Decide if you're actually ready for a career change, or just tired right now
Burnout and a genuine wrong-fit career both feel like "I need to quit." They need different responses.
- Use it for
- Anyone considering a major career change who isn't sure if it's the right call or a bad-week reaction.
The feeling "I need to change careers" can come from genuinely different places — burnout from overwork that would follow you anywhere, a fixable problem with this specific job or manager, or an actual mismatch between your career and what you want. These need different responses (rest, a direct conversation, or a real change), but they feel identical in the moment, and acting on a career change to solve what's actually burnout often just imports the same problem into a new job.
When not to use this
If you've already done this reflection honestly and are confident it's a real mismatch, skip to actually planning the change. This is for when you're not sure which situation you're actually in.
Did this work?
You can distinguish specifically whether this is burnout, a fixable situation, or a genuine mismatch — and know which one before making an expensive decision based on the wrong diagnosis.
Tested on claude-opus-5. Evidence status is draft; it moves to battle-tested only on recorded runs, never by hand.