Quiet Quitting the Hustle and Reclaiming My Happiness

A lot has happened since the onset of the pandemic that overshadows OKRs, KPIs, and other goal-setting metrics, but for some reason, it's expected that people leave the weight of the world at home to deliver on their role’s responsibilities. No matter the magnitude of shared or individualized trauma that we’ve experienced, many work cultures still remind us that there is not space enough for the whole human experience in the workplace. Cue the collective burnout that has led to the great resignation and the quiet quitting movement.

The heart of the quiet quitting movement.

Quiet quitting is rejecting the notion that work has to take over one's life. You see, everyone is exhausted. I see it at every level of an organization and in all different types of organizations. People are just burnt out. While burnout and all that led to the great resignation and quiet quitting began well before the pandemic, the last two years seem to be what has forced so many to take a good, hard look at their lives– turning away from positions they’ve worked for years, sometimes decades, to attain, turning down pay increases and title bumps, and most notably, rejecting the imposed hustle culture that got them there in the first place. With so many asking, “What’s the point? What are we even hustling for?” people are redefining what success looks like for them.

As people begin to reengage with parts of their pre-pandemic work lives– being in the office, going to conferences, events, and gatherings, traveling for work, and in general, saying yes to a lot of things they paused doing for two years– they are subliminally being asked to choose, and many are simply refusing to do so. With that, there’s this natural shift happening where success is becoming more about prioritizing one’s happiness and well-being rather than the exhausting, never-ending hustle. 

This shift is exactly what I have been experiencing for the past year.

After a traumatic eye surgery in May of 2020, I was left having to relearn how to see and process information. As you can imagine, this was life-altering. It changed how I did practically everything, and in that season, where I should have slowed down and allowed myself time to heal, I put my work first, as I had always done.

Before the world went virtual, I worked with teams to design spaces for virtual collaboration and helped develop systems and implement best practices for asynchronous work. So, as more companies went remote, my services were in higher demand than before. I loved what I did, and it was important work, so I kept going, full speed ahead.

It was so easy to get sucked in and ignore my own needs because the success of helping others had always been my driving motivator. I wasn’t doing what I saw others doing on social media throughout 2020. I didn’t bake bread. I didn’t take long walks. I didn’t discover new hobbies. I worked, slept, and without realizing it, I was drowning, just trying to survive. On top of the physical isolation, we were all experiencing at the time, I began to emotionally isolate myself to preserve my energy, and still, I felt depleted. 

It soon became apparent that if I continued down the path I was on, I would–over and over–find myself in the same burnt-out, uninterested place that was robbing me of my joy, and that would be a disservice to everyone. I want more for those I work with, and I want more for myself–so I had to redesign.

As much as I loved my work and the career I worked so hard to build, I couldn’t keep sacrificing my personal well-being for it, and I needed to figure out what it was I really wanted for my future. 

“What do you want for your life?” 

As I began to feel this new tension, a mentor of mine asked me this question, and oddly enough, the answers I would have given before didn’t feel the same. I still loved helping and serving others, I loved problem-solving, I loved being in the thick of it, and I loved being busy. I wanted to be a part of discovering solutions that made people's lives easier, more fulfilling, and happier. But when those answers didn’t sit the same in my heart and in my gut, I knew something needed to change.

So, I did something I never thought I would do…

I put a pin in my business and redesigned.

Let me preface this by saying, ultimately, I found that in order to reclaim my happiness and realign my purpose, I didn’t need to walk away from my work forever. But at the time, taking a sabbatical helped me redesign my work in a healthier way. I took an extended amount of time off of work to rediscover the parts of life that made me happy. I helped my mom remodel her home, I rested my eyes, and I traveled–not for work, but for me. And as I did this, my priorities began to shift. I still wanted to work, but I didn’t want it to be the center of my life. I started to prioritize my happiness, and as a business owner, what I was really doing was quietly quitting the hustle.

I replaced the hustle energy with a steady, more sustainable work life, and now I spend more time doing things I love—like rebuilding old furniture and taking time to renovate my new home–and my work is flourishing because of it. Slowing down has helped me become more innovative with my work and how I engaged with it. My health, wellness, and personal goals have become as much of a priority as my professional ones. And now, I’m even better equipped to meet my professional goals because I have the strength, presence, and energy to work hard when I need to–which comes from engaging the discipline of play and rest. I certainly don’t have it all figured out, but I’m on a continual journey to find the beauty in honoring my heart and soul as I support my life goals by designing work to fit around them. 

What would your version of quiet quitting look like?

It’s ingrained in us from a young age that “the early bird gets the worm,” or in other words, the image of success is to “be the first one in and the last to leave”. But at what cost? At some point, everyone should ask themselves why they have subscribed to this lifestyle.

If you’ve been burned out, unhappy, and dissatisfied for a while, I would like to challenge you to sketch out a map of your life with happiness at the center. I know we need an income to survive, but for a moment, imagine that you don’t. How does this imagined life differ from what you’re doing now? How would that shift your daily activities, and how would you spend your time and energy? 

You’re the only one that can answer these questions, so be honest. Try hard to ignore your survival brain while you do this exercise. It may feel uncomfortable, and you may feel prone to say, “but I have to do fill in the blank.” Put that aside for a moment and focus on what lights you up, what brings you happiness, joy, and a sense of freedom.

You don’t have to do this all at once, but my advice is to just start somewhere. Spend a few minutes each day analyzing your life, and deeply reflect on what matters to you. Then you can start making small steps toward prioritizing what really makes you happy. The good news is, it’s your life, so you get to define it—the hustle doesn’t have to.

A corporate context

If you’re reading this as a corporate leader, this may feel like an individualized movement that leaves corporate entities at a loss. But I think it’s the opposite. At this moment, there is a calling for a change in how we work, and there is an opportunity to evaluate what this could look like at scale. I believe there is a huge opportunity here for companies to adapt and redesign for a competitive edge that will push them into a more sustainable, beneficial future.