Leaving Meaningful Work Without Burning It All Down

Leaving Meaningful Work: Relationship Status – “It’s Complicated”

Leaving a career you chose because it was meaningful to you is complicated for many reasons. It is very different from leaving a job or a career that you did not particularly care about.

First and foremost, you got into this work because it personally mattered to you. You became a teacher because you believe education is important and can change a person’s life. You got into film because you love telling stories and believe that art can change the world. You got into journalism because you believe that the truth matters and that giving voice to the voiceless is important.

All of these are deeply important and worthy purposes. For many people, this leads to a painful question: If I got into this because it mattered so much, what does it say about me if I leave?

Another complication is the fear of abandoning people. If you entered education because you believe it changes lives, are you abandoning children if you leave the field? Questions like this often bring a great deal of guilt.

When that identity is tied to your work, leaving raises a difficult question: Who am I if I am no longer this?

There is also the feeling that leaving means letting the bad actors win. If you are thinking about leaving education because of the way politics and government have become involved, you may wonder whether leaving means conceding defeat. This is another common emotional barrier.

Your identity is often deeply tied to meaningful work. When you choose work that matters, it becomes part of how you see yourself. I am a teacher. I am a professor. I am a journalist. I am a filmmaker. I am an actor. When that identity is tied to your work, leaving raises a difficult question: Who am I if I am no longer this? That question alone can be profoundly destabilizing.

Another factor is what I often describe as a kind of cult-like reinforcement within meaningful work fields. We are this kind of person. We are not that kind of person. We work in nonprofits because the work matters. We are not just in it for the money. Those other people are. This framing creates a sense of moral virtue and positions others as the outgroup. It powerfully reinforces the decision to stay, even when the work is no longer sustainable.

I have done (and do) my own fair share of doomscrolling, but it is not great for us. Read this National Geographic article on how it rewires your brain.

Finally, even when people have worked through many of these questions, they are often so burned out and exhausted that they lack the bandwidth to make a decision, let alone take action. When they get home, all they have the energy to do is sit on the couch, watch endless TV, or doomscroll on their phone. These behaviors are not failures of motivation; they are the result of depleted mental and physical energy.

Alongside burnout, there is often paralysis. People feel stuck, frozen, and unable to make any meaningful moves.

All of these factors create a set of complications that are specific to leaving meaningful work. They are very different from the challenges of leaving a job that never held personal meaning in the first place. (And believe me, I know. You can read more about my own career changes here.)

In addition although leaving meaningful work has always been emotionally complicated, it’s also now become practically harder. Industries are contracting, hiring is slower, and job searches have more hidden rules than they used to.

What is Meaningful Work?

Quite simply, meaningful work is work you chose because it mattered to you. Traditionally, people associate meaningful work with the nonprofit sector, but it does not have to be nonprofit. Nurses, doctors, surgeons, scientists, filmmakers, actors, lawyers, and many others do not typically work in nonprofit settings, even though they often (though not always) chose their work because of its mission and meaning.

You might be surprised to learn that many tech workers also fall into this category of meaningful work. One of the best writers on this topic today is Cory Doctorow. Rather than using the term meaningful work, he describes the phenomenon as vocational awe. When people feel a vocational calling and choose their work because it matters to them, they help hold organizations, institutions, and industries accountable. They chose the work because it had meaning, and they resist letting it drift away from its stated values.

Historically, this accountability took different forms. In higher education, faculty often played this role. In K–12 education, it was frequently unions. In Doctorow’s work, he explains how enshittification has eroded vocational awe, particularly in tech. Workers are no longer able to hold their industries to account, and as a result, those industries decay. We can see this dynamic well beyond tech.

I believe all of this contributes to a form of moral injury, which often becomes a major driver of the desire to leave meaningful work. Moral injury occurs when someone causes, fails to prevent, or witnesses actions that violate deeply held moral beliefs. For my clients, this typically happens when they chose work because it had deep meaning and purpose, and then the institution or industry asks them to make choices that directly conflict with their values.

A few examples include:

• A trust and safety team that is not allowed to keep violence off a tech platform and may even be asked to amplify it.
• An employee at a tech company that publicly champions free speech while financially benefiting from censorship.
• A teacher working in a school that lacks the resources to support students’ IEPs and therefore does not provide that support.
• A nurse required to work under unsafe patient ratios because the hospital demands it.
• A writer asked to feed other writers’ work into generative AI systems while original writers are no longer hired.

All of these situations represent different forms of moral injury.

The Myths of Leaving Meaningful Work

There are many myths that people encounter when they are deciding whether to leave meaningful work. Let’s talk through some of them.

One common myth is: If I leave, it means I never cared at all – that this work was not important to me. This might be the field, if you are a professor; the research, if you are a scientist; the patients, if you are a doctor or nurse; or the students, if you are an educator, principal, professor, or higher education staff member. Of course, this is not true. You cared deeply, and you probably still do. You simply no longer have the same relationship to the work that you did when you started. That shift may be related to you, or it may be related to changes in the field. It does not mean that you never cared, and it does not mean that what you did did not matter. It simply means that times have changed. (I cover more of these types of questions in my FAQ’s, which you can read here.)

Henri Matisse. Blue Nude II. 1952 from MOMA

One way I like to think about this, something a coach once shared with me, is to think about work the way we think about artists and their creative periods. Each phase is like an album, or like Picasso’s or Matisse’s blue periods. You focus deeply on something for a time, but you are not meant to stay there forever. If you did, we would never get the next beautiful periods of work or the next great albums. This is about evolution. Leaving does not mean that you never cared, or that you will not carry what you learned forward. It simply means that this particular album is finished.

I should be grateful to do something with meaning: is another myth. You hear this often because there is a great deal of career change advice aimed at people who left so-called “evil careers” to pursue work with more meaning. That transition is generally viewed as virtuous by society. You were a hard-ass lawyer, you made hundreds of thousands of dollars, and now you are going to work at a nonprofit or do pro bono work. That story is celebrated. Leaving meaningful work to do something else – whether that work is meaningful in a different way or less meaningful – is often seen as less virtuous.

But gratitude does not solve every problem. You can feel grateful for doing meaningful work and still realize that it no longer feels right. I have worked with clients from nonprofits who no longer believe their service models work and feel they do more harm than good. I have worked with people in higher education who believe the programs they run reinforce harmful social narratives or victim blaming. I have worked with teachers who no longer believe the system allows them to deliver a free and fair education to every student in their classroom. They simply do not want to do the work anymore. You can be grateful for the time you spent and still recognize that it is time to do something else.

Picasso’s The Weeping Woman and a great many other works came after his blue period.

Another myth is: I cannot start to leave until I know exactly what I am going to do next. The problem with this belief is that certainty is rarely possible in a pivot. It is difficult to take a clear-eyed look at yourself, identify what makes you valuable in a new context, and then present that to someone else. This is even more true in the current job market. Career pivots require aligning your skills, experience, and interests with available roles, and then waiting to see how the market responds. In a difficult market, choosing one path with absolute certainty can lead to disappointment. It is often better not to be overly attached to a single outcome.

Related to this is the belief that you cannot move forward unless you feel the same way about your next career as you did about your current one. In psychological terms, this is a form of transference: moving all the emotions, healthy and unhealthy, from one relationship onto another where they may not belong. In many cases, the intensity of feeling around meaningful work is tied to identity, group belonging, or social reinforcement. Replicating that same emotional attachment in your next role may not be healthy, especially if meaningful work led you into overwork, burnout, or an inability to say no. Those patterns are easy to carry forward. Often, it is better to choose something that feels less personally consuming.

Another pattern I see – that I often joke about – is the idea that if you are going to leave meaningful work, you might as well sell out. I will be on a discovery call with someone, ask what they are considering next, and they will say something deliberately extreme. When I ask why, they explain that if they are leaving meaningful work, they might as well go all the way. I always tell them this is unnecessary. There are many paths that do not violate your values and are not selling out. Work is not a simple dichotomy between meaningful work and something deeply unethical, like puppy murder.

The final myth is that no one hires career pivoters, or that even if they do, they certainly are not hiring them in this market. That, too, is simply not true.

The Truths About Leaving Meaningful Work

On the left, a garage that could use some organizing. On the right, a satisfying, organized garage.

Let’s cover what I think are some of the truths about this work.

As a society, we have moved very far from what work should actually feel like. There are excellent books on this topic, including Won’t Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe and Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. The way I define good work is simple: ideally, work should feel like cleaning out a garage.

What does that mean? A garage is a space that many people use in different ways. When you clean it out, the impact is immediate and visible. You can see the difference right away. The space becomes more functional. Everyone can get in and out more easily. Recycling is simple to collect and take out. Tools are easy to find, making quick repairs possible. Bikes come off the wall, and someone heads out for a ride. Cleaning out a garage has lasting impact, and even if it eventually becomes cluttered again, there is a period of time where you can still see and feel the results of your effort.

A great read for reorienting your relationship with work is Sarah Jaffe’s Work Won’t Love You Back.

Most people are happy when their work feels like this. It has meaning, it is practical, and you can see the results. For the most part, people are satisfied when their work reaches this level of usefulness, and they are generally unhappy when it does not.

When it comes to the work you chose as meaningful, my argument is that most people end up in their careers largely because of circumstance. When you are young, the jobs you know are usually those held by your parents or caregivers and perhaps a few relatives. You also know the helping professions you interact with as a child – teachers, doctors, nurses – and the ones we hear about in school, like police officers and firefighters. In many cases, parents or caregivers also steer children toward specific college paths they value, such as engineering, accounting, law, or medicine.

Then there are hobbies. Things you enjoy as a child may become areas where you are told you are “good,” and that affirmation often nudges people into particular career fields. And affirmation doesn’t stop there! Many people who go into higher education, for example, start out doing work study in a college office simply because that is where colleges need labor. Someone tells them they are good at it, and that becomes a career path. For most people, these choices are not the result of destiny or calling; they are circumstantial.

Your dad was something. Your best friend’s mom was something. Someone came into your classroom and talked about their job when you were in fourth grade. You had a work study position in the student affairs office. These are the kinds of experiences that often shape career paths. My argument is that given your abilities, talents, skills, and preferences for how you work and interact with others, a different set of circumstances could easily have sent you in another direction. That is why it is okay to change. You would likely be just as capable – and just as successful – doing something else with those same skills and talents.

Many of my clients find David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs helpful as they evaluate their current work situation.

Lastly, many of my clients ask, “Why would anyone ever hire a career pivoter?” My personal belief is that the biggest advantage of hiring a pivoter is that you get someone with strong skills and real experience, but without the entrenched politics or baggage of your industry. You could not manufacture that person. They are unique, interesting, and able to see your field with fresh eyes rather than through the assumptions of someone who was shaped entirely by that space.

Not every company wants to hire career changers. Very small companies, or highly regimented and regulated organizations, may not. But for many companies, hiring someone who can do many things well and approach the industry in a fundamentally new way is incredibly valuable. That is why many organizations actively seek out career changers.

What Helps When Leaving Meaningful Work

What actually helps when you are thinking about leaving meaningful work and considering a career change?

The first thing I always recommend is identifying what no longer works for you in your current work and naming it. Maybe it is working nights and weekends. Maybe it is the pay. Maybe it is that your industry is contracting and you have to do more with less every single year. Maybe it is the way you are treated in your organization.

I hear this from teachers a lot. They feel like they are not getting care or respect from the district, the state, their own administrators, and also from parents and their students anymore. I also hear from people who work in film, television, and journalism that there are far fewer opportunities. There are too many people looking for work and not enough roles available.

If you can name the feeling and identify what is causing it, you can then ask whether this is an industry problem, an organization problem, a department problem, or a me problem.

If you can name it, and if you can identify its cause, that is incredibly valuable to you. 

For example, you might feel less respected. Then you can ask, am I actually less respected, and if yes by whom? You can look at that and say, yes, we are generally less respected, we get less autonomy, or the field is contracting because it used to be funded by a certain entity and that funding is no longer there, so there are cuts.

If you can name the feeling and identify what is causing it, you can then ask whether this is an industry problem, an organization problem, a department problem, or a me problem. If it is institutional, but there are other institutions that are not dealing with the same issue, you could go to a new institution. If it is departmental, you could move to a new department within your existing organization. If it is industry wide, then you have a clear handle on what is happening and how it affects you.

Another thing that people find really useful is talking to folks outside your industry. Most meaningful work industries are very insular. If you work in tech, you tend to talk only to other tech people. If you work in higher education, you mostly talk to other people in higher education. The same is true in K–12 education, healthcare, insurance, mortgage work, and more. People tend to talk to themselves.

Talking to people outside your industry is incredibly valuable because it reminds you that other worlds exist and other things are happening. There is other work that you could be doing that helps people, supports families, and sustains lives, income, and hours. Simply talking to other people about their work shows you that this actually exists in the world.

This is a short video (2 minutes ish) about what people get wrong about transferable skills.

Another thing that really helps is identifying your transferable skills. You likely do many things at work that go beyond your original role. If you are in a space where there is industry or institutional collapse, the likelihood that you have taken on more and more work is very high. That is difficult, but it often gives you many transferable skills.

Almost every person I talk to in almost every industry has picked up work that is not traditionally part of their role. This might include budgeting, working with IT on software implementation, being a subject matter expert, taking over event planning, running projects, or writing technical requirements. These skills are highly transferable.

You could be doing these things as a nurse, a teacher, a student affairs staff member, a professor, or a filmmaker, writer, technician, or studio worker. All of these are transferable skills.

Support is another option to consider. It doesn’t magically remove uncertainty. It changes how you move through it. It helps you avoid panic decisions, narrow your focus, translate your experience into market language, and keep momentum when you’d otherwise freeze or spin.

…And What Doesn’t Help When Leaving Meaningful Work

Although Scarface quitting in Half Baked is one of the all time great work movie moments, it’s not something we aspire to recreate.

What does not typically work when leaving meaningful work?

I generally do not recommend panic quitting. Panic quitting is a decision driven more by fear than by strategy. It is also rarely helpful in the current job market, which is difficult globally. It is much easier to find a new job while you are still employed than when you are not. For most job seekers and pivoters, quitting without a plan creates additional challenges rather than solving existing ones.

Of course, there are exceptions. Sometimes people are deeply burned out. Sometimes health issues make staying impossible. Sometimes layoffs happen. It is always possible to make a meaningful career change from these circumstances. Even so, it is generally better when a transition does not begin with panic quitting, if that can be avoided.

Staying out of guilt also does not work. Guilt does not change the conditions that led you to consider leaving in the first place. It simply adds another layer of emotional strain to an already difficult situation. In many cases, staying out of guilt actually makes your day-to-day work harder, not easier.

Another very common pattern is endless research. People research and research. They take class after class. They talk to people, listen to podcasts, talk to more people, listen to more podcasts, and start and stop repeatedly. While learning is important, you will gain far more insight by putting some of that research into practice, even if you later change direction, than by staying stuck in perpetual preparation.

Even advice offered with the best intentions may not apply to your situation, especially in a job market that is as unusual and unpredictable as this one.

Additionally, advice from people who are not well positioned to give it often does more harm than good. They may not understand career changes, and they may not understand the current job market. I once worked with a client who was a principal leaving the K-12 system. She spoke with a friend who had made a career change a decade earlier. During a networking call, that person told her that what she was trying to do would not be possible. My client was devastated.

I explained that this person was so far removed from their own career change that they no longer remembered what the process was actually like. They had, in many ways, become part of the establishment. I encouraged my client to disregard that advice and to be very thoughtful about who she consulted during this process. She went on to make a successful career change, received an increase in pay, and loves her new job. The advice she had received was completely wrong.

Even advice offered with the best intentions may not apply to your situation, especially in a job market that is as unusual and unpredictable as this one.

Finally, many people try to do this alone, and some pull it off. I did myself, many times. But the most common risks I see aren’t laziness or lack of talent. They’re lack of knowledge, second-guessing, and exhaustion. You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s when people either stay longer than they meant to, take an unnecessary pay cut, accept the first “good enough” offer, or end up in a different version of the same burnout. Or sometimes worst of all, stay stuck in their existing position.

What Does a Successful Career Change Out of Meaningful Work Look Like?

What does leaving meaningful work and making a successful career change look like?

It begins with understanding what you want your life to look like. This includes the hours you want to work, how much money you want to make, and what kind of benefits you need. Life is supported by work, not the other way around. When you understand how you want to exist in the world and how you want to show up for your family, it becomes easier to choose work that supports that vision. This is the first step.

By understanding what she wanted her life to look like, she could see which parts of her job were no longer supporting that and begin to identify what kind of role would.

Once you have clarity about the life you want, you can identify which aspects of your work need to change. For example, I worked with a client in higher education who went through long seasons of working from seven or eight in the morning until ten or eleven at night. She loved her family, her parents were getting older, and she wanted to spend more time with them. Recognizing that this mattered to her made it clear that working nights and weekends was no longer sustainable. By understanding what she wanted her life to look like, she could see which parts of her job were no longer supporting that and begin to identify what kind of role would.

Next is the work itself. It is important to understand what you enjoy and what you do not. Maybe you love collaborating with colleagues but dislike being client facing. In that case, your next role should minimize or eliminate client facing responsibilities. Maybe you enjoy giving presentations and representing your organization at conferences. That preference becomes an important signal about what to prioritize in your next role.

One of the most common themes I hear from clients is exhaustion from managing large teams that are overworked and underpaid. For many of them, returning to an individual contributor role – without people management responsibilities and still earning a six-figure salary – would be a significant improvement. That is something we intentionally look for in their next role.

Threads Culture has a great Core Values List that you can view in detail here.

Another key element of a successful career pivot is understanding your values. I often ask people to identify their core, non-negotiable values, as well as those that are more flexible. For example, a global pharmaceutical company might post publicly in support of Pride Month while donating to anti-LGBTQ politicians. I ask clients to reflect on whether that represents a values violation for them and why. For some, it is personal: they or their family members are LGBTQ, and association with that kind of hypocrisy feels unacceptable. For others, the issue is the hypocrisy itself, saying one thing publicly while doing another privately. Clarifying whether something violates your values, and why, helps you determine which values you want to carry forward into your career change.

The answers vary widely. Some people want to avoid working on data centers or AI entirely. Others are comfortable with AI but not data centers. Some want to avoid weight loss industries but are open to GLP-1 medications. Some are deeply concerned about privacy and do not want to work in roles that depend on violating it. All of these considerations are valid. Leaving meaningful work does not mean abandoning your values. You can bring them with you. You just need to be clear about what they are.

Another critical piece is understanding your transferable skills. You need to know what you do that others find valuable and interesting. Many people approach this in ways that limit their options. One common mistake is focusing only on soft skills like problem solving or communication. While important, most career changes do not happen on soft skills; they are rarely compelling by themselves.

Exploring less conventional paths can also reduce competition with people who share nearly identical backgrounds.

Another common approach is making a very narrow, predictable cross industry move, such as going from teaching or academia into learning and development. There is nothing wrong with this – it is common for a reason – but it is often an oversimplification. The skills developed in teaching and professorship apply to many roles beyond the most obvious career changes. Exploring less conventional paths can also reduce competition with people who share nearly identical backgrounds.

Finally, it is important to acknowledge that this process is hard. It requires sustained thought, care, and attention. Many of my clients also work with therapists during this time, which I fully support, because a great deal can surface emotionally. This work is difficult both practically and psychologically.

Leaving meaningful work does not say anything negative about you. It is not a moral failing. You are capable, thoughtful, and brave for engaging in something so countercultural.

Leaving Meaningful Work Success Stories

A selection of my wonderful clients

When people decide to leave work that was meaningful to them, it often feels incredibly isolating. Many assume they are the only ones struggling with these questions or considering this kind of change. I want to share a few examples of people I have worked with and where they went next (read individual success stories here).

I have worked with a dance company manager who transitioned into corporate social media and studio management. I have worked with a higher education staff member who moved into global corporate internal communications. I have supported K–12 teachers who shifted into learning and development and customer success roles. I have worked with nurses in healthcare who transitioned into project management. I have also worked with performers – including actors, musicians, and singers – who moved into marketing and product management.

Over the years, I have worked with people leaving nearly every field you can imagine. They include leaving:

• performing arts, film, entertainment, and media
• healthcare in all capacities, including doctors, nurses, and administrators
• higher education in all roles, from administrators and professors to staff
• K–12 education in all capacities, including principals, administrators, staff, teachers, and district employees
• government, including federal, state, and local governments
• tech, including global tech, social media, SaaS, and managed services
• finance, including banking, IT finance, compliance, and regulation
• nonprofits including direct service, administrators, and executives

If you have your eye set on something, I bet it’s possible.

I have also worked with individuals who earned master’s degrees in new fields and needed support to move successfully into those new careers. I have also helped people start businesses, and I have helped others leave their businesses and return to employment. I have supported people in finding work in new countries, as well as continuing employment and maintaining visas abroad.

My clients have gone on to work at companies and institutions such as Walmart, Amazon, Meta, TikTok, Deloitte, Princeton, Harvard, New York University, Smith, Fidelity, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, Havas, Nature Conservancy, TED, DeleteMe, and a seemingly infinite number of small SaaS, start-ups, and non-profits.

I have helped people leave fields that I have also helped others enter. I have supported people moving out of tech and into tech, leaving higher education and entering higher education, and leaving teaching and returning to teaching.

I have worked with people at very large global companies, very small startups, and international organizations.

I tell you all this because if you have your eye set on something, I bet it’s possible.

Signs You Might Need Help Leaving Meaningful Work

The clearest sign is indecision that isn’t resolving on its own. If you’ve been circling the same question for months – stay or go, this or that – more thinking usually isn’t what breaks the loop. Talking it through with someone who has seen this pattern hundreds of times often is.

The second sign is knowing you want to leave but having no idea what comes next. That’s a common problem. Someone outside your field can often see options you can’t because you’re too close to your own experience to read it clearly.

The third sign is that you’re already in motion but nothing is happening. You’re applying and not getting interviews. That could be a target problem, a narrative problem, or a materials problem. And if you’re getting interviews but not offers, that’s a preparation problem. Either way, effort without traction is a sign the approach needs adjusting, not that you need to try harder.

And the fourth: you made the change, but you’re struggling to feel settled in it. Career change doesn’t end when you accept the offer. It ends when the new work actually fits. If it doesn’t yet, that’s worth addressing rather than waiting out.

What you’re attempting is genuinely countercultural. The story we’re given is that you either stay in the career you chose at twenty-two, or you go back to school, start over, and become an intern at forty. There is no narrative for taking a decade or two of real experience, identifying what transfers, and moving into something new without a demotion or a pay cut. That path exists. It just requires knowing how to build it.

If you’re reading this and something landed, you don’t need a perfect plan. You need a first next step.

Where You Are is a short intake I read personally. You tell me what’s actually going on: where you’re stuck, what you’ve tried, what you’re protecting. I’ll follow up within a few days with what I actually think, including whether now is the right time and what kind of support would help.