If you hate your job and you’re thinking about quitting, I want you to pause for a moment.

I’m not telling you to stay somewhere that makes you miserable. Sometimes leaving is absolutely the right decision.

But before you hand in your resignation, there are six things I want you to consider.

1. Figure out whether you hate your job or you’re completely exhausted.

When you’re burned out, even a job you once loved can become unbearable.

Everything feels harder. Small problems become overwhelming. You lose motivation, patience and the ability to see things clearly.

Before making a major career decision, take a step back and ask yourself: Is this job genuinely wrong for me, or have I reached a point where I have nothing left to give?

The answer matters because these are two very different problems.

2. Stop performing at 120% when you’re being paid for 100%.

Stop volunteering for every project.

Stop fixing problems nobody asked you to fix.

Stop automatically taking responsibility whenever something goes wrong.

And stop making yourself indispensable at the expense of your health.

Do your job exceptionally well. Be reliable. Take pride in your work. But recognise that constantly exceeding expectations is not a sustainable career strategy if it comes at the expense of everything else.

Try setting more reasonable boundaries and see what happens.

You might discover that you can still be an excellent professional without carrying the weight of others.

3. Stop assuming that a new job will solve everything.

A new company can offer better opportunities, a healthier culture and a much-needed fresh start.

But it can also come with impossible deadlines, difficult personalities and unrealistic expectations.

And if you’ve developed a habit of saying yes to everything, taking on too much responsibility or struggling to establish boundaries, you may find yourself recreating the very situation you wanted to escape.

Changing jobs can be the right move. Just make sure you’re not taking the same patterns with you.

4. Take your annual leave before writing your resignation letter.

And I mean actual time off.

• No checking Slack.
• No secretly catching up on emails.
• No spending your holiday worrying about everything waiting for you when you return.

Give yourself the opportunity to experience life without work consuming your attention.

Notice how you feel when you’re rested. Pay attention to whether your motivation returns, whether your perspective changes and whether you can imagine going back to your job with a different approach.

Time off won’t fix a toxic workplace or an unsuitable role. But it might help you understand what you’re dealing with before making a major decision.

5. Separate your professional ambitions from your personal identity and worth.

You can be an ambitious professional and still have bad days.

You can receive feedback and criticism without questioning your entire career.

You can miss an opportunity without feeling like you’ve failed.

And you can be good at what you do without needing to prove it to everyone, every single day.

Your performance matters. Your development matters. Your career matters.

But none of these things determines your worth as a person.

The more you depend on professional achievements to feel good about yourself, the harder every setback becomes.

6. Give yourself permission to be ambitious without making work your entire life.

You can want the promotion.

You can want the higher salary.

You can want to become an exceptional leader and build a career you’re proud of.

And you can still want to close your laptop at 5 p.m. and enjoy your evening.

These ambitions are not mutually exclusive.

Success doesn’t have to mean constantly sacrificing your time, energy and personal life to prove that you deserve it.

You can take your career seriously without allowing it to consume every part of you.

I learned this the hard way.

I burned out at 29. One of the most important lessons I learned during my recovery was that I could change my relationship with work without giving up everything I had worked for.

I didn’t have to stop being ambitious. I had to rethink how I approached my career, what I expected of myself and what I was willing to sacrifice for professional success.

That experience changed the way I think about career development.

Today, through my Career Coaching, I help ambitious professionals gain clarity about their direction, communicate their value and make strategic career decisions that support their ambitions.

Because I don’t believe you should have to choose between building a successful career and having a life you enjoy.

If you’re thinking about leaving your job, start by understanding what’s really making you unhappy.

But make it from a place of clarity, not complete exhaustion.