Quitting your job: the question no one asks you first

You've been thinking about it for weeks, maybe months. You imagine Monday morning without this job, without this manager, without that weekly meeting that goes nowhere. And every time you bring it up, people ask "but do you have a plan?" As if a plan were enough.

The problem with "quitting your job" isn't the missing plan. It's the missing clarity on why you want to leave. There's a huge difference between someone who leaves because they know what they want, and someone who leaves because they can't stand what they have anymore.

The difference between running and choosing

Plenty of people who resign discover six months later that the problem wasn't the job. It was a need they'd never put into words: for autonomy, meaning, pace, recognition. And because they hadn't named it, they changed the context without changing the cause.

If you don't know why you want to leave, you're likely to find exactly the same problem in the next role. Just with another company name on your LinkedIn.

The exercise below won't tell you whether to resign. It'll ask you to pick the single thing to focus your energy on in the coming weeks, whether that's inside or outside your current job.

Exercise · 10 minutes

From the step "Just one thing," Action zone

Pick your priority

Pull together what you know about yourself: what blocks you, what you no longer want to accept, what success means to you. If you haven't done this work yet, write what comes to mind.

Out of everything you could change or improve, pick one single thing. The one that, if it moved forward in the next 6 to 8 weeks, would have the biggest impact on the rest. Write it down and write why it's this one.

Imagine that in 6 weeks, that priority has moved forward. What will be different in your day to day?

You now have a single priority, the reason you picked it, and a concrete picture of what would change if it moved forward.

A priority set is a first concrete step

What you just did is set a priority instead of going in circles between ten contradictory urges. Most people who want to "change everything" change nothing, because they never pick where to start.

A priority is only the first step. The path continues with translating it into concrete actions for this week, and markers to see if things are actually moving. To go further: understanding why you're waiting instead of acting.