How to find purpose in a job you secretly want to quit

There's a particular kind of tiredness that doesn't come from working too hard. It comes from showing up, day after day, to a version of your career you no longer recognise as your own. You're not burned out, exactly. You're not quitting, either. You're just... elsewhere. Mentally drafting a different life while your inbox fills up in real time.

It turns out there's a name for this, and it's having a moment in 2026. We spoke with Saikiran Murali, founder of the career platform Workline, and Aruna, founder of SD Campus, to understand why so many of us are grieving careers we technically still have—and what it actually takes to feel like ourselves at work again.

Welcome to the era of "Career Grief" 

Ask Murali whether professionals are mourning the careers they once imagined for themselves, and he doesn't hesitate. According to Murali, career grief is real and growing, especially among people whose expectations for work outpaced the opportunities actually available to them. "Many came into the workforce expecting a clear arc of growth and purpose, only to run into economic uncertainty, restructuring, and progression that stalled out far more slowly than planned."

The catch is that this grief rarely looks like a dramatic exit. Murali describes it as something subtler: a dip in enthusiasm, a quiet withdrawal of emotional investment, and a reluctance to plan too far into the future. The work still gets done. The person doing it just feels unmoored from the future they once pictured for themselves.

Aruna sees the same pattern from the therapy chair, and she can practically map its timeline. The earliest tell, she says, "is a drop-off in things like volunteering ideas in meetings or showing curiosity about how your work connects to the bigger picture. People keep hitting deadlines—they're just doing it without the enthusiasm that used to come along for the ride."

Eventually, Aruna explains, that quiet fade can deepen into something closer to psychological disengagement: less participation, an active avoidance of new responsibility, and a stopped clock on imagining any future with the company at all. In her view, 2026's mix of burnout, financial uncertainty, and a culture newly fixated on wellness has made it easier than ever to check out mentally long before anyone files the paperwork to leave.

Meet the half-out-the-door workforce 

If career grief is the feeling, the "half-out-the-door" employee is its visible—or rather, invisible—symptom. Murali says, "This phenomenon is becoming more common across industries, particularly when people don't feel financially secure enough to act on their dissatisfaction by resigning." The early indicators, he notes, are rarely loud: people pull back from discretionary effort, speak up less in meetings, lose curiosity about growth opportunities, and stop emotionally investing in where the company is headed. They're present. They're just running on autopilot.

Here's the part that should worry employers more than attrition does: according to both Murali and Aruna, this kind of silent withdrawal can drag on for a long time, slowly eroding productivity, collaboration, and morale long before it shows up on any retention report.

Did "follow your passion" set us up to burn out?

For years, career advice leaned hard into the idea that work should be a wellspring of purpose. Murali thinks that narrative deserves at least partial blame for today's burnout crisis. Expecting one job to deliver income, identity, passion, and fulfilment all at once, he argues, sets up a bar that's genuinely hard for any single role to clear consistently. "Work can still be meaningful—but when it's asked to be everything, even an objectively good career can start to feel like it's falling short."

It's a sentiment Aruna echoes from a slightly different angle. In her experience, "purpose has less to do with the job title on your business card and more to do with how you see yourself in relation to the people you work alongside." She's watched clients switch jobs chasing fulfilment, only to land in a fresh set of familiar frustrations—and others stay exactly where they are while becoming far more engaged simply by shifting how they relate to the role they already have.

Stuck, but not stuck: What separates resilience from resentment 

So what happens when leaving genuinely isn't an option? Both experts point to the same hinge point: agency. Murali says the people who manage to rediscover motivation tend to fix their attention on what they can actually influence—a new skill, a stronger relationship, or an internal opportunity—and reframe their current role as one piece of a bigger personal goal. The people who spiral into cynicism, by contrast, tend to feel like their circumstances are entirely outside their control. Same job, very different internal experience.

Aruna's coaching process starts at the root of the complaint itself. When a client says, "I hate my job," she's found that the real issue is often something more specific—a manager's style, a lack of promotion runway, an unsustainable workload, or simply feeling unseen. From there, she has clients identify the smallest fragments of meaning already present in their role and build outwards from those, to move someone from feeling "stuck" to recognising room to make a difference, learn something new, or do work that actually matters to them.

The bridge-job mentality 

One reframe Aruna recommends often: treating your current role as a bridge job rather than a dream job. Viewed this way, a less-than-thrilling position becomes a vehicle towards something bigger—financial independence, experience, supporting your family, or a launchpad for what's next. She's found that this shift tends to ease frustration because people start to understand exactly what their daily effort is buying them.

That said, Aruna is careful to draw a line: reframing can help you tolerate an imperfect job, but it should never become a justification for staying in a toxic one. A demanding bridge job is one thing; chronic stress dressed up as resilience is another.

From quiet quitting to purpose relocation 

If 2022 gave us "quiet quitting", Murali thinks 2026's defining trend looks more like purpose relocation—professionals deliberately moving their sense of identity and ambition towards hobbies, side projects, fitness, and community rather than centring it all on a single employer. He's seeing rising investment in creative pursuits, learning communities, and personal development, and he's careful to note that this doesn't signal lower ambition. It signals a more distributed, arguably healthier, definition of success.

Aruna agrees, framing it as part of a broader cultural correction: more people are recognising that pouring their entire identity into work creates strain for both themselves and their employer. She's watched clients build meaning instead through family, friendship, community involvement, creative projects, and personal growth—not as a retreat from ambition, but as insurance against the very specific burnout that comes from asking one job to hold your whole sense of self.

Neither expert is arguing that you should love your job, or that you're obligated to find purpose in your 9-to-5. The throughline in both of their answers is something quieter: meaning at work tends to come less from finding the perfect role and more from how much agency you feel you have inside the one you've got. Sometimes that means changing jobs. More often, both Murali and Aruna suggest, it means changing your relationship with the job—and building a life rich enough that no single role has to carry the weight of your whole identity.

Lead image: Pexels 

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