A millennial who hated her unfulfilling corporate job decided to quit two years ago and pursue her voiceover-acting side hustle full time.
Alice Everdeen, 31, told CNBC Make It that making just $42,000 a year working long weeks as a content manager for a supplement company wasn't making her happy.
Working fewer hours, she is now said to make far more doing voiceovers for clients including Amazon, Southwest Airlines, and OnlyFans. CNBC said it reviewed documents showing she made $102,000 last year, and it quoted her as saying she worked three to five hours a day in her new role after working 50-hour weeks in her old one.
She also renovated a school bus with her husband so they could travel across the US. She told CNBC she put the extra money she earned into the modifications and they planned to start their journey Monday.
"We feel like we've made it as adults, by our standards," Everdeen said. "We want to follow our dreams rather than what we're told we should do."
In recent weeks, "quiet quitting" gained traction after Insider published a story on "coasting culture" earlier this year about the idea of establishing work-life boundaries while still collecting a paycheck.
Everdeen told CNBC she'd learned over time to set hard boundaries meant to avoid exhaustion and complacency. As an example of what she wants to avoid, the outlet said that while working as an MSNBC producer years ago she found herself hanging around the office long after her shift.
"It's not good when I want to stay at work longer," she said. "It means I'm distracting myself and not dealing with whatever is going on. I realized I pour myself into my work when I'm not feeling fulfilled in life."
The balance can still prove tricky, though. Everdeen said 80% of her income in her new role came on the freelancing platform Fiverr, sometimes prompting her to check it constantly. "I used to get notifications from Fiverr, and when the noise would go off, it triggered this dopamine release in my brain where I was like, 'Money!'" she said.
She said working less didn't mean she was any less passionate, though. "It took a long time to learn how to let go of what doesn't matter," she said. "Paying $4,000 a month for rent, and then working 60 hours a week is not what I want to do."
