Well well well, here comes the advice that can only comes from someone who have quit her job not once, but twice in the course of 8 months.
To give you some reassurance and myself some credibility, I quit my first job because of my burnout, and my second since I got to one of the best firms in the industry. Hence, I quit twice, not because I didn’t know want I wanted, but quite the opposite.
Having gone through this process twice in the last year, I realized a common pitfall that our minds tricks us into during the last week at work:
You will feel like you have to do everything at work before leaving.
The thing is, you really don’t. I’m not telling you to log off and disappear two weeks before you are legally obligated to hand in your laptop. On the contrary, you should fulfill the remaining reasonable responsibilities on your project and create handover documents that can help the new person onboard faster.
However, if you’re somewhat of a perfectionist like me, or just that you were educated in an environment where most students do their homework, listen to their teachers, even try to excel beyond the expectation by doing extra classes. It will be hard to define how much work is “reasonable” and how much is not.
So, start there:
1. Define what is reasonable for you within this time frame
Personally, I like to look at the last period at a company as a sprint:
Are there any quick wins I can get out of the project or work stream I’ll be working on during this time— new skills, new industry ramp-up, new working relationship to be built with someone you respect?
Then, I set my goal to be a certain level of achievement for that one thing and work towards that, as well as to filter out things that do not contribute to my goal. That way, you are still a responsible employee, but you have your clear boundaries to protect yourself from being overworked while already not really needing or wanting to impress anyone.
For example, I was immediately staffed in a new project after handing in my resignation. I hated the company for wanting to squeeze the last amount of work out of me, but to be frank, corporates are corporates — that’s how they function.
I figured I was wasting my time blaming them on how they are. I quickly noticed that the new project is data-heavy. I took the opportunity to focus on building the skills and learning shortcuts from other colleagues, aiming to be able to know the whole process of data analyses, from data-cleaning on SQL to data visualization on Tableau.
Executing your plan is not enough, it is also important to …
2. Communicate to your colleagues what your focus is
And therefore what you will not do in the coming month. For me, I told them I would gladly take on the whole data analyses work stream, but I will not be involved in things like interviews or survey set-ups.
My colleague was glad I was not the type who drops everything and just go offline every 5 PM and do bare minimum right after my resignation. It keeps bridges in the long run, which I would argue to be equally important as your learning.
This also means protecting yourself from unnecessary stress if you just say yes to everything still. If boundaries are not drawn, you will likely try to finish all things possible. Given the limited time, this means workload stress, deadline stress.
To be fair, you probably dislike at least one thing about your job now that you’re quitting. After you are burnout and stressed, looking back, you will eventually just feel even more taken advantage of.
It also helps create a pleasant working environment, not for your colleagues, but for you until the end. We all once went through that awkward last day. Your stressed self will probably not be that pleasant to be around and also you could blame your colleagues for you not being able to say no.
Eventually, by doing only the thing that helps you grow create a win — win — win situation:
You win, the company wins, your colleagues win.
The series of anxiety one feels towards the last day can be intense. I hope this piece of advice/sharing helps alleviate part of that from your shoulder.
Good luck at the new workplace :)
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