The fluorescent lights hummed relentlessly above the war room table as I stared at the 3:17 AM timestamp on my laptop. Around me, half-empty coffee cups formed a constellation of exhaustion while the latest sales figures blinked accusingly from the dashboard. ‘We’re 12% below target for Prime Day,’ someone croaked into the Zoom void. In that moment – surrounded by the debris of another all-nighter at Amazon, my designer blazer draped over the chair like a discarded costume – a terrifying thought cut through the caffeine fog: None of this matters as much as I’ve convinced myself it does.
For ten years, I’d worn my 80-hour workweeks like badges of honor. Helmed teams managing $300M annual GMV at Flipkart. Collected promotions like poker chips – Senior Manager to Director to Head of Category in record time. My LinkedIn profile gleamed with achievements, each line item meticulously crafted to broadcast my worth. Yet every milestone left me emptier than the last. That corner office with the skyline view? Felt like a glass cage after two weeks. The congratulatory champagne? Flat before the bubbles could reach my throat.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth no one mentions about career burnout: it doesn’t announce itself with dramatic breakdowns. It’s the slow creep of existential math – you keep adding professional successes while subtracting pieces of yourself, until one day you realize the equation will never balance. The WhatsApp pings from leadership at midnight (because urgent revisions to Q3 forecasts apparently can’t wait till sunrise). The way your hands still twitch for your phone during rare dinners with friends. The hollow panic when someone asks what you enjoy outside work and your mind goes blank as a new spreadsheet.
We’ve been sold this myth that career progression should follow some satisfying upward trajectory – that if we just check enough boxes (promotion! raise! industry recognition!), we’ll arrive at some magical plateau of contentment. But what happens when you summit that mountain and discover… it’s just another base camp? When you finally get that coveted title and realize you’ve been climbing in circles? That terrifying moment of clarity – when the adrenaline of achievement fades and you’re left staring at your slightly burnt-out reflection in the laptop screen – that’s when true reckoning begins.
This isn’t another think piece glorifying the ‘quit your toxic job’ narrative. If anything, what frightened me most was realizing my workplace wasn’t the villain – the system was functioning exactly as designed. The real crisis wasn’t in my job description, but in my mirror. When your career becomes your entire personality, resignation starts to feel less like quitting and more like performing radical surgery on your identity. Who are you without the business cards and the email signature and the ‘So what do you do?’ small talk answers?
That May morning when I finally closed my laptop for good (no backup plan, no next big role lined up), I wasn’t running from something, but desperately toward the most urgent project of my life: remembering who I existed as before the world told me my worth equaled my output. The journey since has been messier, more beautiful, and more terrifying than any quarterly business review – but that’s another chapter entirely.
The Decade I Spent Running on a Treadmill
The fluorescent lights of the Amazon office hummed at 3:17 AM as I proofread the Prime Day sales report for the fourth time. My third coffee of the night had gone cold, but the adrenaline from hitting 300% growth targets kept my fingers flying across the keyboard. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of our Mumbai high-rise, the city slept – or at least, the parts not employed in e-commerce did.
This was my normal for ten years. The relentless rhythm of big retail: Diwali sales spikes, midnight strategy calls with Seattle teams, WhatsApp groups pinging with urgent ‘ASAP’ requests before sunrise. I wore my 80-hour workweeks like a badge of honor, collecting promotions like marathon medals – Director of Marketplace Growth at Flipkart by 28, Head of Category Development at Reliance Retail by 32. Each title came with a nicer apartment, a heavier gold necklace, and exactly five minutes of satisfaction before my brain whispered: Next.
The Five-Minute Happiness Rule
I first noticed the pattern during my first major promotion. After months of 14-hour days preparing the Q4 strategy, the VP title finally appeared in my email signature. That evening, I sat alone at a five-star hotel bar, sipping a Manhattan I didn’t particularly want, staring at the embossed business card in my hand. The fizzy triumph lasted precisely until my phone buzzed with a calendar invite for next quarter’s stretch targets. The hunger returned instantly, sharper than before.
Neuroscience calls this goal-shifting – our brains treat achievements like toll booths, not destinations. But in the pressure cooker of Indian e-commerce, this natural tendency gets weaponized. We’d joke about ‘Amazon face’ – that hollow-eyed stare of managers during peak season, simultaneously exhausted and wired on the next big challenge. The running treadmill metaphor became literal: I took conference calls while jogging on my apartment complex’s gym treadmill at 5 AM, determined to ‘maximize productivity.’
The Glass Fishbowl Effect
My Gurgaon penthouse became the perfect metaphor for my paradox. The floor-to-ceiling windows showcased a glittering urban panorama, but after three years living there, I couldn’t name a single neighbor. The minimalist furniture stayed pristine because I was never home to use it. One monsoon evening, watching raindrops slide down the panoramic glass, it hit me: I wasn’t in a luxury apartment. I was a showpiece in a corporate aquarium, my achievements on display for some imagined audience.
Worse, I’d started judging everything – friendships, hobbies, even potential partners – through the lens of professional utility. A brunch companion became valuable if they could introduce me to a VC. Yoga was worthwhile only when the instructor could quote Harvard productivity studies. The realization chilled me: my career wasn’t just part of my identity anymore. It had consumed the entire canvas.
The Treadmill’s Hidden Cost
We rarely discuss the physical toll of achievement addiction. By year eight, my annual health check read like a cautionary tale: stage 2 hypertension, vitamin D levels of a subterranean mole, and a cortisol profile that made my doctor whistle. ‘Your body thinks it’s being chased by tigers daily,’ she said, tapping the lab reports. I laughed it off – weren’t we all running from some metaphorical predator?
But the real damage was emotional. When my niece asked during a rare family dinner, ‘Masi, what do you do for fun?’ I froze. My last hobby had been abandoned in college. My friendships had dwindled to LinkedIn connections. Even my carefully curated Instagram feed showed only conference badges and airport lounges. That night, staring at my medicine cabinet’s beta blockers and sleeping pills, I finally admitted: this wasn’t sustainable success. It was a high-functioning burnout.
Key Takeaways Embedded in Narrative:
- Career burnout manifests in physical symptoms and emotional numbness
- Identity crisis at work occurs when professional achievements eclipse personal identity
- The high-paying job unhappiness paradox stems from moving goalposts
- Work-life balance for professionals requires conscious boundary-setting
When My Suit Became a Straightjacket
It happened on a Tuesday evening. My six-year-old was coloring at the kitchen table when she suddenly asked, “Mommy, what do you like to do when you’re not being a boss?” The crayon froze in my hand. In fifteen years of PowerPoint presentations and QBR meetings, no question had ever paralyzed me like this.
The Mirror Cracked
That moment exposed the terrifying truth I’d been avoiding: I had no answer. My LinkedIn profile boasted 87 skills, yet I couldn’t name three personal passions. The realization hit like a bucket of ice water – I’d become one of those corporate holograms who only materialize during work hours.
Social media compounded the crisis. Scrolling through Instagram, I envied colleagues who seemingly balanced VP titles with vineyard vacations and artisanal baking. Later, I’d learn most were faking it too – our industry’s open secret. We were all exhausted actors in an endless performance of “Look How Well I’m Adulting.”
Therapy Session Revelations
My therapist’s office became ground zero for deconstructing my workaholism. During one session, she had me complete a chilling exercise:
- List all roles that define you (I filled two pages with professional titles)
- Now circle the ones unrelated to work (Three items: daughter, sleep-deprived human, microwave meal connoisseur)
“We’ve conflated achievement with identity,” she explained, sketching what she called The Corporate Russian Doll Effect – layer after layer of work personas with nothing substantial at the core. Her prescription? “Start collecting evidence of who you are outside your email signature.”
The Social Comparison Trap
Research shows 62% of professionals measure success against peers’ curated highlights. I was textbook case – constantly benchmarking my life against:
- The ex-colleague turned startup unicorn
- The friend with both kids and a Forbes feature
- That random LinkedIn connection who somehow does triathlons between board meetings
This comparisonitis (as my therapist calls it) creates a vicious cycle: We mimic others’ goals → achieve them → feel empty → chase new borrowed dreams. It’s like trying to assemble IKEA furniture without the instructions – you end up with extra screws and a wobbly existence.
Small Acts of Rebellion
The unraveling began with tiny acts of defiance:
- Deleted LinkedIn for a month (survival tip: disable notifications before doing this)
- Started saying “I don’t know” in meetings instead of faking expertise
- Wore jeans to a formal review (the corporate equivalent of skydiving)
Each small no to workplace performativity became a bigger yes to discovering my uncorporated self. Turns out, I kind of like gardening. Who knew?
Reflection Prompt: What’s one “non-work” identity you’ve neglected? Could you nurture it this week – even just 15 minutes?
The Resignation That Wasn’t an Ending
Walking out of the corporate office for the last time felt less like a dramatic movie scene and more like stepping into a science lab – equal parts terrifying and exhilarating. My resignation letter had been the easiest document I’d ever drafted at Amazon; just three sentences that took more courage to write than any 50-page business proposal.
The Math Behind the Leap
Before handing in that letter, I spent nights crunching numbers that had nothing to do with quarterly KPIs:
- The 6-Month Rule: Calculating exactly how long my savings could cover Mumbai living expenses (pro tip: always add 20% for unexpected costs)
- Health Insurance Roulette: Navigating India’s labyrinthine healthcare system without corporate coverage
- The Hidden Tax of Freedom: Factoring in costs my salary previously absorbed – from gym memberships to that daily Starbucks habit
I created spreadsheets that would make my former finance team proud, but the most important column wasn’t monetary. It was labeled “Sanity ROI” – measuring what I’d gain in mental space versus what I’d lose in security.
Alternatives to the Nuclear Option
For those not ready to burn ships, I interviewed colleagues who’d chosen different paths:
- The Sabbatical Strategist: A Flipkart director who negotiated a 3-month unpaid leave to trek the Himalayas, returning with fresh perspective (and a promotion)
- The Portfolio Player: An ex-Reliance marketer now balancing consulting projects with pottery workshops
- The Stealth Explorer: Still employed but using weekends for passion projects, like the Zomato manager running underground supper clubs
Their experiences proved there’s a spectrum between “suffer in silence” and “quit with fireworks.”
My First 30 Days as a Lab Rat
Current experiments in this self-discovery lab:
- Surfing the Learning Curve: At 34, being the oldest beginner at a Goa surf school (where teenagers pityingly correct my stance)
- Writing Without PowerPoints: Rediscovering words that aren’t buried in corporate jargon
- The Vulnerability Diet: Practicing answering “So what do you do?” without reaching for my former business card
The awkwardness is palpable. I miss knowing the rules. But for the first time in years, my WhatsApp isn’t pinging with midnight emergencies about discount coupons – and that silence sounds like possibility.
“Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.” – Albert Camus
Who Are You When the Job Title Disappears?
For years, I introduced myself as “Priya from Amazon” or “the Head of X at Flipkart.” Those words rolled off my tongue easier than describing my actual personality. Until one evening, while staring at a blank “interests” section on a pottery class registration form, I realized I’d become a professional ghost – visible only through my LinkedIn achievements.
Here’s your uncomfortable question for today:
If you deleted all job titles from your life tomorrow, how would you introduce yourself to a stranger?
I’ll go first. After three months of unemployment (let’s call it my “self-discovery sabbatical”), my non-work identity now includes:
- Sunrise stalker (turns out 5:30am looks different when you’re not prepping quarterly reports)
- Failed ukulele enthusiast (my cat now flees at the opening chords)
- Professional overthinker (finally monetizing my degree in Philosophy)
The Comments Section Experiment
Your turn. In three words only (because constraints breed creativity):
- Drop your non-corporate identity descriptors below
- Bonus points if one makes us laugh/snort coffee
- Tag that one colleague who needs this exercise most
PS: For those wondering whether my bank account survived this identity crisis – stay tuned for next week’s painfully honest breakdown: “How My Emergency Fund Lasted Exactly 27 Days Less Than Projected.”*
PPS: To the 3 people who will inevitably comment “But how will this pay your bills?” – Valid question. See next post. For now, just play along.
