What I Learned by Leaving Technology

At the end of 2024, I left my technology job. At first leaving technology felt like a failure for a while; it doesn’t anymore.

It wasn’t entirely by choice. I spent months interviewing, got closer to a meaningful job, and eventually ran out of room to maneuver. I found a job in healthcare, front desk work, and patient services.

The work is repetitive. Medications need refilling; forms need signatures, appointments get scheduled and rescheduled. Similar problems surface every day. Those problems show up by the people who show up, across every age and background. I’ve found I genuinely like that. It turns out I’m more interested in people than I realized.

The repetition has also given me room to experiment with. I’ve been reading about negotiation and communication for years. The kind of reading that feels productive but stays theoretical when you work alone or in the back room with the same isolated small group.

The front desk is quite different. People arrive frustrated: insurance problems, long waits, confusion about which provider they are seeing. I have been practicing labeling and mirroring: i.e., putting a name on what someone feels, reflecting their words back. The feedback is noticeable immediately in their facial expressions, their emotions, and their words. You learn fast what is genuine and what’s just technique.

Outside of work, I’ve been building a routine I don’t have to think about anymore. I wake up at 5 AM, do 108 bows, and sit for ten minutes of meditation. I do it because I’ve stopped deciding whether to do it. That, I’ve learned, is the only habit of design that works for me. Not motivation. Not streaks. Just remove the question of whether you want to begin or not. Just do it! Over time I will add more: pushups, squats, other exercises layered in gradually. Small expansions of productive exercises that already hold.

For years I’ve been writing things down across scattered places: books I’ve read, ideas I keep returning to, things I noticed but couldn’t yet use. At the time I wanted to collect without a purpose. What I understand now is that I was capturing something more valuable than information. I was capturing my own taste, my own way of seeing things. Life is your laboratory.

Most people use AI starting from zero, no constructive input, which is why the results feel generic. Bringing your own writing into the conversation changes that.

Claude, an AI app, can help generate ideas from any source, but it doesn’t know what or how you’ve lived, or what you’ve tested, or what you’ve crossed off the list. That’s the part you bring. It’s to argue with it, and to ask whether its answers hold up against bona fide experience.

You’ve collected enough. Organized enough. The feedback you need is already coming from your life. The only thing left is to start listening to it. At one point you must stop collecting and start publishing.