Before You Smash the Computer: for when you keep thinking about leaving but can't figure out why you're still there

Every day around 4:45 you think about leaving. You've drafted the resignation in your head, maybe in your notes app. And every day you stay, and you can't fully explain that part either, which is somehow worse than the job.

Here's the research on the staying half: the people who study why we stay in jobs found it usually isn't satisfaction. It's links, fit, and what you'd have to give up. The two people you'd actually miss. Being the one who knows where everything is. The life built around the schedule. Often it has almost nothing to do with liking the job, which is why "do I like my job?" never settles anything.

These questions get underneath the wanting out: the specific moment you keep bracing for, the one thing you're sure quitting will fix (and how much of it you could have without leaving), what the complaining lets you put off, what here you'd actually miss, and what you'd have to believe, about yourself or about staying, to make this a decision instead of a feeling. And if something true holds the door shut, the visa, the mortgage, the only paycheck, this reckoning says what almost nobody says: that's not a belief, that's a fact. Facts don't need examining. They need a plan for living well inside them.

It holds the one who's been fantasizing about quitting for three years, the one who genuinely can't leave right now, the one whose job is fine and who wants out anyway (wanting more isn't a character flaw), and the one downloading this ten minutes after a very bad meeting.

Free. Enter your email and the questions are yours on this page, right away. About twenty honest minutes.

One of the questions inside:
"What decision does the complaining let you put off?"

Where to go next:

• If you named the belief but haven't decided: Before You Decide
• If something true holds the door shut and staying needs to be survivable: Burned Out