When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing(42)
—“The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson
“For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”
—Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
“In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.”
—The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
—The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
And that last sentence of A Farewell to Arms—the one Hemingway finally settled on? “After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.”
WHEN TO QUIT A JOB: A GUIDE
Many “when” decisions involve endings. And one of the biggest is when to leave a job that just isn’t working out. That’s a big step, a risky move, and not always a choice for some people. But if you’re contemplating this option, here are five questions to help you decide.
If your answer to two or more of these is no, it might be time to craft an end.
1. Do you want to be in this job on your next work anniversary?
People are most likely to leave a job on their one-year work anniversary. The second most likely time? Their two-year anniversary. The third? Their three-year anniversary.1 You get the idea. If you dread the thought of being at your job on your next work anniversary, start looking now. You’ll be better prepared when the time comes.
2. Is your current job both demanding and in your control?
The most fulfilling jobs share a common trait: They prod us to work at our highest level but in a way that we, not someone else, control. Jobs that are demanding but don’t offer autonomy burn us out. Jobs that offer autonomy but little challenge bore us. (And jobs that are neither demanding nor in our control are the worst of all.) If your job doesn’t provide both challenge and autonomy, and there’s nothing you can do to make things better, consider a move.
3. Does your boss allow you to do your best work?
In his excellent book Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best . . . and Learn from the Worst, Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Robert Sutton explains the qualities that make someone worth working for. If your boss has your back, takes responsibility instead of blaming others, encourages your efforts but also gets out of your way, and displays a sense of humor rather than a raging temper, you’re probably in a good place.2 If your boss is the opposite, watch out—and maybe get out.
4. Are you outside the three-to five-year salary bump window?
One of the best ways to boost your pay is to switch organizations. And the best time to do that is often three to five years after you’ve started. ADP, the massive human resources management company, found that this period represents the sweet spot for pay increases.3 Fewer than three years might be too little time to develop the most marketable skills. More than five years is when employees start becoming tied to their company and moving up its leadership ranks, which makes it more difficult to start somewhere else.
5. Does your daily work align with your long-term goals?
Ample research from many countries shows that when your individual goals align with those of your organization, you’re happier and more productive.4 So take a moment and list your top two or three goals for the next five years and ten years. If your current employer can help you reach them, great. If not, think about an ending.
WHEN TO QUIT A MARRIAGE: A HEDGE
When should you get divorced? This kind of ending is too fraught, the research too sprawling, the circumstances of people’s lives too varied to offer a definitive answer. But some research indicates when your spouse might make the move.
Julie Brines and Brian Serafini analyzed fourteen years of divorce filings in the state of Washington and detected a distinct seasonal rhythm. Divorce filings spiked in the months of March and August, a pattern that they later found in four other states and that gave rise to a chart, shown on the next page, that resembles the Bat-Signal.5
The reasons for the two monthly peaks aren’t clear. But Brines and others speculate that the twin peaks may be forged by domestic rituals and family calendars. “The high season for divorce attorneys is January and February, when the holidays are over and people can finally stop pretending to be happy,” says Bloomberg Businessweek.6 Over the winter holidays, spouses often give a marriage one last try. But when the festivities end and disillusionment descends, they visit a divorce lawyer. Since contested divorces require some work, the papers aren’t filed until four to six weeks later, which explains the March burst. The same thing might happen at the end of the school year. Parents keep it together for the kids. But once school is out, they head to the lawyer’s office in June and July, resulting in another filing spike in August. Consider yourself warned.
FOUR AREAS WHERE YOU CAN CREATE BETTER ENDINGS
If we’re conscious of the power of closing moments and our ability to shape them, we can craft more memorable and meaningful endings in many realms of life. Here are four ideas:
The workday
When the workday ends, many of us want to tear away—to pick up children, race home to prepare dinner, or just beeline to the nearest bar. But the science of endings suggests that instead of fleeing we’re better off reserving the final five minutes of work for a few small deliberate actions that bring the day to a fulfilling close. Begin by taking two or three minutes to write down what you accomplished since the morning. Making progress is the single largest day-to-day motivator on the job.7 But without tracking our “dones,” we often don’t know whether we’re progressing. Ending the day by recording what you’ve achieved can encode the entire day more positively. (Testimonial: I’ve been doing this for four years and I swear by the practice. On good days, the exercise delivers feelings of completion; on bad days, it often shows me I got more done than I suspected.)