How to Quit Your Job in 837 Easy Steps

I found myself Googling whether to leave my job — while leading PR at Google

Credit: nadia_bormotova/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Step 1: Take lots of online quizzes, looking for sudden enlightenment.

It all started with a quiz — several of them. Week after week, I’d hop on Google and search “how to know it’s time to quit your job.” I’d write it just like that, a complete sentence, wanting to do full justice to my question. The first results were always quizzes:

• Is your boss a horrible person?
• Would you hate to have your boss’s job?
• Are you woefully underpaid?
• Do you wake up each morning dreading going into the office?

I did them all. I never scored 10 out of 10. No, I didn’t totally hate my job. No, I didn’t dread going into the office each morning. My boss wasn’t a horrible person. And, as head of PR for all of Google, I would say I was over- not under-paid.

But I was unhappy. I had gotten to the top of my profession, but the truth was that I was increasingly having doubts about the content of this supposed dream job. And after all those years of wondering what it would be like to run things, I realized that having the big office meant you were on one…