第136期：辞职创业后，我才明白……

想成为我们的主播，欢迎加微信 xdfbook 投稿。 一段美文，一首英文歌，或是一点生活感想，全由你做主。 《辞职创业后，我才明白……》 What I Never Expected When I Quit My Job to Start Up 在过去的两周里，我跟其他人一样度过了中国春节——走亲戚，收红包，大吃特吃新年的各色美味。 然而在享受喜悦、欢庆节日的同时，我的内心却萦绕着深深的恐惧感。 “你现在在哪里工作？” 这是我在春节期间一直非常害怕听到的一句话，甚至比“你什么时候结婚？”更让我害怕，尽管后者也同样可怕。 不可否认，起初当我告诉朋友和家人我决定辞去手机开发工程师的工作去创业时，我并不觉得困难。虽然有点担心人们的反应，但总的来说我不太在意别人对我的评价和看法。 从“你为什么要辞职？”到“我以为你的工作待遇挺不错的，不是吗？”，再到“为什么要从头开始呢？”。 当我提到我要辞职去和几个朋友创业时，以上就是人们向我抛出的问题。对于新加坡的大多数创业者而言，我很确定这些问题早已屡见不鲜。 即便如此，在提交辞职信的时候，我以为我知道自己将要面临什么。 我知道自己必须得努力工作，我了解自己将会面临的财务状况，我明白创业可能会失败。我本以为我已经把大部分问题都想清楚了。 同时，我为能够参与打造属于自己的产品而感到非常非常非常兴奋。 即便如此，我却没有真正预料到会面临下面这些问题。 少了许多跟我爱的人相处的时间 我非常清楚地知道自己将会花费大把的时间在创业公司的工作上。在我上一份工作中，我也常常需要长时间工作，所以我以为这不是什么新鲜事。 而后我才意识到我少了更多与朋友、家人和男友相处的时间。最终，过了很长一段时间后，身边所有人才明白我辞职创业有多影响我与他们相处的时间。 这对我来说也很艰难，因为我突然意识到，要匀出时间跟朋友聚会、与家人聚餐以及和男友约会是多么困难的一件事。我偶尔会熬夜工作，有时周末也会加班，因此和我所爱的人约时间见面变得越来越难。 情绪上的大起大落 我一直都觉得自己是个AQ (逆商)很高的人，因此创业不可能比当手机开发工程师糟糕到哪里去。 但是我简直大错特错。起初，我花费大量时间想各种办法来提升我们当时在做的产品，几乎心力交瘁。我不断地思考与创业公司有关的事，似乎根本没有办法停下来。 除此之外，我身边似乎没有人(不论是朋友还是家人)能理解我所面临的问题，也没有人能认同我作为创业公司的联合创始人所做的工作。我很快就感觉到我们曾经的对话与现在的对话有了差异，可能是因为我的认知发生了改变。我觉得他们无法真正理解我脑海中的千头万绪，而我则在吃力地以尽可能恰当的方式把信息传递给他们。 有时，我感觉自己仿佛孤身一人置身于一个荒岛上。 但我很幸运能够拥有非常支持我的男友、朋友和家人。他们尽管很难理解我的处境，却坚持以自己力所能及的方式来迁就我。 失去稳定的收入来源 当人们得知我辞职去创业，他们最常问的一个问题就是：“辞去工作就没有收入了，这对你来说是不是很艰难？”答案肯定是“是的”。 不得不把开支减少到原来工作时的三分之一左右当然不是件容易的事，尽管我在辞职之前已经为自己的财务状况做好了规划。 现在回头想想，被迫减少开支后我才突然明白，我过去常买的很多东西其实并不真正需要。与此同时，我还是想尽可能地自食其力，所以自尊心也受到了打击。 创业之后我不得不接受以下现实：让别人给我买吃的、请我吃饭，因为根据我目前的银行存款，我没有能力回报他们。 做自己不喜欢的事 在创建公司的过程中，我学到的最重要的事情之一就是不得不去做(许许多多)我不擅长或是我其实不喜欢做的事。 我曾经是个很外向的人，但是做了一段时间的开发工程师后，我开始变得有点离群索居。而作为创业公司的联合创始人，我们需要做的一件重要事情就是走出去与人交谈。 这样有些与世隔绝地生活过一段时间后，要我慢慢放开自己到外面与人交谈，一开始真的很难。同样让我觉得很难的是要四处奔走告诉所有人我的创业公司是做什么的。 有时我们不得不在一天里跟好几位潜在客户约谈，回家后我甚至不想和任何人说话。我已经把当天的“社交配额”用光了，只想蜷缩在自己的世界，不再出去。 For the past two weeks I spent my Chinese New Year just like everybody else—visiting relatives, gorging1) myself on new year goodies and collecting angbaos. But amidst the joy and festivities2), there was a deep dark fear inside me. “So where are you working at now?” That was the sentence I really feared to hear all through Chinese New Year, even more than “When are you getting married?”, even though that was just as scary. Admittedly at the start, I didn’t have a hard time telling friends and family about my decision to leave my job as a mobile developer to start up. I was a little worried about the response people would have, but was generally not too bothered by comments and opinions dished out3) to me. “Why do you want to quit your job?” to “I thought your job was paying you quite well?” and “Why start from square one4)?” Those were the questions thrown at me when I mentioned that I was quitting my job to start up with some friends. And for most startup founders here in Singapore, I’m pretty sure these questions are nothing new. Even so, I thought I knew what I was getting into when I “threw in the letter.” I knew I was going to have to work hard. I understood the financial circumstances I would be in. I acknowledged that it might fail. I thought I had already got most of them sorted out. At the same time, I was super super super psyched5) that I could be a part of building my own product. Even so, I never really expected to face these issues. A Lot Less Time with Loved Ones I knew very clearly that I would spend a lot of time working on the startup. I used to work long hours in my previous job, so I thought it would be nothing new. Then I realised that I had a lot less time to spend with friends, family, and the boyfriend. It eventually took quite some time for everyone to understand that quitting my job to run my own startup affects how much time I get to spend with them. It was also tough for me because suddenly I realised how difficult it was to allocate time for outings with friends, family dinners, and for going on dates with the boyfriend. I was occasionally working late nights, and sometimes on weekends, so it became increasingly hard to schedule meet-ups with loved ones. The Emotional Rollercoaster I always thought I had a high AQ (Adversity Quotient6)) so it couldn’t have been much worse than working as a mobile developer. But boy was I wrong. At the start, I spent so much time thinking about possible ways to improve on what we were doing, I almost burnt myself out. It seemed like there was no way to stop constantly thinking about the startup. To add to it, it seemed like no one else around me, friends or family, understood the kind of issues I faced, or could relate to the kind of work I do as a startup co-founder. Soon after, I felt that there was a disparity7) between the kind of conversations we used to have and the ones we now had, perhaps because of a change in my perceptions. It felt like they couldn’t really comprehend the million and one things that were going through my head and I was struggling to convey the message across in the best way possible. At some point, I felt like I was alone on a deserted island. But I am very lucky to have a really supportive boyfriend and friends and family who, despite having a hard time understanding my circumstances, make it a point to accommodate8) me in whatever way they can. Losing a Constant Stream of Income One of the most common questions people ask me when they find out I quit my job to start up is “Was it hard for you to lose your income when you quit your job?” That is definitely a yes. Having to cut my expenditure to about a third of what I used to spend when I was working was definitely not easy. This was despite the fact that I had actually already planned out my finances before quitting my job. Now in hindsight9), when I was forced to lower my expenditures, it was suddenly clear that a lot of the things I used to buy, I didn’t really need. At the same time, my ego took a beating10) as I still wanted to be as self-reliant as possible. After starting up, I had to accept the reality of having people pay for my food and give me treats, simply because I could not afford to pay them back based on the current amount of money in my bank account. Doing Things I Dislike One of the most important things I learnt while building a startup is having to do things (a lot of things) that I don’t do well or I don’t really like to do. I used to be quite outgoing, but after working as a developer for some time, I started to develop the characteristics of a hermit11). And as a startup cofounder, one of the important things we need to do is to go out and talk to people. Having been a little bit of a hermit for some time now, it was really difficult at the start to ease12) myself out of my shell to go out and talk to people. It was also really hard to go around telling everyone what my startup was about. At times when we had to talk to a few potential clients in a day, I didn’t even want to talk to anybody when I got home. I had burnt through my “human quota” of the day, and all I felt like doing was curling in my shell and not coming out. ………… 文章摘自：《新东方英语》杂志2016年7月号