Welcome to the Quit Zone 🧳
What to do when you know you want to leave but you haven’t left yet
Hi there! You’re reading the Bonfire newsletter from Kevan Lee & Shannon Deep. Each week, we highlight brand, marketing, and creative learnings from our experience as in-house marketers turned agency owners who think a lot about creativity, our relationship to work, and how all of that impacts our identities. We’ll also feature insights from our digital community of super smart folks (which you’re welcome to join).
Wishing you a great week!
How to survive in the Quit Zone
I left my job as VP Marketing at Buffer, a social media startup, on January 15, 2021.
But my resignation started waaaaaay before.
More than a year earlier, I answered my first recruiting email. Over the ensuing 12 months, I looked at new marketing leadership roles every week, sometimes every day. I went through multiple interview rounds with multiple companies—Mozilla, Postscript, Calendly, and dozens more. I did multiple case studies, I got rejected multiple times. The temptation to leave drove me to research Master’s degree programs in business (boring but lucrative) and new media (thrilling but pauperish), to start teaching at a university, to brainstorm ideas for the next great American novel. (The novel was going to be a YA love story set in a 1990s Blockbuster Video, if any publishers are reading this.)
All the while, I still had my job.
I still led a marketing team and hit my goals and participated in leadership meetings.
I was just so ready for my new, next thing.
Which was obviously quite hard! There were many days when I felt torn between my devotion to my wonderful teammates and my lack of motivation to dig as deeply as I used to. Certainly, I had boundary issues before, but once I got clearer about my boundaries, I then had guilt about my mindset, impatience about my timeline, and just a lot of stress handling a full-time job at work with what felt like a full-time job looking for other work.
Sound relatable? If so, then you and I are in the majority: More than 70 percent of people want to leave their job. According to some reports, 38 percent of workers have already started the job search, and 39 percent are open to new opportunities, whenever they arrive, which cannot happen fast enough. That leaves just 23 percent of workers who are fine where they are. Sheesh.
With so many people wanting out of their current job, it raises an important question: How should a person show up to work when they don’t want to be at this particular workplace anymore?
Having lived through the purgatory, I can tell you what worked for me. And having spoken with many friends and peers who are co-living in this purgatory right now, I can tell you all the latest tips, tricks, and scuttlebutt. Shameless plug: It helps to have a community! And we just so happen to have a community you can join to connect with folks about this exact thing.
Now, onto other solutions!
Why everyone is looking for a new job
To understand how to navigate this Quit Zone, it helps to know how we ended up here in the first place. For starters, the concept of figuratively resigning yourself to a future literal resignation has been around in tech circles for almost a decade now. It was first popularized by a blog post in Rands in Repose, an engineering management blog. The post got so popular it spawned an entire merch line.
Resignations happen in a moment, and it’s not when you declare, “I’m resigning.” The moment happened a long time ago when you received a random email from a good friend who asked, “I know you’re really happy with your current gig because you’ve been raving about it for a year, but would you like to come visit Our Company? No commitment. Just coffee.” …
Still, seeing (the email) isn’t the moment of resignation. The moment happened the instant you decided, “What the hell? I haven’t seen Don in months and it’d be good to see him.”
Your shields are officially down.
“Shields down” has become shorthand to describe the mental state of anyone who’s thinking about a new job, whether they’re actively looking, actively interviewing, or simply just open to something new.
As a people manager, you’re often trying to make sure that your teammates are not on the verge of “shields down” moments. The signs are obviously subtle at first, so one of the best ways to collect intel is through employee engagement surveys like employee NPS or the Gallup Q12 Survey, which was a favorite of mine as a manager. Managers can use this to better understand their team members, and individuals can use it to get to know themselves better. Are your shields down? Well, to find out, you can see what happens the next time you spot a recruiter email or an unwarranted job listing. Or you can see how many “No” answers you give to the Gallup Q12 questions below:
Do you know what is expected of you at work?
Do you have the materials and equipment to do your work right?
At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
At work, do your opinions seem to count?
Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?
Do you have a best friend at work?
In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
In the last year, have you had opportunities to learn and grow?
So … why is everyone looking for a new job these days?
It’s because the workplace of the 2020s is an incredibly difficult environment for all of these Gallup questions to be true. Expectations are shiftier, resourcing is tighter, recognition is rationed, opinions go unheard, and even the question about having a best friend—perhaps the one question on this list that you have some semblance of control over—is fraught because your best friend may very well have their shields down, too!
So not only are the fundamental attributes of a strong workplace under siege, but the broader environment of startup life is kind of a dumpster fire, for marketers in particular.
Tell me if any of these are keeping you up at night lately:
Artificial Intelligence can do a scary-big percentage of my job today.
No one is hiring, so where would I even go if I did leave.
My creative ideas don’t matter. All anyone cares about anymore is efficiency and pipeline and sales.
I am being asked to do more with less.
Even one of these challenges would be enough to rethink where you’re at. Bless you if you’re dealing with more than one, or even all!
How to manage yourself, your emotions, and your well-being when your shields go down
Shields down moments will happen to just about everyone.
I say this to normalize it, though I understand if it just sounds defeatist. Most of us will fall into the Quit Zone sooner or later—many of you may be in there now—so in order to survive in a lameduck role, we must learn to manage our way through until the next job move happens.
In my case with Buffer, this took a year. At another job of mine, it only took a few months. I can think back to many friends and peers of mine who have had varying stays in the Quit Zone and some who had talked about leaving years ago and whose LinkedIns still remain fixed in the same job, with their tenure ticking up like an odometer. (In most cases, their job title has been ticking up, too, which is a relief!)
Given the inevitability of shields down, here are 5 quick ways to respond in order to take care of yourself while you’re still in the job that you want to leave.
1 - Get to know yourself better
Like any signal in your work or life, the shields down moment deserves attention, not panic. Step 1a: Do not blow things up immediately with an irreversible decision or hastily-penned Slack message. Step 1b: Start listening to yourself and being curious. (We have an upcoming workshop all about this.) Ask yourself:
What is this job no longer giving you?
What parts of yourself have gone dormant?
What would it feel like to build a life that doesn’t require armor to survive?
The original “shields down” blog post describes an instantaneous calculus that your brain is doing subconsciously while it’s saying yes to an exploratory coffee with a friend or yes to hiring manager’s outreach. You can also do this calculus proactively and intentionally by asking yourself the following questions, just like with the Gallup poll:
Am I happy with my job?
Do I like my manager? My team?
Is this project I’m working on fulfilling?
Am I learning?
Am I respected?
Am I growing?
Do I feel fairly compensated?
Is this company/team going anywhere?
Do I believe in the vision?
Do I trust the leaders?
Your visceral reaction to certain questions from this list will guide you toward what you value and where your current role falls short. Not only will this be helpful for where you want to go next, it may also be clarifying for what you can more explicitly ask for from your current manager or workplace, if you feel so bold.
2 - Take the time to practice your story
Even if you're not interviewing yet, it's incredibly helpful to start shaping your narrative. What do you want to say about your time in this role? What have you learned, built, survived, contributed? During my year in job purgatory, I spent the first six months trying out different versions of my story: I was a well-rounded marketing leader, then a PLG expert, then a remote team builder, and on and on until something clicked with what felt true to me and what felt worthwhile to the job market.
Your clear, confident story might include the following:
Your biggest area of strength
A clear theme or two in your career that you want to highlight
Relevant accomplishments that are measurable or referenceable
The role that work plays in your life today and in the future
3 - Take the time to figure out what you really want next
The worst feeling is leaving a draining job only to land somewhere just as misaligned. Sometimes this happens because you are running from something and not toward something. So it’s best to take the time to get clear about what does matter for you in your next gig.
We’ve built a career / values scorecard, based on a template from Adam Grenier, that helps you identify which parts of the job matter to you and how future job opportunities rank against these values when positioned side-by-side. If you’re weighing multiple offers, it can help grant clarity. If you’re looking for a way to be objective about a new role, this will turn a squishy job search into a cold-hard-facts rubric.
Here’s the version in Google Sheets, which you’re welcome to copy.
4 - Set new boundaries and stick to them
If you’ve mentally checked out, don’t overcompensate by working harder to prove you’re still “all in.” Instead, this is the perfect time to reset boundaries in service of your sanity:
Block time for job searching or thinking
Say no (or not yet) to projects that aren’t mission-critical
Stop answering messages after hours unless it’s truly urgent
This isn’t slacking; it’s conservation. You’re preserving the energy you’ll need for what comes next, whether that’s interviewing, portfolio building, or just recharging enough to even imagine a future that excites you.
It can also be a way to subtly signal to others that your bandwidth is shifting. You don’t need to make a grand announcement. But by quietly adjusting what you take on, how quickly you respond, or how available you make yourself, you begin to reclaim control of your time—and, importantly, your identity outside the job.
5 - Flip the script from being resigned to being accepting
Resignation is a passive feeling, like you’re stuck and just letting things happen to you. Understandable given the context, too! But sitting in resignation for long periods of time is going to do a number to your mental health and well-being.
If you’re able, flip from resignation to acceptance. Acceptance is an active choice to be right where you are, for now. You can qualify the situation as much as you like, so long as you acknowledge that you are using your full agency as a human being to claim the space that you’re in and yes you see all the place’s warts. “This isn’t where I want to be forever, but I’m here right now—and I’m going to be intentional about how I show up until it’s time to go.”
Acceptance can look like:
Doing your job well enough to protect your reputation, while saving your best energy for future you.
Being honest (with yourself) about how much you can give and when you need to pull back (see boundaries, from above).
Allowing yourself to coast in certain areas, guilt-free, because you’re prioritizing sustainability.
Finding moments of lightness or joy in your workday, even when you’re emotionally halfway out the door.
Over to you
“Shields down” can be a scary, weird, and wildly clarifying season. But you are far from alone. You are part of the 70%+ who are reimagining what a good, sustainable, values-aligned work life can look like.So treat yourself gently. Use this time wisely. Gather intel. Fortify your relationships. And when you do go—because you will—you’ll be able to do it with clarity, not chaos.
What season of work are you in currently? Have you experienced any shields down moments in your past? Are you experiencing one now? We’d love to hear from you!
And we’d love to see you at this week’s workshop!
Want more like this? Join us in Campout.
If these questions resonate, Campout, our digital community, is where we’re unpacking all of that, together. We’re less interested in “crushing goals” and more curious about what it looks like to build lives and careers we actually want to live inside of.
Here’s a taste of what’s happening:
Get the full replay of last week’s ah-mazing!! event with Rachel Korb all about energy mapping. (Also highly recommended: Rachel’s substack,
)Sign up for our upcoming Career Clarity workshop, hosted by me and
. We’ll be covering one of our favorite topics: how to find and follow your curiosity. It’s step one of identifying a meaningful career, and we can’t wait to learn together with you all!
The event takes place on Wednesday (August 6) at noon Eastern. Here’s the link to RSVP and sign up for Campout.
You can see all this and more in the Campout community.
But wait! There’s more…
Wanna be friends?
If you love this newsletter and wish it were more interactive, you’re in luck! Join us over in Campout, our digital community for creative marketers and the creative curious.
Wanna work with us?
If you need help with brand strategy and storytelling, fractional brand and marketing leadership, and bringing your brand strategy to life in impactful ways, send us an email at hello@aroundthebonfire.com to get in touch.
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