by Adam Dawson
When you read the Internet experts on what to do when you get fired, most of them say that you should try to learn from the experience. You’re never totally blameless and you need to be able to demonstrate progress in your professional growth. Here are some personal lessons I’m learning from this experience, not to mention the professional ones I’ll continue to reflect on.
1. We need a bigger emergency fund.
For most of the last 3.5 years, we had the recommended $1000 emergency fund in the bank. Had my job search not worked out so quickly, we would be seriously hurting with no more money than this in the bank. We must begin to build our emergency fund even while we’re paying off debt. Our preliminary plan is$5000. Once we’re there we can see about increasing it.
2. You can often see it coming – and prepare.
I saw signs of this event all the way back in the April/May timeframe. My project list began to dwindle and I received some harsh criticism from my boss. Then he stopped responding to emails despite my efforts to improve the situation. Although I started my job search right away, in hindsight, I did very little to prepare financially for the worse case scenario. We didn’t cut back or save more in preparation. This was a dumb thing to do. We are lucky to escape unscathed.
3. I must keep up with my ADD medications.
8 years ago, I was diagnosed with adult ADD. I am sometimes skeptical of the whole Adult ADD idea and don’t intend to start a debate here. But I did find that medication helped me focus and increase my productivity at work. In my recent job, I did not take medication, mostly because I don’t like the side effects – it makes me grouchy. But it’s clear to me that I need to be treated in one way or another, as my productivity was an issue.
So those are 3 lessons I learned. There are more but if I can get these down we will have made progress!
