someone, but not me, and I have a borderline hoarder, a single mom, and someone living in a guest house who all need me more than she does. I could also do without her constant last-minute something-came-ups, and now I will, and I can schedule in those others instead.

37

About 9 years ago, I was assigned to a particular team, and I was meeting the Navy guy in charge of it. After the usual meet-and-greet exchange, he asked if I had my sights on management or if I wanted to stay on the technical side of the job. I told him I had no desire to be a manager.

He proceeded to tell me why I was wrong. Because “knowing” me for all of 10 minutes made him a better judge of what I should do with my life than I could ever be. :dubious: That guy was an ass in too many ways to list - fortunately, we had yet another reorg and someone else became my boss.

For the record, while I was on active duty, I was in management for a while. I sucked at it. I hated dealing with personnel issues, I hated the requisite politics, I hated the thought of moving up the food chain. On the other hand, I was a good engineer, I was good as a member of a team - heck, I was even a good team lead the couple of times I did that. But supervisor? Manager? No thanks.

My last boss was the best. He believed me when I said I didn’t want his job. He also would use me as a sounding board of sorts. HE was a great manager - one of the best I’d ever had. He was promoted to his boss’ job - now the poor guy never gets to go home. Ambition isn’t always a good thing…

38

As I’ve slogged along in the hopes of becoming what I wanted to be when I grew up, plenty of people have told me to give up and throw in the towel – almost from day one of university when I signed up for a history major with the goal of teaching in higher ed. Parents thought it was ridiculous and I’d grow out of it; my undergraduate history adviser nagged me constantly about doing something else besides going to grad school. My mom nagged me for years that I was wasting my time and would never amount to anything; she would give me supermarket/retail job applications whenever she saw me – up until a few years ago, in fact.

Took a long time to get to a full time, tenured position because of one thing or another (inability to work when I first got my degree for myriad reasons, getting stuck in adjunct hell, &c). In fact, getting signed on full time has only come in the last couple of years.

I was so used to being at the bottom of the totem pole/lower rungs of the academic ladder, that I couldn’t figure out why a colleague recently was sending me emails asking about some changes she wanted to make to the assessment pattern on a module she was teaching. My thoughts were, why in the hell is she bugging me about this?

Then I realised – it’s because I’m in charge of the major under which that module falls; there can’t be any changes to the module’s assessments (ie assignments) without permission from me.

You know you’ve arrived when you have the power to say ‘no’ (which I did in this case, as it was a matter of this instructor trying to get out of a requirement herself).

Three years ago, I wasn’t even allowed to advise students on what classes they should chose in the next semester, because what does an adjunct know about such things (even one who has been in the department longer than some of the full time people). Now I’ve got to go to Clearing tomorrow and sift through applications to decide which students are going to get on a particular university course. Weird feeling really.

In order to get to this position, though, I did have to decide that I’d had enough of being ‘safely’ an adjunct forever at a school that treated me (and the other adjuncts) like crap, or taking the risk to move to another continent and start from scratch again without a necessary guarantee of getting to this level. My current school hired me originally to teach one class only!

Similar decision to say, ‘I’m out of here’ came after a year at my first grad school – terrible clash between me, the department’s goals, my adviser. I could have stayed on and been miserable, and maybe just petered out with an MA (after a few years – this university was infamous for students taking up to 10 years to get a graduate degree). Or to take a risk, pull up stakes, and start over again completely at another school – which I did with no support except from (strangely enough) my mother; everyone else was like, ‘You’re a quitter, you do’nt see things through, etc.’* Very easy for them to say! Sometimes when you beat your head against a brick wall, all you get is a bloody head really.

39

Know I’m done when Sunday evenings fill me with dread…I know I’m done when the conductor announces, " Grand central Terminal" and I wish I could stay on the train and go back home. I think I’m done!