Those Moments When You Want to Quit
The urge to resign might not mean you actually want to resign.
I Just Walked Out of a Meeting
Requirements changed three times in one hour.
I sit down and stare at my monitor. New Slack message: "Can you summarize and share the meeting notes?" Summarize what? There's nothing coherent to summarize. In that moment, a crystal-clear sentence forms in my head.
God, I want to quit.
When Your Work Disappears
The urge to quit hits when your work loses its meaning.
A feature you poured two weeks into gets scrapped due to a direction change. "The plan shifted." One sentence, and two weeks evaporate. The code gets deleted, branch and all. Only the commit log remains. A commit log nobody will ever read.
Developers are builders. When what you build disappears, your sense of purpose shakes. (Okay, that might be a bit dramatic — but in the moment, it genuinely feels that way.)
A Former Colleague's Instagram
A former colleague posts on Instagram. "Started a new job!"
Their salary probably went up. Benefits probably improved. Office probably got bigger. Based on absolutely zero evidence, the grass looks greener. LinkedIn is even more brutal. Everyone's getting promoted, switching jobs, shipping successful projects. I feel like I'm the only one standing still.
I know social media is a highlight reel. Knowing doesn't stop me from comparing. It's just human nature.
Friday Evening Exhaustion
Friday evening. A week's worth of fatigue crashes down all at once.
If it recovers over the weekend, that's fine. The problem is when the fatigue is still there Monday morning. And Tuesday. And Wednesday. When fatigue accumulates without recovery, the urge to quit stops being an emotion and becomes a physical signal.
Burnout doesn't arrive suddenly. It seeps in a little each day, unnoticed. You only realize in hindsight that it had already started.
The 72-Hour Rule
The urge to quit comes often. The decision to quit is rare.
The urge is emotion; the decision is judgment. The urge hits walking out of a meeting room, and fades on the commute home. The decision comes on a quiet night, and is still there the next morning.
I use the 72-hour rule. If I still feel the same way after 3 days, I take it seriously. Most impulses fade within 3 days. Only what remains is the real problem.
The Usefulness of the Urge
The urge isn't all bad.
In the moment you imagine quitting, you become your most honest self. What you truly hate, what you truly want — it all comes into focus. The things you usually brush off with "whatever, it's fine" suddenly have clear outlines. The urge to quit is a kind of self-diagnostic. Even if you don't act on it every time, the feelings that surface in those moments are worth remembering.
I'll Go to Work Tomorrow Anyway
The urge to quit came yesterday and will come again today. And I'll probably go to work tomorrow anyway.
Between the desire to throw it all away and the resolve to keep going despite everything, most workers choose the latter. It might be willpower. It might just be inertia. It might be reality. (Honestly, it might just be the rent.)
Today's urge to quit will fade on the subway ride home. Tomorrow morning the alarm will ring again. And I'll go to work again.
At least for today.