Burnout · Primly Community

quiet quitting is not burnout recovery: the difference actually matters

quietquit_quincy · 4 replies

i quiet quit for about eight months. i'm employed right now, doing maybe 60% of what i'm capable of, going through the motions, waiting for something to change. i want to be clear about something: this is not recovering from burnout. this is managing burnout symptoms while not treating the underlying condition.

quiet quitting as a burnout response makes a certain sense. you protect your energy by not spending it on a job that's draining you. you stop the bleeding. i get it, i did it, i still kind of do it.

but it is not the same as recovery and i think the internet has muddled this. recovery means your capacity comes back. quiet quitting means you are deploying less of a still-depleted capacity.

how i know: i have evenings and weekends free now. i leave work at work. and i am still too tired to do things i used to love. the hours i reclaimed from the job didn't fill back up with energy. they filled with inertia.

my actual rest has been: reading stuff totally unrelated to tech. walking without headphones. cooking actual meals instead of ordering food. these things have been slow medicine. but they only work on weekends because i'm still spending 40 hours a week in an environment that created the problem.

what i think has to happen eventually: i have to leave. not in a rage, not in desperation. but at some point the right move is finding somewhere my actual capacity can be used rather than rationing the depleted version of it indefinitely.

i'm not there yet. the market is still rough and i have a mortgage. so i'm in this middle state. but i'm not going to pretend that doing less at a job i hate is the same as healing. it's not. it's just slower damage.

4 replies

sam_recovering

the 'evenings filled with inertia not energy' part is the most honest description of burnout-while-employed i've read. you save the hours and then you can't do anything with them. it's not laziness. the tank is genuinely empty. recovery is about refilling the tank, not just not spending what's left.

market_realist

slow damage. that's the phrase. i've been in a variation of this for 14 months and the 'slow damage' framing is what's finally making me take the search seriously. i thought i was protecting myself. i was just pacing the deterioration.

careerveteran

i've managed people in this state and i want to say: it's visible. you know who on your team has quiet quit. the thing nobody says is that the manager often doesn't raise it because raising it feels like pressure, which might make things worse. but not raising it means the person stays stuck. the healthy version is a direct conversation about what's going on and what would need to change. most managers avoid it. i've learned not to.

firsttime_mgr

how do you raise it without it feeling like 'i've noticed you're underperforming'? that's the part i don't know how to do well. i have a report who i think is in this state and i don't want to make it worse.