“I Want to Quit My Job” — Is That Restlessness Yours?

Introduction: The Restlessness With No Name

I want to quit my job. I cannot believe things are fine as they are. And yet what I should do next is not clear either. Only a sense of this is bad as it is sits at the bottom of the chest. Driven by this restlessness, you look up certifications, register on job-change sites, search for a side hustle. While you are moving, you feel you have gone a little forward. But the feeling fades in a few days, and the voice of still not enough comes back.

What this article treats is not a diagnosis of whether you should quit. It is where that restlessness of this is bad as it is comes from, and why it does not disappear even as you move — its structure.

Let me give the conclusion first. The restlessness moving you may not have been born inside you alone. And the action you had been taking to erase the anxiety may, in fact, have been not erasing it but feeding it.

The Nameless Restlessness of “This Is Bad as It Is”

When you feel you want to quit your job, the anxiety usually has no definite shape. Asked head-on what is it you fear happening, you cannot answer clearly. Only a vague this is bad as it is sits at the bottom of the chest. Not a fear with a deadline, but a restlessness without an outline.

This restlessness has a typical turn of phrase: am I being left behind? Am I the only one standing still? Each mixes comparison with others and dread of the passing of time. And this very namelessness is the most troublesome property of career anxiety. A fear with a clear object disappears when you deal with it. But a restlessness with no object leaves the voice of still not enough behind whatever you do.

What moves this restlessness is less a shortage of ability than the sense of shortage. The two resemble each other but are different. A shortage of ability can be measured. But the sense of being short has no bottom. Because that sense is born not from comparison with something inside you but from comparison with a standard outside that ceaselessly moves. As long as the outer standard keeps moving, the sense too never reaches fullness.

Your Restlessness Has a Supplier

Here, move the vantage point sharply. Look at your restlessness not as a natural emotion born from inside you but as something supplied from outside.

Picture one experiment. If you spent a week in a place cut off from all information — no social platforms, no news, no advertisements — would that sharpness of being left behind keep existing at the same strength as now? I will not say vague worry about the future would vanish. But that sharpness would, within a few days, be astonishingly blunted. Because you would be cut off from the supply source that was ceaselessly restocking it. The restlessness blunts not because you became a finer person but because the supply of its fuel stopped.

In our era, the supply of anxiety is tailored to each person as never before. The words you searched at night are recorded, and by the next morning they return as advertisements matched to those words. A device detects the buds of your anxiety and, without rest, delivers information that waters those buds. As the supply has become individualised, it has grown all the harder to tell apart from an emotion welling up from inside you, an emotion of your own.

▸ This argument — that anxiety is not an emotion but a designed terrain — is treated in depth in anxiety about the future is not weakness.

The Action Meant to Erase the Anxiety Was Feeding It

Here is a conclusion that runs against intuition. The action you had been taking to erase the anxiety was, in fact, not erasing it but feeding it.

Earn one certification and the ones not yet earned come into view; learn one skill and the next enters your sight. Moving was not shortening the list of shortfalls but, rather, updating and extending it. The payment you made was to erase the anxiety, but that payment becomes the funds that support the activity of the side that manufactures the anxiety. The more management you buy, the more the machinery that supplies the anxiety flourishes and stores up the power to manufacture the next shortfall. You, the consumer, are bearing yourself the cost of feeding your own anxiety. This closed circle was the true form of the phenomenon that the anxiety does not fall however much you move.

Inside this back-and-forth, people usually blame themselves: I am anxious even though I am moving, because my preparation is still not enough. But pause a moment and think. How many people around you are moving as you do and carrying anxiety as you do? Probably an astonishing number. When this many earnest people are moving alike and failing alike to reduce their anxiety, to explain it by everyone’s lack of preparation strains belief. When something that looks like an individual problem is this widely shared, what to doubt is not the individual but the structure that stands them all in the same place.

Conclusion: Before Quitting, Look at the Source of the Fire

The restlessness of I want to quit my job does not disappear even as you move because that restlessness is supplied from outside, and the action meant to erase it was feeding it. Before diagnosing whether or not to quit, there is one thing worth confirming: is this restlessness truly yours, or was it supplied?

There are certainly scenes where quitting is the right choice. From surroundings that damage mind or body, you should leave without hesitation. But whether you make that decision driven by restlessness or having looked at the source of the fire leads to utterly different places. A choice driven by restlessness carries the same anxiety to the next workplace. First, discern where the fire that hurries you comes from. Receive the overall blueprint as your next step. How this restlessness works across career anxiety as a whole is gathered in why career advancement never quiets your anxiety about the future.

References

Academic papers and theory

• Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk” (1979) Econometrica, 47(2)
• Cialdini, R. B. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (2007) Harper Business