How To Prepare To Escape The 9 To 5: The Six Steps To Start Now

This article is a guest post from Daphne of Free At 50. After 30 years of working for others, she was laid off and decided to escape the 9 to 5 forever. Her solid experience has fed into a six step checklist to help others escape the 9 to 5.

If you work for others, and especially if you work from home (learning to manage your time and priorities better), you may have started to consider ways to work for yourself and escape the 9 to 5. This could mean freelance work or starting your own company.

The issue is you might not know how to get started. Let’s hear from Daphne and how her story motivated her to escape the 9 to 5. Here are the six steps to escape the 9 to 5 and make a lifestyle change.

1. Find your why

It’s not about money, not really. Having money is important in order to pay the bills and put food on the proverbial table, but that is not your WHY.

Your WHY is the reason your goal is to earn income a different way. It’s feeding your desire to escape the 9 to 5 and design a lifestyle like my “Free At 50” lifestyle.

• Time freedom
• The ability to travel and/or work from anywhere
• The ability to work from home
• The ability to work on a Saturday and go hiking on a Tuesday
• Not having to ask for time off to take care of a loved one
• Not having to answer texts from your boss during a holiday dinner

And more.

I vividly remember a conversation with a former colleague who told me her aunt passed away in her 50s… of a heart attack… in her cubicle.

At that moment, I knew I wasn’t going to be in that situation.

What is happening in your life that motivates you to change your situation? That, my friends, is your why.

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2. Shift your mindset

I’m part of GenX. That means I was raised to believe I had to go to college, get a job, be the first in, last out, and climb the ladder. I was conditioned by my professional environment that multi-tasking is vital. That the goals are promotions and salary increases.

When I was laid off during Covid, I already knew, at age 49, I didn’t want to go back to corporate life. I decided to escape the 9 to 5 (8-6, 7-7 and weekends!) forever.

The decision to own my time and make such a drastic lifestyle change was 100% a mindset shift. I had to tell myself, convince myself even, that I can unapologetically:

• Not work traditional hours
• Not need to be busy to be successful
• Ditch the corporate titles

3. Narrow your options

Deciding what to do for income outside of 9-5 life can feel daunting.

Don’t let it be overwhelming – instead, ENJOY it!

How do you get started? Simple, you grab pen and paper or if you’re like me, a stack of Post-it notes and start writing down your passions, hobbies, skills, talents… all of it.

Then have some fun seeing what you can do to marry your passions and your skills. Talk to people, jump online, and take some free masterclasses.

I narrowed it down to two options: small business consulting and blogging. You know where I landed of course!

4. Research the best fit

Once you’ve narrowed your options down, dig deeper.

• Work on both (yes, I did a consulting project with a small business and I also started my blog)
• Take courses
• Meet people in each sector, maybe join some Facebook groups (and talk to them!)

Once you determine what is the best fit for you, move on to the next step.

5. Build your toolkit

You must invest in yourself if you’re serious about making this lifestyle change. Cobbling a real business together for free is dangerous; you may even waste money in the process. For me, working with a business coach once I decided to go all-in with blogging made sense and I recommend it to everyone.

Make sure to budget for coaching services as well as courses. You may have the skills, but as an entrepreneur, there will be so many new things to learn!

This is also where a coach can offer value. Mine helped me focus on where to invest. For example, my target audience hangs out on Facebook, so I invested in a course for creating a Facebook group early on in my journey.

Building your toolkit is critical to success, don’t short-change yourself or your business.

6. Take action – if you really want to escape the 9 to 5

Yes, I’ve put this down as step six, but the truth is you need to be taking action all along. I landed on it for step six to finish the checklist strong, and remind us all that it is a constant, don’t pause or even stop once you’ve hit steps one to five.

Here’s a tip: write down your goals and your projects, then break them down into tasks. If you use a planner (you should have one to escape the 9 to 5!) it’ll be easier to continue taking action, constantly moving forward.

Start your plan while you’re still in your 9-5

Here’s the thing: you don’t have to be out of your 9-5 to start building your next chapter.

While my lifestyle change for a 9-5 escape came on the heels of a Covid layoff, I knew in my heart much earlier that I was “over” corporate life. If you’re still in your 9-5 right now as you read this, you are ahead of the game.

You can start your plan.

You can begin with your why and move through the steps.

And, importantly, you have income actively being directed into your bank account, so you can start moving money into a fund for your Free At 50 life! Take action now and get on the path to being Free At 50 (at, by, or around 50!)

I hope that this article has inspired you to take action and begin your journey to escape the 9 to 5. If you’re already on your journey, cheers to you! I hope my words have given you momentum. Don’t stop pursuing your why, ever.

Daphne Reznik is the creator of the Free At 50 blog, which focuses on life after corporate, how to transition into professional freedom and resources to create income streams.  She has a diverse background having worked in state government, small business, and most recently, a large corporate entity. Her experience supporting businesses and leading a national staff training program, provided her with a skillset she is using to design a lifestyle as a blogger and to inspire others. Check out her Ditching the 9-5 Facebook group.

Thanks so much to Daphne for this guest post with sound advice on the steps to follow to make a lifestyle change too!

For more on changing up your work life routine check out making positive change at work, how to ask your boss to work from home and how to ensure you’re not overdoing it and at risk of burnout.

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