Issue 2— Finance Fridays — Business Writing, When To Quit and Accepting Redundancy Packages

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Contents:

• 💡 Idea of the Week — Taking notes is a career hack
• 💡 Idea of the Week — Knowing when you quit
• ✅ Actionable Advice — Huberman’s Daily Top 3
• 🧐 Question of the Week — Voluntary Redundancy Package

💡 Taking notes is a career hack

Inspired by: YouTube: Marc Andreessen It’s Time to Write

The current thinking is that we write too much in the workplace.

• There’s too many pointless PowerPoint presentations.
• We send too many emails.
• We receive too many Slack messages.

There’s just too much communication. So someone saying we need to write more at work probably sounds ridiculous.

But Marc Andreessen has a point. As does David Perrell (via his Twitter thread). Writing at work holds a lot of power. People may look down on the person recording minutes but when it’s time to pull up receipts on actions agreed from said meeting, who do you go to?

The note taker.

Another example are the Product or Project Managers in tech companies hosting the weekly/daily stand-ups. It is literally their job to take notes and circulate them to other stakeholders. It sounds simple but they are rewarded handsomely for taking notes and distributing them to others.

So clearly writing matters and you should write more at work.

4 ways to write more productively at work

1. Volunteer to take notes at meetings — particularly with the colleagues you least work with and circulate afterwards. This is how to indirectly network within your workplace.
2. Take notes when you’re at work conferences, the good, the bad, the insightful and post a summary on your LinkedIn, @’ing the organisers social handles and anyone you quoted. In return for stroking their ego, they will re-post your content thus increasing your chance to build new connections via LinkedIn.
3. Keep a work journal, tracking your accomplishments whilst they are fresh in your mind. So when your performance review comes along, you’re prepared with examples to justify your next pay bump.
4. Write out business cases for any ideas that can improve the business, whether you follow-through with them or not. This way you’re always prepared to take the initiative when the right opportunity arrives. This will also allow you to practise pitching ideas at work.

💡 Knowing When To Quit

Inspired by: YouTube: I Guess this is Goodbye — Finances Unfiltered (now deleted, he’s back posting lol)

Seth Godin wrote a short book on the concept of being a good quitter which flies in the face of the popular notion that staying with something for the long haul yields the greatest rewards.

3 reasons why being a good quitter is a valuable skill in the modern age

1. Shiny Object Syndrome — We are heavily exposed to infinite options in our lives leaving us paralysed and ultimately distracted. Juggling too many projects will make you unable to do the thing (word to Chris Williamson). So we should not quit what matters, but definitely try to quit what matters only a little bit. James Clear — Author of Atomic Habits, explained it on the High performance podcast, that the hardest part of staying focused is choosing between good things to do and great things to do.
2. Sunk Cost Fallacy — Becoming invested in a dying asset can be expensive so when we start seeing too many red flags, we have to acknowledge them. For example, if you’re invested in the S&P 500, you’ve already agreed to stick to it for at least 20 years regardless of the ups and downs. On the other hand, is that side hustle costing you too much money, time and effort? Is it distracting you from getting a raise at your full-time job? Maybe it’s time to move on to new opportunities, the world is full of them.
3. Minimum Viable Product — Testing ideas quickly is a concept derived from Silicon Valley (no, not episode 1 of the TV show), the tech industry based in Silicon Valley. Failing quickly, to find what works is an indicator of an innovative organisation. Steven Barlett of the Diary of a CEO, runs his companies this way as does Netflix (hence why they cancel shows so quickly). Even Elon Musk has a similar ethos — “If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” So there’s nothing wrong with quitting thus “failing” because multiple failures will eventually lead to success. Nobody remembers all the missed shots Michael Jordan took, only the ones that went in.

My favourite form of knowing when to quit are 30 day challenges. Matt D’Avella the Minimalist Filmmaker on YouTube does these challenges a lot. And talking about YouTube, you probably need about 1–2 years of consistency or 100 videos (according to MrBeast) before you really know whether you’re going to make it. So clearly when to quit depends entirely on the context of what you’re doing.

✅ Actionable Advice: Huberman’s Daily Top 3

Inspired by: AMA #11: Improve Task Switching & Productivity and Reduce Brain Fog

A small productivity hack. You probably have too many things on your to-do lists because realistically you can only complete 50% of it, and you’re probably adding things that are procrastinating tasks that distract you from doing the thing that matters. This is pretty similar to Ali Abdaal’s “Daily Highlight” Productivity Hack.

So pick 3 things you must do, everyday. Everything else after that are bonuses that you might do.

2023 had some of the largest layoffs in the tech industry which brought to the forefront the discussion of severance packages. More than 200,000 tech workers have been laid off since the start of 2022 up till the end of 2023. Some were definitely more lucrative than others with Salesforce offering their employees a minimum of 5 months pay.

Then a friend was offered a 3 month voluntary redundancy package and was considering accepting it to go travelling and then decide on his next career move. In my attempt to offer advice, I realised that there isn’t a clear decision framework for deciding whether to accept a voluntary severance package if the option to stay was still there.

What’s a voluntary redundancy package?

If a company is in financial difficulties, it might ask people to volunteer to be made redundant. They would offer more than would be applicable in a compulsory redundancy situation (such as mass layoffs). And compared to normal severance packages, it’s very much optional. Thus this is commonly referred to as a voluntary redundancy package.

5 Step Decision Framework for responding to a voluntary redundancy offer

1. Check the job market

Quitting your job when the job market is in a downturn puts you in a vulnerable position. If you discover that the grass isn’t greener on the other side, it’s an uphill battle. Applying for jobs and getting interviews will measure how valuable you are as a job applicant and reaffirm that your decision to leave will not be so catastrophic.

2. Apply the Regret Minimisation Framework

The Regret Framework according to The Art of Improvement.

Applying the regret minimization framework popularised by Jeff Bezos is a great way to make important life decisions.

What will you regret not doing?

A: Quitting your job to become a full-time YouTuber

B: Staying on to have a mediocre career trajectory

Fear is an important emotion needed to stop us making rash decisions and there’s actually nothing wrong with an average career. If it means feeding your family and having the stability for a good life outside work, it is justifiable. But it can hold us back in retrospect when we’re older and wish we did have the courage to live out our dreams more.

The pain of a mistake can be temporary.

The pain of regret lingers for a lot longer than you would like.

1. Review your financial position

Lack of money is the number one reason why you do not take the risks necessary to change your life. The worst thing you can do is not have enough money after you leave your job. The anxiety of going broke would stop you from pursuing your dreams whole-heartedly and probably push you back on the path you tried to get away from in the first place.

So have an emergency fund so you have the space to breathe.

2. Plan how you would like to spend the money

It’s crazy how many people don’t actually plan what they are going to do when they quit their jobs. You should be able to visualise the next steps after leaving. Without a stable income, every day will feel like an ominous countdown back to the corporate world you tried to escape in the first place.

3. Pre-plan both Plan A and Plan B

Plan A is doing what you want to do. Living out your dreams, pursuing your passions.

Plan B is getting back into regular work but feeling much happier than you did in your previous workplace.

✍🏿Quote of the Week

“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people that they don’t like.”

― Will Rogers (not Will Smith ffs)