What a perfect performance review may be hiding
Some of the best performance reviews of my career came during the years I was actually the most disconnected from the work.
I want to tell you about a chapter in my own life that looked perfect from the outside. It was a time when my performance ratings were high, I was exceeding my targets and the feedback was generous. My name came up in the right conversations for the right reasons and I would sit in my car after work sometimes, not moving, not checking my phone, just sitting there with this low hum of something I couldn't quite put my finger on.
I wasn’t sure if it was burnout or what it was because I wasn't failing. I wasn't unhappy in the way that gives you permission to make a reaonsable change. I was performing at the top of my game but somehow in the midst of it all I had begun to feel almost apathetic about it.
That's the version of unhappy that nobody prepares you for and we don’t hear people talking about. The kind that doesn't come with a crisis or a breaking point, instead it comes as just a slow quiet fade inside where the wins keep coming and the feeling behind them doesn't quite align. You look at the evidence of your career and everything says you should be proud and happy with where you are. And you are, to a certain degree in a way, but proud and happy are not the same thing, and somewhere along the way they stopped coming together inside you.
For the first decade or so of most careers, three things move together and you don't even realize they're separate. You get better at the work, the work feels meaningful, and that combination makes you happy. Excellence, meaning, and happiness feel like one thing because they've never been apart.
And then, for some people, meaning quietly steps away. Not dramatically. Not in a moment you can point to. The work just gradually stops connecting to something that matters to you personally, even as you keep getting better at it. And because excellence is still there, you’re still earning the reviews and the recognition and the compensation, you assume everything is fine. You don't notice that meaning left, because excellence is standing in its place wearing the same clothes.
What many people get wrong about this moment is that they think the problem is that they're not happy. So they try to fix happiness directly. They take a vacation or maybe they negotiate a raise. They redecorate their home office. But happiness wasn't the thing that left first it was meaning and until you look at where the meaning went, the happiness problem doesn't have a solution.
Think about the last two weeks. When did the work feel like it mattered to you, not to the company, not to your team, but to you personally? And when did it just get done because that’s what you do, that’s what your good at? You don't need to do anything with the answer yet. Just notice where the meaning is and where it isn't..
🩵 One Thing I'm Loving
The TED talk from Emily Esfahani Smith – “There’s more to life than being happy” Emily talks about Is there a difference between chasing success in career and positive emotion and building a meaningful life, and why achievement alone doesn’t equal fulfillment. This is a great talk about the different pillars of meaning.
Remember, you are still the author of what comes next.
Warmly,
Heather
Anchored in Possibility™ | "The future belongs to those who know who they are when everything changes."
