Burned Out and Stuck? 3 Foolproof Ways to Quit Your Job BEFORE Figuring Out Your Career Change

What do you do when you’re so burned out that you just can’t keep going, but you have no idea what to do next?

If you feel trapped in an unfulfilling job and the thought of planning your next career move feels overwhelming, this episode is for you. Discover why waiting for the perfect plan is sabotaging your efforts and learn how to create a career bridge that provides financial stability without driving you further into burnout.

1. Learn how to buy yourself some breathing room to figure out your next steps.
2. Explore three foolproof ways to quit your job safely, even if you aren’t sure what your next career is.
3. How to make sure you are choosing a career BRIDGE and not a career DETOUR.

If you’re ready to move forward and regain control of your career, listen now and start creating your own career bridge today!

If you want to create a viable exit strategy and find work you enjoy that doesn't burn you out. You can grab this free training, go to coachchelsmd.com/pivot so that I can help you plan your pivot.

Life After Medicine explores doctors' journey of finding purpose beyond their medical careers, addressing physician burnout, career changes, opportunities in non-clinical jobs for physicians and remote jobs within the healthcare system without being burned out, using medical training.

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Life After Medicine explores doctors' journey of finding purpose beyond their medical careers, addressing physician burnout, career changes, opportunities in non-clinical jobs for physicians and remote jobs within the healthcare system without being burned out, using medical training.

Transcript

Chelsea: 0:00

what do you do when you literally just can't? is it possible that this is your emergency? This is the time that you need it. This is your just in case you are living it right now,

0:16

Welcome to Life After Medicine, the podcast helping millennial health professionals leave the system, find their purpose, and turn it into their paycheck. I'm your host, Chelsea Turgeon. In 2019, I quit my OBGYN residency. I had this gut feeling there was something more for me than 15 minute patient visits under fluorescent lights. Now, I'm a six figure entrepreneur, podcaster, and career coach. I get to do work I love. On my own terms, all while traveling the world. My mission is to help you follow your pull towards something more so you can find work you enjoy that doesn't burn you out. Don't worry. It's not a pipe dream. I'm here to show you exactly how it's done.

Chelsea: 1:08

Welcome back to another episode where you're going to learn

1:13

why

Chelsea: 1:14

trying to figure out the perfect plan on paper is actually sabotaging your efforts and keeping you stuck. In your unfulfilling job, how to identify the perfect career bridge for you that provides you financial stability without burning you out and how you can craft a plan forward, get unstuck and start moving even if you have no clue where you're going to end up. Let's dive in. During my first finals week of medical school, I remember doing some online shopping at 2am to ease my stress, I desperately wanted to buy this sweatsuit that had a hoodie and sweatpants, and they both said, I literally can't even. all over them. It was just like a sweatshirt that said I literally can't even and the pants that I literally can't even because that is how I felt. It felt like it summed up my entire existence from that first semester of med school. That like, I literally just can't. And sometimes that's how we feel when we are stuck in an unfulfilling job, when we're burnt out, when we're drained, when work is consuming us, but we have so many other pieces of our life that we're trying to juggle as well. Sometimes it feels like we literally can't. And we want to find our way out of where we are, but we don't have the headspace. We don't have the bandwidth. We don't have the mental capacity. to figure out what's next because we're so burnt out with where we are. And I know I've talked about this before and I've had other guests come on and talk about this, that sometimes when we're unhappy in our current job, we're having a hard time figuring out what's next and we end up just getting stuck. stuckness is coming from some thought processes that aren't, really helping you out, right? So maybe you think you can't turn in your resignation until you have figured out exactly what your next career is going to be. you can't make any move until you have an entirely new life plan. If you've ever played chess, I haven't. If you've ever played chess, I have, but I've literally never won a game or even gotten anywhere close. But in chess, it's like, oh, I can't make my first move until I know exactly how I'm gonna win the entire game. You think you have to use your degree or experience directly. Maybe you think you have to fully replace your clinical income immediately, and that there's no way that you could take a temporary pay cut, even if it's just to figure out what's next. Or you think you have to map everything out on paper before you get started. And so usually what happens is you're doing this and so then you Google like alternative careers for physicians or alternative careers for nurse practitioners and you're using Google in a way that's not very helpful. You start scouring job boards, you're looking for this like unicorn job, but then you tend to get discouraged when you don't see anything that immediately jumps out at you. But your current job is keeping you from really being able to figure out your whole plan. So you're kind of stuck at this impasse. And then meanwhile, you're falling deeper and deeper into burnout and having a harder and harder time making it through the day. And so what do you do when you literally just can't? What's the solution? You have to create a career bridge. You have to find a way to bridge the gap from where you currently are to where you want to be Even if you don't know Where it is you want to be because sometimes you need the bridge to help you just get clarity a Career bridge is essentially a way to financially sustain yourself without Driving you further and further into burnout it helps buy you some breathing room and give you that time and energy and mental bandwidth that you need to find your purpose and turn it into your paycheck. And that's what we're going to talk about in this episode. What are these three foolproof ways that you can quit your job before you figure it out what's next and do it safely. So number one is a sabbatical. This is when you take some time off. Even when you don't know what you're gonna do next and there's a few ways to go about this and also to know if It's right for you So a sabbatical could be three months, six months, one year, even just the five weeks like I did in residency that really did feel like a sabbatical or some breathing room. Now this could be job protected, so maybe there's a way to leverage any hospital policies to get some time off where maybe you're still getting, maybe you're not getting paid, or maybe you're getting paid like a fraction of your salary, is protected and secured so that you could come back to it when you're done. Doing this can help you just feel more secure and feel like you have something to, to come back to. So What are your hospital policies for taking medical leave for FMLA? One of my clients worked somewhere in California, but she got to take six months off for burnout leave and I think it was like half pay. So she had a really great situation where the hospital and the place she worked actually had these policies in place. the policies in your hospital and how can you find that out? Sometimes,, there are no hospital policies and it's you just quitting and DIYing, taking your own sabbatical. And that is another option as well. So how do you know if this is right for you? Well, really, this tends to come down to finances. Do you have enough financial runway to support yourself for six months to one year? without additional income. Is that something that's possible for you? Can you gift yourself this time off to figure out your next steps? I know people who have taken out their 401ks or they've actually just taken something from their retirement savings. Not that that's right for everybody, but knowing that things like that are an option Some of us don't want to take a sabbatical. We don't want to take this time off because we're like, Oh, well, we want to save that time for an emergency. Like, Oh yes, I could take this medical leave or I could take this FMLA, but I want to save that in case I need it. This is when you need it. This is the time that you need it. This is your just in case you are living it right now, because you're listening to this episode. It is very likely that your situation is more dire than you're willing to admit, and it can be hard to see when you're in the thick of it. So is it possible that this is your emergency? One of the podcast guests I had on, Paul Millard, who wrote The Pathless Path, he said, if your life depended on it, could you find a way to take three months completely off of working? Can you rearrange some things and gift that to yourself? So that's the sabbatical, and that's one way to quit your job before you have figured out what's next. The second way is part time. So the question here is, are you able to reduce your hours Significantly to free up time and energy by either going part time by going per diem by moving into a locum's type role. I actually did this a bit in residency. So I negotiated a way for me to continue working for 90 days after turning in my resignation at a reduced schedule. So I worked in clinic for half days a week for five weeks. So that was like 20 hours. I worked like 20 hours a week for five weeks. I took holiday call fully and got super wrecked during that. And then I worked antepartum rotation that I did sort of halfway. I had to get in at like 6am, pre round, do rounds, and then I had to do all the rounding tasks. You know, all the things that kind of came up that needed to be done. during rounds and then I got to leave as soon as I had completed all of that. So basically I was working maybe 6am to 1pm, six days a week. So it wasn't totally part time but it was very reduced from what people normally work on that rotation and I still had my full salary. Because it's paid by the government and they didn't feel like having to submit paperwork to reduce it. So they let me keep my full salary while working part time. and I didn't know that was going to be a thing. I just sort of asked and I tried to put up a negotiation and they said yes. So this can be a good starting point if you feel hesitant to leave initially, right? It can be a way to start incrementally freeing up some time and bandwidth that still feels safe. Thank you. Now, if you take this approach, you need to continually be careful and listen to yourself because this can help things feel better, but usually it's just a stopgap until you are ready to quit completely. I've had clients go part time and they're still feeling so much burnout and exhaustion, and so it's also not going to work for everybody. But if you are feeling really scared at the idea of leaving, it can be a way to start bridging. And you also, you need to be sure to be protective of your new time off, almost as if you were still working. So don't just give away that new time becoming more available to other people, unless that's what you really want to do with it. But it's going to be important for you to set boundaries around that time so that you can use that for you. So that you can use that to start figuring out what's next for you and start recovering from burnout and resting. And now the third type of career bridge is a bridge job, and the question here is, do you need to find a new source of income entirely? this could be for you if you are just so burnt out from clinical work that even the idea of part time is just not going to work for you. And maybe you don't have the financial runway to take a full sabbatical. And so you just need to temporarily find a new source of income entirely. And so what skills can you easily leverage to make money in a way that doesn't burn you out? And this is what I did when I started teaching English in South Korea. I needed a way to earn money while I was trying to figure out how to start a business. And I also wanted to be abroad while I was doing that. But I didn't want to go back to school. I didn't want to spend a lot of time trying to get a job. I didn't want to have to do a lot of training or learn a bunch of new skills. And so teaching English in South Korea actually turned out to be a really good gig for that first year. So some rules of thumb around this is the bridge job that you're taking needs to free up more time and energy than your previous job. You don't want to be working more. Ideally you want it to be something that's fairly easy to get because you don't want to expend lots of time and energy just trying to get hired for a bridge job. Your quality of life needs to be better, whatever that means for you. So for me, it was having weekend freedom I remember looking at my calendar February of 2019. When I got to South Korea, I looked at my calendar for the rest of the year and it dawned on me that I had every single weekend. I did not have to work any more weekends for the rest of my life. I never had to check call schedule. I never had like having weekend freedom. I can't even explain to you what that felt like. The joy that I felt when I looked at my calendar and was like, they're all free. Wow. And so to me, even though I was working nine to five, still going into work, I didn't have like time freedom or location freedom yet. I had weekend freedom and that meant so much to me. And it also needs to be at least one step towards your bigger vision, whatever that looks like for you. So you want it to be a career bridge, not a career detour. You want to be moving a little bit closer towards your bigger vision. So for me, that was, I was living abroad. My bigger vision involved traveling in some capacity, and So my career bridge was bridging me towards that. Those are the three types of career bridges that can help you essentially quit your job before you've figured out what's next. You can take a sabbatical, go part time, reduce your clinical hours, or get an entirely new bridge job. The biggest takeaway that I want you to get from this is you don't necessarily have to figure out your whole life plan before turning in your resignation. Sometimes that feeling of I need to figure everything out before I get started is keeping you stuck. It's okay to quit before you figured out what career path is next. And sometimes You have to quit before you can figure out what's next. There are ways to do it safely, responsibly, practically, all of those things. If you're interested in hearing other people who have created career bridges for themselves, then I recommend listening to Nicole's pivot profile, which is season two, episode 47, how to safely make a career change when you're too burned out to figure out what's next.

14:12

if you're feeling burnt out and disillusioned and want help planning out your next steps, I have a free training called plan. Your pivot. This training teaches you how to create a viable exit strategy and find work. You enjoy that. Doesn't burn you out. You can grab this training totally for free. I go to coach Chels, md.com/pivot. So that I can help you plan your pivot

Chelsea: 14:35

Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next time.