Diary of a junior gapper (p.1)

Sharing my 2 biggest lessons on being unemployed and taking a break

Hi friend,

Hope you’re doing okay.

A friend of mine recently asked me “Did you gain a lot through your gap-month experience?”

I paused for a few seconds and said “Yes, indeed”. Although to me taking a break is not so ideal like ones who travel around the world or ones who make six-figure online solo-preneur business after quitting their corporate job.

It's definitely an adult summer break that many people could be dreaming of.

My gap months did bring me wholesome experiences and meaningful lessons about a lot of things: life, connections, self-esteem, career choices, security, etc. Hence I decided to write this series Diary of a junior gapper for ones who:

• Wonder what a career break can look like

• Want to find ideas and inputs for their to-be gap plan

• Are curious to hear my gap stories ;)

Navigating your career break or gap year is one hell of an experience. It pushes you to product-manage yourself, and your own life, with zero upper management.

Having that bunch of times in your hands without letting it slip through like water is actually a tough, yet exciting task. Or if you view it as a game, you're on the adventure to your wonder-gap, about to fight the biggest boss as your fear of uncertainty and meet with a lot of NPCs as your new companies.

Here’s to the first 2 key takeaways of my adult summer break:

#1 Your job title # your identity.

I believe the question “Who am I without a job title?” is pretty common among the corporate slaves or whoever that grinds on a job, or multiple ones.

If you never thought of that question yet, try to imagine yourself ticking “unemployed” in the occupation section of an online survey. Of course nobody would cross check on you and you can definitely fake it, yet ticking that answer for once made me cringe. It was the moment of realization to accept myself as an unemployed person.

If you're looking for a career break, being sure or at least knowing what more you have in you will definitely helps you from the identity crisis when not having a 9-to-5 life, not having to work for someone, not having to rate yourself based on the KPIs your manager pushes you to commit.

It's normal for many people to strike a conversation with someone they first met by the question "What do you do for a living?". I was never really interested in using that as a warmup question, or maybe I'd still ask but for having a better understanding of the other person's background, not to judge whether they're in big businesses or having fancy job titles.

It’s cause I prefer the idea of connecting with people whose eyes spark whenever they tell me something they're interested in, or when I see them interacting with other people in the same room. I guess it tells me more about a person rather than just knowing their job title.

It's good to having found the job we love to work on, a career worth pursuing and an industry that we dream of. Yet it doesn't mean your self-worth and identity are entirely based on how many users have you (or your company) acquired in your last growth hacking campaign, or how many clients have you signed up on your consulting business.

During my gap time, I happen to meet so many new connections with interesting identities that are not defined (wholly) by what they do in the corporate world.

I guess that a career break is the perfect time to reflect on our identity and work on our self-esteem. I get to explore so many more mini versions of me outside the label of a product strategist, a strategic planner or whatsoever. And while doing that, I continue to nurture other identities that I've already proud of and commit to myself. Someone who treasures wellbeing, growth and connections. Someone who loves to write about what she learns and accompany others while they're sharing the same interests or concerns.

#2 We never know till we try. If something doesn't work, adjust and iterate.

There's no one-size-fit-all gap plan. And even if you try to have one in the first place, there’s nothing that can guarantee you that you’ll end up ticking all the boxes for your desire and dreams at the end of your gap phase.

The dark side, or the unknown scary zone of the gap period is that, you don't know what's the end of the tunnel, you literally don't. It can vary from you receive your next offer to going back to work, or you think you're gonna stop the 9-to-5 life and decide to go for your personal creative pursuit instead, and so on.

Sure, it's necessary to figure out certain things in life that you care about, want to do or that are important to you when you have an actual break.

It's still good to have a thought-out, structured and detailed planning with goals at first to give you a direction and an overview of what you want to accomplish or problems you’re trying to solve during your gap period.

"Setting goals are not for achieving, they are for clarity." - Dan Koe

But be flexible enough and remember to adjust and iterate accordingly. Have vision but aim to not be restricted.

In Agile methodology, product teams find a way to build something functional within short development cycles. They adjust it based on market or user feedback and then iterate continuously so that the product can evolve and improve over time through constant updates and refinements. It’s similar to how I try to look at my gap.

"The beauty of life is that you can paint this blank space of paper with whatever color you want and there's truly no right or wrong answer…

…In business and product, we do such a great job finding and iterating the products that make so much money but we don't do that with the most important thing which is our own life." - Voice Hugs podcast

Navigating my career break is similar to drawing on a blank space of paper, and similar to many trial test run in product development. But that’s the beauty of it. Rather than sitting in a corner at the end of the day and continuously rant about why my gap time doesn’t look like how I wanted it to be.

That’s it for today. Let me continue on my gap-month reflection and next time let’s talk about learning to get deep rest, managing my time, things to explore & so on.

I called myself junior gapper because this is the first time I have an actual career break after 7+ years working from company to company. I’m sure there’re a lot more to learn and I’d love to hear your opinion or past experience as well.

If you have any questions regarding this topic, feel free to leave a comment. And if you find this post helpful for someone, please consider hitting the button below:

Thank you for reading!! Hope you enjoy this post and have a great weekend <3

Love,

Han from work in progress

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Bài viết thuộc thử thách Viết Đều và Hay của Writing On The Net Alumni.

#wotn #vietdeuvahay