Don’t say “burned out,” say “baptized by fire.”

Look, one doesn’t progress from “I love this job” to “I’m sick of this shit” in one lousy day. Or a one tough week. Or even one horrendous month. No, it takes a prolonged period of repeated injury to get to a place where you really just can’t cope with this shit anymore.

That means there was plenty of time for an “I don’t feel comfortable here, and what can we do about it” conversation with whoever in the organization can, well, actually do something about it.

And don’t get me wrong, it’s a difficult conversation. There is a lot of ways it can go horribly wrong and backfire.

Moreover, there are many ways it can go horribly right and backfire even harder. Maybe you come back with a realization that the company is falling apart, and you must jump this sinking ship ASAP. Or it could be that company is just fine, but you personally is an awful mess and need to get yourself into a mindfulness retreat. Or perhaps being miserable is in your official job description, along with “COBOL-74 developer” title and unlimited medication budget. Or it can as well be that you’re okay, and the company’s okay, but it’s just time for you to move on.

However, if speaking up about not being comfortable has a chance of backfiring, then not doing so is a time bomb that’s guaranteed to explode, and here’s why.

You only have a limited budget of mental energy that you can put into your work. When you spend more of it to power your coping mechanisms, then less is left to produce something of value, as simple as that. If you spend two hours a day hating damp noisy office, stressful commute, flaky internet connection, and whatever else you’re annoyed by, then you only have six hours left for actual work, and only 75% of what could’ve been done gets really done.

That’s how your unhappiness actively chews into your productivity.

And this is where it comes back to this essay’s title. If you’ve been there before, then you know exactly what are you heading towards.

At some point you’re gonna get grilled for under-performance.

Which might come across as painfully unfair, or mayhap by then you’re too exhausted to really care anyway.

And that puts awkwardness of openly discussing your frustrations into context: it can indeed go wrong, but compared to the alternative, how bad can it really be?

If you’ve been to a dark place, you come back stronger, and braver, and that’s what really counts.