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May 6, 2025 · Jim Tang
We aren’t making a living, we’re making a dying.
Vicki Robin
I spent nearly 5 years in corporate making a dying.
Waking up with a feeling of meaninglessness. Opening a calendar and email filled with contents I couldn't care less about. All for a few fleeting hours of freedom before going to sleep. Then doing it all over again.
I'd dream of retiring early - when my real life would begin. How many more days? How many more years? ...Decades?
On social media, I was exposed to stories of people quitting their job to “find themselves”, to build their startup, to pursue their true passion.
"That's foolish," I'd say to myself. 95% of businesses fail. Something like that, right?
But deep down, I envied their conviction. I dreamed of a life true to myself. But accepting it was possible would’ve invalidated everything I’d already sacrificed.
So I kept suffering in silence while everyone told me I had it all.
Consider this: If your actions are misaligned with who you are, but you continue them day after day, month after month, year after year, what does that teach your mind?
You don’t respect yourself. You don’t believe you have agency. You’d rather trade the essence of your soul for a "successful" life you never actually chose.
The longer you fight yourself, the deeper these beliefs embed into your brain.
Most people avoid confronting the reality that they're going to work corporate for 40 years. 40 years.
People typically fall into one of two archetypes:
But there's a third group that goes unnoticed. In fact, when we see them, we place them in a different category - as if they're not even playing the same game.
In big tech, I met senior folks with millions in the bank who didn’t quit despite loathing their jobs. Why?
After thinking deeper, it made perfect sense. The same things that kept me tethered: Pay, prestige, beliefs. They all run even deeper for them.
As you continue to win at the corporate game, the cost of leaving gets higher and higher. Promotions, compensation increases, social status, and the growing fear of "it's too late".
It makes sense why companies like Google and Meta pay so much and offer such a compelling ladder to climb. It’s not out of generosity.
Most of us assume working a job is just a given. Think about how we introduce ourselves: "What do you do? Where do you work?"
To break the illusion, you must begin by realizing it's all a choice.
Even the mundane like brushing your teeth or picking what you eat is a choice. Working your job is a choice.
If you don’t realize this, you are unknowingly outsourcing your life. To your parents, to your friends, and the crowdsourced expectations of strangers (social norms).
So what’s the third archetype?
Truth-seekers: people who design a life that can sustain them through authentic self-expression. Often through asymmetric leverage.
Some case studies on this archetype:
None of them followed a perfect plan. None of them have perfect lives. But each shows a different way to win by betting on yourself and to claim agency. Largely through the use of asymmetric levers such as content, software, and audience.
The evidence is before our very eyes. Yet we refuse to believe it could be us.
If I won the lottery, I’d probably buy a house, hire a chef, fly business class, and feel euphoric... for about a month.
Then hedonic adaptation would run its course and winning the lottery would become the worst thing that ever happened to me.
I’d be robbed of my hero’s journey. Forever tainted by a cheat code.
That’s how I realized: the journey is all there is. Attaining wealth isn’t the end. Cliché as it is, it is undeniably true. How many goals have you already achieved that you said would make you happy?
If the journey is all there is, why deprive yourself of living the one you actually want?
We get caught up in thinking money is the goal. What we really want is something money provides: Sovereignty - the power to choose.
The best part is, you don't need millions to start building it.
So how do you attain sovereignty?
If you’ve read this far, you’ve already taken the first step: becoming aware that it's possible.
The next step is defining life's vision. How?
One approach is to simply do nothing. Do nothing long enough and your subconscious will find a way to tell you if you’re not pushing towards your real purpose.
That's what happened to me. It may take the form of a mid-life crisis, depression, or just persistent, ambient feelings of discontent. That's if you're lucky. It forces you to change, to figure it out.
If you're unlucky? You live a life that's just barely tolerable for decades. You wake up at 65 and wake up one day realizing it was never really yours.
But if I could speak to my past self from a year ago, I wouldn’t want him to do nothing. It’s a painful and slow path. Instead, I'd ask myself these 3 questions, and I encourage you to do the same:
If you answered yes to all 3, congrats, you’ve already won. If not, keep reading.
We’ve discovered your current job isn’t your true life. But leaving feels insane.
How could it ever be a logical decision?
I’ll tell you what happened to me after I posted the first 50 Days to $1K reel:
I’ve been sleeping 5 hours a night (don't copy this) and still waking up with a sense of purpose, of drive. Despite all the uncertainty, despite the countless failures, despite the lack of income, I feel more alive.
When I told my parents I was going to quit Google, they tried to talk me out of it for hours. Later, my Dad told me something: On that car ride home, they agreed on one thing: "Jim's eyes had life in them again".
Working a job felt like catching water from an empty glass. Working for myself feels like trying to catch the overflow.
So before you dismiss leaving as reckless, consider the real cost of staying:
Escape Velocity starts with the belief that you can have it all.
If you quit your job without financial runway, you have guts, but you're gambling. Some people can pull it off - just look at the Hormozis. But that’s not my story
If you have a few years of runway and full commitment? You will:
This newsletter is my first step toward building a life of full alignment.
I hope it helps you do the same.
Want a roadmap to build your own Escape Velocity? Start with The Escape Plan (free).
By the end of this PDF, you’ll know:
The sooner you stop outsourcing your life, the sooner it becomes yours. Don’t wait for a crisis like I did.
This Escape Plan and this newsletter represents my first true steps into building this brand. I'm happy to share this sacred moment with you and hope to still be writing to you each week for years to come.
Let's continue to evolve together, Jim