In 2019, I wasn’t someone who hated her job. I was someone who had become very good at pretending it was fine.
That’s what identity drift looks like from the inside. You don’t leave the wrong job in a dramatic arc. You stay in it, slowly, one small compromise at a time, until you look up and don’t recognize the decisions you’ve been making.
I had a title I’d worked for, a salary I’d negotiated, and a team that counted on me (I later realized too much). I was putting out fires without relief. Competent but not engaged. That gap between what I was capable of and what I was doing kept widening. That’s what I now call identity drift. It doesn’t announce itself; it’s more of a faint whisper.
The burnout I hit in 2019 didn’t come from overworking alone. It was the slow erosion of things that used to feel like mine. Creating informed strategies. Overseeing execution. Instead, decisions were overturned and flashy ideas overshadowed established plans. By the time I was taking client calls from my bathroom, due to poor internet connection, I’d been drifting for at least six months.
That’s what makes staying in the wrong job so costly. The visible cost is time and money. The invisible cost is who you stop being while you contemplate if it’s time to go.
Something I repeatedly hear in client coaching sessions: “I hate my job, but quitting on the spot isn’t realistic for me right now.” I get it, but the problem with that framing is that it treats the decision like a switch. Stay or go. Now or never. The real question is what you’re losing every month you stay without a plan.
William Bridges wrote about this in Transitions. He refers to the Ending as the point where you start loosening your grip on an identity that no longer fits. Even when my clients suspect there’s been a shift, there’s a resistance to act on it. Sometimes, they wait too long until a decision is forced upon them. Others ask themselves, “How much would it take to leave a job that’s fine?”
Fine is not a career strategy.
The identity cost shows up before the burnout does. You feel it in small ways at first. Sunday dread that you feel 24/7. The meeting you dread because it has nothing to do with anything you care about. The promotion you pursue because it seems like the next logical thing to do.
You keep playing the role. You just can’t believe that you’re the person playing it.
CliftonStrengths ranked Input as my top theme when I took the assessment. I’m someone who needs to collect information, ideas, connections, and ask questions. I was gathering intel that I was in the wrong place, but I wasn’t translating that into action (yet).
The thing that matters more than the stay-or-go decision is how the identity cost compounds. Six months of drift is recoverable quickly. Two years of drift takes longer in career time and the internal work of remembering who you were before you got so good at the job that stopped fitting you.
So if you’re in a job that’s fine and you’re wondering why you’re tired, ask yourself: When did you last feel genuinely curious or excited at work? If you can’t remember, the drift has probably been going on longer than you think.
The decision to stay or go rarely comes first. What comes first is whether you’re willing to look at what staying has been costing you in who you’re becoming, or not becoming, while you wait for a reason bad enough to justify leaving.