What if I need to leave, but have no energy to look?
This is a situation I have worked through with clients: they know the job is draining them, but they still need the paycheck. They have responsibilities that make a lapse in income difficult or impossible to endure.
They may already be trying to leave. But updating a resume, preparing for interviews, looking for openings, applying, and networking all require capacity. When the current job consumes the workday and follows them into the evening, that capacity can be hard to find. Or just literally nonexistent.
Sometimes the constraint is time, or sometimes there are hours available, but nothing left mentally to do anything with them.
The place I usually start is finding small ways to relieve pressure in the current job. Creating some breathing room can make the present more tolerable and give you more room to decide what comes next.
Where is the biggest pressure in your week?
Look at what is consuming the most time or creating the most pressure.
It might be a project, a recurring report, a set of meetings, or requests that keep arriving at the last minute. Try to name something specific. “Everything is too much” may describe how you feel, but it doesn’t give you much to work with.
Then look at the work that genuinely has to get done.
I sometimes call these the “job-ending” obligations: responsibilities where failing to do them could realistically put your job at risk. I’m talking about leaving a critical responsibility undone, rather than completing it without polishing every detail to perfection.
That distinction requires an honest self-assessment. When you’re under pressure, a lot of work can start to feel as though anything less than exceptional performance will get you fired. And so we want to look at that just a tiny bit closer, what are the actual expectations, consequences, and evidence? What is the reality of this situation? Do I even actually know that?
Write the essentials down somewhere you can see them. Make sure those responsibilities are being prioritized.
Then we can try to distinguish genuine requirements from pressure you may have learned to put on everything else - even stuff that doesn’t actually matter.
Which valuable tasks are easy for you?
Once the essentials are accounted for, look for work that combines meaningful impact, visibility, and relatively little effort.
Maybe your manager needs an answer you can provide in ten minutes… Maybe an executive needs a short summary… Maybe a colleague is stuck on something you can resolve quickly.
Four or five useful completions can make a real difference without consuming your entire day. Make sure the people who need those outcomes know they are delivered.
You don’t have to diminish the contribution by announcing how easy it was for you. In fact, please don’t do that. That’s none of their business.
Don’t mistake the difficulty of a task, or the time it takes, for its importance.
As we develop in our careers, some of our most valuable work becomes easier for us. We recognize a pattern quickly. We know which question to ask. We can solve something that would take another person much longer. We’ve seen this same problem before and know how to navigate it. We’ve made this mistake the company is about to make, and know how to avoid it.
That ease is part of the skill you bring.
Then ask yourself an exploratory question: if you completed the genuinely critical work and these useful, visible contributions this week… and completely stopped there… what would happen? What else would still have a meaningful consequence if it were delayed?
The answer helps you assess where your effort belongs and which commitments may need to be renegotiated. It doesn’t mean silently dropping the rest (or maybe it does… did I say that out loud?).
Are you spending hours on work that is already good enough?
Another place I look is the time between making something useful and making it feel finished to you.
Imagine writing the substance of a blog in twenty minutes, then spending another two or three hours moving words around. What does that extra time actually improve? Does the piece need that level of refinement now, or is it ready for someone else to review?
For a suitable task, in a workplace where early drafts are welcome, I sometimes suggest a small experiment: give yourself fifteen or twenty minutes for a first pass, then send it for review clearly labeled as an early draft.
You may discover that the work needs substantial changes. You may also be surprised by how little the reviewer actually cares and just says “great job, thanks!” (yes, this absolutely has happened).
Either outcome gives you information about the task and the expectations. A page full of edits doesn’t, by itself, tell you that the workplace is unhealthy. It may tell you that the requirements weren’t clear or that this particular task needs more development.
The question is whether you are spending time on improvements that matter or continuing to polish because stopping feels uncomfortable.
The standard still needs to fit the work, for sure, we’re just trying to find places where we can recover more of your time.
What does your manager actually need from you?
Your manager’s expectations can be another source of pressure, so pay attention to their actual behavior.
Some managers want to be consulted early. A manager who places a lot of importance on their own input (read as “high ego”) may become easier to work with when you ask for advice before presenting a finished decision.
A more passive manager may expect you to handle things independently and offer little help when you ask them to prioritize. Repeatedly seeking direction they don’t provide can leave you even more frustrated. Not only that, it can actually hurt your manager’s image of you. If they don’t think helping you prioritize is part of their job, but you ask them for help, that’s not going to help you at all.
What information do they ask for? What reassures them that the work is moving? What seems to reduce unnecessary follow-ups or interference?
Part of the goal here is very practical: get people off your back. Deliver the important work, make the useful outcomes visible, and look for ways to reduce the friction around doing your job.
That may help you create more room to decline another request, discuss a tradeoff, or finish at a reasonable time. It won’t work with every manager, but understanding the pattern gives you something more specific to respond to.
I always said my first task in any job was to earn the right to push back and say no. Because if I was the person that said yes, got things done quickly, and delivered value - when I say “no” it means something.
Where can you bring one of your values into the work?
Work can also feel intolerable because of what it asks you to compromise about yourself.
When you know your values, you can look at the coming week and ask: What is one small way I can do something that is aligned with what matters to me?
You might find that opportunity in work you’re already doing, or you might need to create it.
If learning matters to you, could you learn a different way to approach an existing task? Could part of a project become an opportunity to explore something you’re interested in?
If you aren’t sure what your values are, my article on what a values card sort is and why it matters explains a way to begin.
In my work with clients, bringing a value into the week can sometimes give them a little more breathing room. The work may gain some meaning, even when the workload or environment hasn’t changed much.
That doesn’t erase the difficult parts, no, but it can help someone feel a little more connected to themselves while navigating them.
How do you protect the time you get back?
The purpose of all this is to create space you can actually keep.
You are doing the critical work. You are delivering useful contributions that other people can see. You are looking for places where effort has stopped adding much value. You’re giving your side of the deal when you became employed. Now the question is whether those changes allow you to work reasonable hours and protect more of your life outside the job.
If your manager sees that you delivered valuable work, but you feel you haven’t done enough because it came easily, notice that mismatch. Your own perception of effort may need time to catch up with the impact you are having.
You can develop more pride in that contribution without immediately filling the space you’ve recovered with more work.
For someone whose role is built around a forty-hour week, getting back to that boundary may be a meaningful aim. Even if the work remains draining, you need time to rest, recharge, and engage with things that matter to you outside of your job each day.
If the job offers little meaning, look for places outside of it where you can engage in things that are important to you: relationships, interests, family, community, or something you want to learn.
When life becomes nothing but working and recovering enough to work again, it can feel as though you are always waiting for your life to begin. Feels like you’re just treading water. Protecting even a small amount of time for something meaningful can give you somewhere else to put your attention and energy.
What is one change you can make this week?
For many people, this situation developed gradually. Those extra requests turned into longer hours and accumulated until the week became difficult to sustain.
Making it more tolerable can be an incremental process, too. It almost has to be, by design.
Choose one place to begin: reduce a recurring pressure, clarify a critical obligation, stop overworking a suitable task, make a useful contribution more visible, or protect time for something important to you.
You don’t have to do all of it this week.
Like working out at a gym, a single effort may not produce a dramatic change. Over several weeks or months, you can look back and assess what has shifted: your hours, your energy, your relationship with work, or your capacity to explore another job.
The point is to create enough room that your current job no longer consumes every resource you would need to change your situation.
