QUITTER
“A recent survey revealed that 84% of employees plan to look for a new job this year ”
I actually think that this number may be higher in the physical therapy field. There are many people dissatisfied with the corporate structure of physical therapy, and I am among that group. I think that every year since 2010 I have reassessed my job outlook and searched for other opportunities.
“a US department of labor study revealed that the median tenure for the 55 to 64-year-old category is 10 years. For the 25 to 34-year-old category, the average tenure is only 3.1 years. ”
This one is interesting. There are multiple classmates of mine that worked 3 to 5 jobs within their first 3 to 5 years in the physical therapy profession. I have been out of school for about 10 years now and I I am on my second job. I have had multiple side hustles along the way, but I am still on my second primary job.
“The golden watch has become the other end of the golden handcuffs. ”
I recently received the silver watch. I’ve been at the hospital that I work for for five years and after five years one receives a Watch. I don’t consider the watch a handcuff, but it is a life ring from my perspective. There are many people that have been at this hospital for well over 20 years. Many people realize the problems within the institution, but few people want to change the institution. As much as I’ve tried to change the institution, I realize my power only go so far and that I will need to leave in order to create that change.
“There is a wiser way to get to your dream job, and it begins by keeping your day job. ”
In PT, I have a dream. Not that major dream from Dr. Martin Luther King, but a dream nonetheless. My dream is to see all patients receive quality care. There are many corporations that provide crap care to patients. I hear it from the patients every day. I recently had a patient who underwent 53 visits of physical therapy for her back pain. After two visits his pain was completely abolished and he rated himself as 100% functional. On the one he read it himself as 60% functional. This is a problem. Corporations should not be allowed to milk the patients. The reason why this continues to happen is because patients are under educated with regards to health care in the business of healthcare. If they knew that we get paid based off of how long they kept us they would start seeing themselves more as a $. Healthcare is a unique business because the patients place their trust in us to be altruistic. Unfortunately, the almighty dollar sign can override altruistic tendencies.
“When you keep your day job, all opportunities become surplus propositions rather than deficit remedies. You only have to take the ones that suit your dream best. ”
I value educating people. I spend much time reading outside of work and I want to share that knowledge. If I would’ve quit my job in order to go teach at a university or community college, I would actually take a pay cut from what I’m doing today. This is why I do so much on the side so that way I don’t risk losing the pay that I currently have. If I want to quit my day job at the hospital, I would be very stressed for money and would have to take every opportunity that came my way. There are some things in the physical therapy field that I realize I don’t really enjoy doing. I love teaching students that are passionate, but I hate teaching students that are just there to check off a box, which is one of the reasons why I don’t see myself going into education long-term. I struggle to work with students who don’t share the same passion that I have for the profession. Students are spending 90,000 upwards to $200,000 in order to enter this profession, and it kills me to think that there are some students that are just checking off boxes and going with the flow. This is why I am very picky as to which schools I take students from. Some schools have better reputations than others for the quality of students that come out of the school.
“Dreams tend to challenge the status quo… At the heart of a dream is change”
Because my goal is to ensure that the most amount of people receive quality care, I realize that I have to leave the job that I’m at. I’ve been working on my side hustle now for years. This started with educating myself to become a better clinician. I finally feel confident enough in my clinical abilities and my leadership abilities to be able to step away from my job in order to create my dream.
“I’ve met hundreds of people who tell me they’ve never written their books because they are too busy. ”
Count how many times you hear ‘busy’ as the response when asking someone how things are going? How many of us would say ‘productive’? Is life truly busy or unorganized to an extent that it feels ‘busy’ and rushed? I stopped saying busy. I take at least 45 minutes to watch tv with my family per day. This is usually “Curious George”, but still unproductive time. I recently went to EntreLeadership 1 Day and the talk by Christy Wright was AWESOME. It had to do with prioritizing your top 5 priorities. I no longer feel that George is wasted time because it meets a priority of spending time with the family. I have more time now that I have prioritized my days.
“You don’t ask the bottom less, ‘what do I want to do with my life?’ but instead, “what have I done in my life that I loved doing? ”
I have always been against bullying. I have always been the helper. I didn’t realize it at the age of 5, but that’s my earliest memory. There was a group of bullies that pushed a girl. I went berserk. Think of the movie A Christmas Story. It was kind of like that. They got me back later, but it was all three of them together to get me back. My point is that I stick up for people that are being bullied. The problem is that some people are naive or ignorant and don’t realize that they are being bullied. When I say “ignorant”, I literally mean that they don’t have the knowledge to know that they are being bullied. There are very few reasons that I can think to keep a patient in the clinic for over an hour and fewer still to keep them for more than 6-12 visits. Obviously there are some patients that will need more, but in an orthopedic setting we don’t tend to see that.
“A hinge moment occurs when you are planning to do something standard and normal, something you’ve done many times before… And then seemingly out of nowhere, something, a small detail usually, hinges you in a different direction.”
Way back 2009, I was offered a job by Mickey Shah. I turned it down. That was my hinge moment. I knew that if I had taken that job that I would be riding on the tail of Mickey my entire career. I wasn’t ready for that. I needed to take charge of my own education. I need to create my own presence. I need to create my own brand. And I have spent the last 7 to 8 years doing just that.
“The things that you create and share will always outperform the things that stay stuck in your head or your desk or your laptop. ”
Last year was my step out into the public via a blog. I had 5,000+ views last year and already increased that by over 50% for the year, this year. Had I not done anything, the ideas would’ve taken me no where. I’ve met and conversed with many people this year and I believe it’s because of the writings.
“You have the perfect amount of time each day for the things that matter most. The key is spending time on those things.”
Improving my role as husband and father
Improving my skills as a PT
Improving my teaching of PT to students and other professionals
Exercise
These are my priorities. The order changes as the seasons change. Some times I may have to devote more energy to teaching compared to learning. Some times I need to exercise because the other aspects have become too overwhelming. The average American watches 4.3 hours of tv per day. I may watch one hour of either news or a show my wife wants to watch. I find that in order to accomplish my 4 priorities, that there just is t enough time to know who married who or who got voted off the (insert modern reality tv show).
“When enough people ask when you’re quitting, you start to feel dumb for staying. ”
This has started happening to me in the last year. I keep hearing “you don’t belong here…you think differently…you’re work ethic is different from everyone else”. Why have I stayed? The incentive to leave wasn’t greater than the safety of staying. The incentive just grew by leaps and bounds. My wife and I have a daughter with special needs. I don’t know what her future holds, but I have a responsibility to give her every opportunity to succeed. People say that money is t everything, but few people can prosper on social insecurity alone. Since her birth, I have driven the pedal down and pushed forward and harder than I have ever done in the past. My family is my inspiration to work harder now. I’ve always taken pride in being good at my job, but now I want the prestige and rewards that come with hustle and work. I’ve been grossly underpaid and have settled because of job safety for a long time, but that is rapidly ending. It’s time to leave the cave, kill something and drag it home, as Dave Ramsey would say.
“Bad employees make horrible dreamers. You can’t loaf on your day job all week and then expect to magically throw the switch on the weekend and hustle on your dream. ”
I’ve always lived by a phrase “all hustle, no talent”. Obviously, I overstate the talent part, but I want to be known for work ethic. It’s one of the few things that I can control. In 2003 I was voted as employee of the year at Sam’s club and quit soon thereafter. The worst thing that can happen for me is to have no where to move up towards. I need a goal and an ability to continue to rise. I have no where left to transition to st my current place of employment and my boss is aware that I am leaving. I need to do bigger things next year than I did this year. I can say without a doubt that this has held true year to year.
“The first thing you need is a passion. Like Malcolm Gladwell’s unquenchable curiosity to explore the unexpected relationships between things, you need a passion that will drive you forward.”
I’ve thought a lot about this through self reflection. What drives a person? Anger is a strong force and has driven me for a long time and continues to drive me. There was an interview with Lewis Howes (from The School of Greatness Podcast) on The Art of Manliness Podcast and he discusses how he was driven by anger for a long time. The problem with being driven by anger is that one is never fully satisfied because there is never enough positive to drown out the negative. I continue to be driven more by anger than by happiness. I see an injustice and I want to work to fix it. I see people being taken for a ride and I want to stop it. In PT, I see patients getting garbage care (if I could even honor it by calling it care) and I want to stop it. For every patient that receives garbage care (this means that the therapist is not providing treatment, but instead delegating treatment to someone unqualified, this means that the therapist is doing more harm with their words than good with their interventions, this means that a therapist is not empowering the patient to take charge of their health, this means a lot of things), I want to stop it because it gives my profession, and therefore me a negative reputation.
“It’s not that difficult to be trans parent to a group of 10 readers. You realize that if you say something they don’t like and they all stop supporting your dream, you can always start over.”
This is something that I have struggled with over the last year. The movementthinker blog is finally starting to get readers, and the last thing that I wanted to do was to alienate any of the readers. Now, I don’t care as much about alienating readers as much as I care about me being me. If I lose readers, so be it. This is not meant to make me any money, but instead is an avenue to allow me to vent my thoughts.
“It ultimately worked because I hustled… To push harder than the other person. To dream further. To work longer and faster… I don’t think any of the information in this book works without applying hustle to it. That’s the key. ”
This is the mantra to success. Some people are born into wealth and success. With that said, they have the blueprint from their fathers and forefathers for success. They have the shortcuts branded into them so that they don’t have to go through the heartaches of life. For instance, I started my career already 100K behind. I had to take jobs that paid the bills because I had a lot of bills to pay. My child won’t have to work for money the same way that I did, but they will have the privilege of learning from my mistakes and obtaining advices learned the hard way. I want my children to work and be successful, but I want them to be able to keep the money they earn instead of giving it away to lenders or poor investments.
This is why I hustle.
“Hustle is not hard.”
“Take it easy” is a phrase that gets said instead of goodbye. It kills me! I don’t want to take it easy. It took a lot of work to get to where I’m at in life, but that is the work that in used to doing on a daily basis. For me to take it easy is stressful. I have trouble not accounting for my time. I hear from colleagues that they wish that they could read as much as I do or invest as much time into the profession as I do, and I think BullShit! Everything we do is a choice. Hopefully, we have a list of priorities and are scheduling our day in order to maximize these priorities and minimize distractions. I’m okay if some therapists don’t prioritize their career or profession over other priorities such as family or religion, but to state that they wish there was more time is a fallacy. We all work with the same 24, but may work the hours differently.
“I want the peace in knowing that it wasn’t for lack of hustle that I missed a target for my dream.”
When I was competing in powerlifting, I lived by the phrase ‘No regrets!’ I walked out of the gym on a daily basis knowing that I did my programming as best as possible to compete and place in the top 3. I’ve never been the strongest or the best at any one lift, but I worked my tail off. That work ethic carries over to everything that I do. If I were a street sweeper, which I’ve been, then I work hard to make sure I am among the best sweepers. That hustle comes from somewhere, but I don’t know where that hustle originated.
“Hustle fills you up. Burn out empties you. Hustle renews your energy. Burn out drains it. Hustle impacts every other aspect of your life in a positive way as you learn to prioritize the things that matter. Burn out impacts every other aspect of your life in a negative way and your dream becomes the only thing that matters.”
Acuff J. Quitter: CLOSING THE GAP BETWEEN YOUR DAY JOB & YOUR DREAM JOB. Brentwood, TN: Lampo Licensing,LLC. 2011.
Dr. Vince Gutierrez, PT 