Nothing about 2024 went as planned.
After a particularly difficult 2023, I set two intentions for the new year: power and discovery. On January 1, I wrote in my journal: "I want to discover who I am and step into my own power. It's time to stop hiding."
I felt confident about the year to come. I finally had a stable full-time job at a medical device company. I had a brand new "side hustle" that was more successful than I'd ever anticipated. I had a growing following on LinkedIn and was still dabbling on Twitter/X and Instagram. Two years after leaving academia, my career finally felt like it was moving in the right direction.
But then, as it so often does, life happened.
Today, I'm sharing my honest reflections for 2024. This isn't another highlight reel of successes or some generic list of "failures". That's never really been my style. I believe in radical honesty, rather than pretending that I'm an infallible authority with nothing to learn. I'm human. I make mistakes. I feel confused and ambivalent and I don't have all the answers.
I also know that it's not the mistakes that define us, but rather our ability to learn from them. And wow, I've learned a ton this year:
Mistake #1. Working 70+ hour weeks until I burnt out.
In academia, I actually had firm boundaries around my work. I worked ~8:30am to 6:30pm, Monday through Friday, stopping work on the evenings and weekends to spend time with my friends. I never once experienced burnout, which gave me the false impression that I was immune to such feelings.
Then, November 2023, I launched the After Academia Incubator - a 90 day program designed to help PhDs land jobs in industry. I spent evenings and weekends prepping workshop materials and reviewing resumes for the 50+ students in the cohort. In retrospect, I didn't need to pour so much time into this, but I'm a perfectionist, and I was terrified about failing to deliver to everyone who believed in my new program.
That's when I made my first mistake.
In January, I pushed myself to work even harder. I was worried about increasing competition for PhD career coaching and decided to make a digital course version of my program as quickly as possible. I set an aggressive (and arbitrary) deadline of January 24, not realizing how much work would be required to reformat and rerecord all my workshops. Instead of pushing my deadline back, I worked 70+ hour weeks to meet it. I paid for that choice, dearly.
What began as mild exhaustion turned into complete and total burnout over the next few months. I ignored the signals from my body telling me to rest, opening more and more cohorts. A two week vacation in April wasn't enough to fully recover. By May, I was ending most workdays in tears, wondering how I could possibly succeed at everything I had put on my plate.
It felt so overwhelming that I decided to leave my 9-to-5. It was a decision that I had pondered for months, but one that was made rather suddenly in the depths of my burnout. That was my second mistake.
Mistake #2. I left my full-time job sooner than I should.
This mistake has ate away at me this year.
Before I left my full-time job, other entrepreneur friends repeatedly asked me when I was going to go "all-in" on my business. I wasn't sure that's what I wanted. I enjoyed the stability of my full-time job, and my business was never meant to be more than a fun "side hustle".
But things became harder at my 9-to-5. I couldn't pay attention in all of my meetings. I was asked to work on products that didn't interest me. And my main task, compiling tedious regulatory documentation, was incredibly boring. I thought things would get better with a promotion and more responsibility, until I found out that, not only would I not be promoted that summer, but I was also going to be replaced as lead engineer on my favorite product - the product I had been hired to develop. It felt like nothing was going to get better, not anytime soon at least.
I was exhausted and overwhelmed, saddled with guilt about not enjoying my full-time job. Other people would have loved this stability, albeit boring. But I wanted more - I wanted to be an entrepreneur. It was the career path that would allow me to design my ideal life, a life with freedom, flexibility, autonomy, money, creativity, stability, and (the most important thing of all) time.
In June, I left my 9-to-5. I was "all-in".
I didn't account for the financial implications of that choice. I had to pay back most of my signing bonus. I didn't get my summer performance bonus either. Health insurance, self-employment taxes, and inflation in Seattle quickly ate into my business revenue. I was too exhausted to scale my business as I had planned - I spent most of the summer recovering and burning through my savings. I knew this path wasn't sustainable.
That's when I applied for a contract UX Research position at a big tech company. I got an offer in 10 days (I've still got those job search skills). Now, I lead a rolling research program for the operating system on our virtual reality headsets. The contract is flexible and supplements my income while I scale my business on the side.
Looking back, I wish I would have taken a short medical leave from my 9-to-5 to reevaluate my career. I could have at least stayed through the summer to build up my savings, or even longer if I had stopped wrapping my sense of purpose up in my work. But I believed other people when they told me that scaling a business would be quick. That was my third mistake.
Mistake #3. Listening to others, instead of myself.
I knew nothing about business before starting one.
I've hired many coaches and consultants this year. Everyone gave me advice about what I should do. Run a community! Don't make a digital course! Start a podcast! Make a new website! Use this messaging! I followed most of the advice, some of which was helpful. But the rest... not so much for me.
That's the problem with business advice. While there are standard business principles, everything else is completely dependent on your target customers. It's up to you to figure out what problems your customers have, and how you can develop a solution to solve those problems - that's called "product-market fit".
I thought I'd found it with my Incubator program. I'd based the program off other coaches' programs, and 140+ PhDs enrolled in the first year. By all accounts, I should consider it successful. But there's something missing, something that's continued to bother me.
Then, I discovered the problem. Although my program is successful, it doesn't leverage my skills and interests, not fully. My greatest strength is my ability to synthesize: I love bridging fields and creating new ideas. Plus, I'm interested in so many things, not just PhD career coaching - I need more. I know I'm so close to "product-market fit", but not "founder-product-market fit."
I'll only find the latter by listening to myself.
Learning from my mistakes in 2025
My intentions for 2025 are alignment and less.
Alignment was inspired by my physical therapist, who is constantly reminding me to stand/sit up straight (thanks Erin!) I've experienced chronic pain for years, but was only recently diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos syndrome - a rare connective tissue disorder. There's no cure, only symptom management through exercise and nervous system regulation.
Which is why alignment goes beyond my joints. After a late ADHD and Autism diagnosis last year, I'm finally ready to accept my neurodivergence instead of masking it. I want to align my life with my brain - no more fighting or trying to shove myself into a neurotypical box. That's just not who I am. Once I understand want I need, I know that's when everything else will fall into place.
This year, I also want to do less.
Less work, less anxiety, less spending, less social media, less pushing myself beyond my breaking point. In a world obsessed with more and more and better, how can I do less and still be successful? That's the hardest question of all to answer. It's a question that gets lost in academia and industry.
I see AI as the key to less this year. I may not love this technology, but automations are powerful and reduce the executive functioning burden on my neurodivergent brain. I won't automate everything. I'll still write without AI, because I don't want to give up my creative process. And writing is thinking for me.
If you've made it to the end, thank you for reading and following my career this year. In a year full of mistakes, writing my newsletter has been one of the bright spots. I look forward to writing the next 52 issues (and hopefully many more).
