SUMMARY POINTS

  • Quiet quitting is doing only the bare minimum
  • Dialing down your workload and stress improves health
  • Use the time to find a better opportunity that aligns with your priorities
Before, things were pretty different.

You were busting your ass at work, taking on all sorts of projects, stretching yourself and your abilities beyond the limits. You felt like a corporate captain at work knocking out the tactical tasks and supporting strategic goals. You felt great.

Then, something happened.

Somewhere along the line, things started to change for the worse.

Maybe, you got a new asshole boss. Or perhaps, your roles and responsibilities changed due to yet another reorg. It could also be the growing amount of bureaucracy that you’re having to deal with or having to play office politics all the time. Frankly, it could be any number of things.

Whatever it is, you’re now at a point where you’ve lost all your motivation and enthusiasm for your job. It no longer makes sense to put in all that extra effort and manage all that work stress as you did in the past.

There just isn’t any kind of incentive anymore to do your best.

Why?

It’s because you’re so fucking tired of banging your head against the wall and dealing with all the bullshit that you just don’t care anymore. All you really want to do is just clock in, go through the motions and clock out.

You’re officially quiet quitting now.

What Is Quiet Quitting & Why It’s Important

Work is hard. It can be frustrating, demanding, and often thankless. So it's no wonder that sometimes you feel like quitting but you can’t actually quit for one reason or another.

No one likes quitting. It feels like failure. It's the admission that you can't hack it, that you're not good enough. So instead of actually quitting, we stay in jobs we hate and try to tough it out. We tell ourselves that things will get better, that this is just a phase we're going through.

But often, things don't get better. We just get more miserable and stressed AF until we can’t bear it anymore.

This is when we decide to quietly quit work because we’re fed up with all the bullshit.

Quiet quitting helps to preserve what little mental sanity you have left. This is when you dial back your effort all the way down to the point where you’re only fulfilling your minimum job roles and responsibilities and not an ounce more.

In other words, you’re only working just hard enough not to get fired or attract bad attention. It’s a step below coasting at work which is a different kind of strategy.

When you’re in a quiet quitting phase, you’re giving yourself the needed slower pace and an escape from all the bullshit to mentally recover and/or find a better opportunity elsewhere.

This strategy usually isn’t a long-term one but a phase that allows you to keep your job and thus your income while you look for another job. Remember, it’s far easier to find a job when you have a job. Don’t ignore recruiters during this phase. They may be a way out.

Quiet quitting is the art of slowly easing your way out of a job, without burning any bridges or leaving on bad terms.

This transition phase can be as short as the two-week resignation notice where you don’t do much to as long as several years for extended on-off job searches.

Some have even adopted this strategy as their long-term career option. For them, their job is just a job and nothing else. Do the bare minimum and collect a paycheck.

And for those about to retire, it’s a normal part of the transition into the golden years of retirement.

Reasons That Justify Quietly Quitting

When you’re at the point where you’ve already made up your mind about moving on, you’ve entered the quiet quitting phase.

The most often cited reason for quitting is because of your bitch boss. As the saying goes, “people don't quit companies, they quit bosses”.

However, there are other reasons why quitting quietly is justified. Here are a few notable ones. You might be in one or more of these buckets.

It’s Just A Job & You Need The Income

A lot of us work in jobs that we’re just not passionate about. Let’s face it, it’d be hard to be excited every day about being a catalog manager for an industrial vinyl flooring supplier.

And, that’s okay because maybe it’s a stable gig that provides a consistent paycheck. The income you earn is what allows you to support yourself and your family.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with earning an honest paycheck for doing your job, even if you’re not pushing yourself all the time. Or maybe, you’re devoting more time to your lunchtime side hustle that could be your ticket out of the rat race.

Planning To Jump Ship Soon

When you’re actively looking for another job and you can sense that something is going to happen soon, it’s totally fine to let off on the throttle a bit. This is especially true if and when you’re in the later stages of the interview process during offer negotiations.

When you’ve got more than one pending offer, you’ve got a solid chance of moving on to your next new adventure. There’s no need or incentive to go all out anymore at work. Instead, you can focus on working for a new boss soon.

Your Company Doesn’t Reward Top Effort

There are countless stories of employees that went above and beyond their roles and responsibilities expecting to get recognized and subsequently rewarded with a promotion.

But, when you hold up your end of the deal and the company doesn’t, WTF is up that?

There are many examples where the promised reward and recognition never materialize. And when exemplary work continues to be unrewarded, well then, that’s just bullshit. It just kills your spirit and motivation.

When you don’t get the recognition you fucking deserve, why put in all the extra effort?

No Opportunities For Promotions

When you’re at the lower end of the pyramid org structure, it can seem like getting to the upper levels is nearly impossible. This is especially true when the people above you don’t move because maybe they can’t move upward either.

Companies that place value on organizational stability don’t like to change much. This is often seen in traditional Fortune 500 type companies in legacy industries.

When you can’t move up, you feel stuck in your career and that’s when you’re likely to give in or give up and start looking elsewhere.

Other Higher Priorities In Life

Nobody was on their deathbed wishing that they had worked more in their life, that’s a fact.

Talk to any person that has gone thru a life-threatening situation or experienced a life-changing event and they’ll tell you that it has clarified and reset their priorities in life.

It certainly did for Ric Elias, who was a passenger on the US Air flight that crashed into the Hudson River in New York.

VIDEO: 3 things I learned while my plane crashed
YOUTUBE: TED
LENGTH: 5:02
Summary points:
  • Life can change in an instant
  • Know what is truly important in your life
  • Reset and pursue your true priorities
There are more important things in life than your job. Your job doesn’t define you. And, it isn’t the focal point of your life. It’s an important part of your life but it’s not the main and only thing.

Just remember this, you work to live not live to work. Got it?

Toxic Work Environment

Life is hard enough on its own. When you add in a toxic work environment, it makes your life even harder to manage. You get overwhelmed AF.

This study from the Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health shows that being constantly exposed to toxic stressors puts employees at significant risk of developing physiological and psychological disorders.

In other words, it can really fuck up your mental and physical health.

Is any job really worth that over the long run?

Conserving Mental Energy

When office life is a constant alternating battle of putting out fires and juggling cross-functional projects for multiple bosses, you can easily burn out. You only have so much energy available each day.

Then, when you factor in all the shit that’s going on in your personal life, you feel like you’re running on an empty tank and can barely get by. You’re hanging by a string.

The one area of your life where you do have some modicum of control is at work. Here, you can slow certain things down. You can be strategic about when, where and how to conserve your mental energy. 

You Just Don’t Give A Shit Anymore

We’ve all been past our breaking points in life many times for all sorts of things. You can only tolerate so much before you throw your hands up in the air and throw in the towel.

Maybe, you’re at this point now where you just don’t give a rat’s ass about your work or job anymore. In fact, it’s probably really easy now to disconnect from work and mentally check out at the end of the day.

When you don’t give a fuck at work anymore, you no longer have any emotional ties holding you back. It’s easy to let go.

Quit Quietly & Plan For A Happier Life

Right now, you’re probably just not feeling it about your job and career prospects. And, you have every valid reason to feel this way. It’s okay. You need this time to chill.

However, just understand that there’s a good chance that there’s something much better out there if you’re willing to explore a bit. You need to listen to what the career angels might be whispering in your ear.

You deserve better.

You deserve a job that you actually enjoy and where you work with people that are awesome, just like you.

Because trust us when we say this, when you’re in the zone and productive and making progress in life, in whatever endeavor you choose, it’ll make you so incredibly happy that nothing can bring you down.

Progress is happiness.

Now, we’re not saying that you need to go all-out gangbusters now and do a complete career makeover - no. It’s about taking small steps toward a better future. You can get back to being that kickass corporate captain again, if that’s what you want.

So, take advantage of this quiet quitting phase. Listen, look around and put the feelers out in your network. See what’s out there. You might get surprised.

Feel Better,
[Cubicle|Therapy]

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