How to find out whether it's the job, the boss or the season
Clock reads 11 p.m. on a Sunday. One browser tab shows a job offer from a rival firm, and the other holds a resignation letter you started a month ago and never finished. The pay is respectable but nothing to brag about. The letter is two sentences. What holds you back isn't loyalty. It's that you can't say, with any real honesty, whether you dislike the work, dislike your manager, or are simply living through the hardest nine months of your career for reasons that have little to do with either.
What's riding on it
If you leave and the cause was a temporary slump, you've swapped a workplace that knows your strengths for one that doesn't, all to solve something that would have eased by spring. If you stay and the cause was the role or your boss, you've committed to another year of Sunday nights just like this one, and that offer may not still be open. Both errors cost you dearly. You can verify just one of them before acting.
Another way forward
So don't settle it tonight. Run an experiment instead. "I've been mulling it over" doesn't count as evidence, because thinking alone produces no data. Give it thirty days, three variables and a single notebook. Alter one thing at a time and record what follows, just as you would if a colleague had asked you to diagnose their problem.
Why this matters well past your own situation.
Deloitte's 2025 survey of 7,500 women found that 36 percent reported more stress than a year earlier, and 29 percent described their mental health as poor. A rough season is widespread, and from the inside it feels identical to a rough job. The women who leave on good terms aren't the ones who suffered most. They're the ones who tested their assumptions first.
Over the coming month, follow three stages.
1. Week one, change nothing. Each evening, rate the day from one to ten and jot one line about whatever drained you. By Friday you'll see whether the low scores bunch around a person, a particular task, or appear every day. That pattern is your first finding.
2. Weeks two and three, adjust the manager factor. Request one structural change: "Could we make our one-on-one a fixed thirty minutes every week? I'll send the agenda the day before." Rework one recurring exchange that wears you down. Keep scoring. If the numbers rise, you've identified the variable, and it can be fixed without handing in a resignation.
3. Week four, adjust the role factor. Hand off, or simply drop, the task that weighs on you most, and in its place volunteer for something you actually look forward to doing. After that, pick a complete Friday off and keep your phone out of reach. If your numbers rise only on days away from the office, the season is likely the culprit and should pass on its own. Should your outlook brighten once that dreaded task disappears, then the real problem lies within the role itself. If nothing changes at all, the decision has effectively been made for you.
When the thirty days are up, read the notebook coldly, as you would a report. The answer will be written down. You may still accept the offer, and if you do, it will be a decision based on a diagnosis rather than a leap in the dark.
The resignation letter can stay in its tab for now. In a month you'll either delete it or send it without a second read, and either way you won't be guessing at 11 p.m. on a Sunday.