#47🛑 Burnout - Quitting
Learning the self-awareness of when it's time to stop, pivot or be greater than your self-doubt.
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Part 2 of the Coping with Burnout series.
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🌋Takeaways
This issue is not about strategies on how not to quit.
The act of quitting isn’t my ADHD challenge. It’s the feelings of shame, regret, sadness, and self-loathing that come after the act of quitting happens.
Don’t say you quit. Choose when it’s time to stop, pivot, or be greater than your self-doubt.
⭐Introduction
Last week I discussed how emergency kindness is the first small step to recovering from burnout. This week, I talk about quitting. It’s my solution for pretty much everything.
If you’re burned out from your job, you’ve probably dreamed of quitting. I thought a lot about quitting my last job. I dreamt of being free from a life of beating my metaphorical head against a wall each day. Quitting was a sweet release from the pain. Eventually, I was let go from that job. I got my release whether I liked it or not.
This issue is not about strategies on how not to quit. I quit all the time.
My goal today is to help you reframe quitting not as the end but, as a choice to something greater. To be empowered to choose when it’s time to stop, pivot, or be greater than your self-doubt.
🛑Quitting and pivoting are necessary parts of life
A good product decision 10 years ago might not be still good today. Amazon’s decision to promise 2-day Prime delivery helped them gain more customers and forever change how we think of shipping times.
If they hadn’t pivoted to other delivery times such as one day or same day, they could have eventually lost customers to the companies that did.
They didn’t quit 2-day delivery, they pivoted to offer the faster delivery they could.
I didn’t quit being a professional photographer. I pivoted to being a dad.
I didn’t quit being a product manager. I pivoted to be a founder and co-founder.
I believe these were necessary and great decisions.
In my head though, all I hear is “I quit a bunch of stuff”. No matter the reason or how successful I was. I’m a quitter.
🛑ADHD Quitting
If you have ADHD, chances are you’ve quit a lot of things in your life. A club, a hobby (so many hobbies), a friendship, a product strategy, a belief, and lots of jobs and careers.
I’ve had 7 major career track changes, launched 5 companies, and had 10+ jobs in the last 17 years alone. Fuck me I have ADHD but I’m not alone.
ADHD research shows that “Employees with ADHD are 30% more likely to have chronic employment issues, 60% more likely to be fired from a job, and three times more likely to quit a job impulsively (Barkley, 2008).”(source)
(side note) I shudder to think what rates of quitting hobbies would be if someone did a study. I tried looking one up but didn’t find any.
I’ve experienced all 3 statistics stated above. I’m really good at quitting and it sucks sometimes.
🛑The ADHD emotional tax
The negative feelings pertaining to the job or hobby don’t go away after I’ve quit. Instead, they compound over time into everything else I do.
I carry the weight of shame, regret, and negative feedback on everything else I’ve failed at or quit with each decision I make. It can be paralyzing.
It doesn’t matter whether the task is easy or hard, or small or large. My ADHD imposes an emotional tax on my entire lived experience of shame in every decision I have to make.
I hear the voices of disappointment of my mother telling me I quit things just like my dad. A former manager asking me why I avoid hard tasks. Another manager chastising me for including grammar mistakes on a paper presented to the CPO of Tableau.
It’s exhausting to make any decision when your ADHD reminds you of your every criticism to date. While quitting seems like the easiest and most obvious answer, it often makes things worse.
🛑Choosing to stop, pivot, or be greater than your self-doubt
To live a happier life and not be frozen by indecision, I came up with 3 choice framework.
Stop
I like the term stop instead of quit because stop implies that you are in control of whether or not you come back to it. Quitting implies you’re done with a thing forever. That’s not true. Sometimes it’s an action I need to stop for now. I may or may not come back to it. It’s my choice, I didn’t quit.
Pivot
You’re changing course because it’s not the best decision anymore. You looked at the facts and made a choice to change direction, that’s all. You’re not quitting.
Be greater than your self-doubt
When you don't know what the best choice is, make the choice that’s greater than your self-doubt. Choose action over inaction. Choose to take a leap of faith that something unexpected will happen instead of failure.
🛑How I used this framework in the last week
Here’s a partial list of things I wanted to quit this week.
The whiskey company because I overwhelmed the design team 2 weeks before launch.
I chose to be greater. I recognized my actions, apologized and course corrected. I didn’t quit in shame. I trusted in my team’s kindness over my personal fear. Shoutout to Sagemages and Chris.
My newsletter because I couldn’t get it done in time.
I pivoted and published on Thursday. A while ago I put on my page new issues every Wednesday-ish. That gives me a shame-free-ish out.
To be fair, I think about quitting every week but here I am almost a year later.
Being an ADHD coach because I got some disappointing news and didn’t hit my weekly marketing goal.
I stopped listening to my thoughts not being good enough. I choose to keep going and believe the future holds something unexpected and greater.
I got the unexpected. - I didn’t hit my marketing goal but I did get a new paid subscriber. Thanks for the kindness, Bryan. You showed up at just the right time.
Zelda TOTK because I’ve reached the last boss and I’m not sure if I can or want to beat the game.
I stopped Zelda for now. I’ll finish it but, a part of me doesn’t want it to end. The other part of me can’t wait to play Mario Wonder with my kid.
✨Conclusion
My ADHD shame makes it hard for me to remember that quitting isn’t the end of the story. Losing my last job was the start of the most amazing chapter of my caeer. I wanted to quit my career, but I chose to pivot. I don’t know where I’m going yet but it sure beats doing nothing.
It could go anywhere! I know but that’s better than going nowhere.
-Star Wars Ashoka
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⏭️Next Week
Finding time and resources to get help.