How My Job Ruined My Intuition

And My Journey to Get it Back

Waking Up

For most of my professional life, work had been a joke. With no defined team, personal objectives, or real leadership, I decided what my job was and how I’d do it. I would read novels at work, spend hours on Reddit, and goof off with my co-workers. It felt like I was being paid to hang out.

After years in the role, I had no discernible skills or professional accomplishments to show for my time. The joy of abundant free time began to feel stale and I grew restless. As I entered my late 20s, time to learn useful skills was running out. I was getting left further and further behind. I needed to find a job that would help me catch up and realize my potential.

In 2021, I found that job. I just didn’t realize what it would cost me.

A Whole New World

In my new role, billion-dollar clients spent hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for my team’s input on important decisions. In contrast to my prior roles, project objectives were contractually defined and careers were on the line. Stakes and expectations were sky high. Life in management consulting couldn’t be more different than the life I had known. I told myself I was prepared for the challenge, but in retrospect, nothing could have readied me for what was to come.

The early days of my new role were painful. I disappointed a lot of people. I had promised a skill level and I was regularly underperforming. And I struggled to understand why. I thought I was doing what was asked and doing a good job, too. I was so far behind I couldn’t even wrap my head around the gap between what I was producing and what my teams required.

Through generous colleagues and mentors sitting down with me to explain my shortcomings, I learned. I’ll forever be indebted to them for this. My time was limited, however. This wasn’t a charity. I needed to learn how to work hard, think and communicate clearly, and keep a mountain of detail in my head at all times, or I might not get another shot.

My biggest step-change in effectiveness happened when I made a shift towards immersion. I never realized it before but I had always reserved a corner of my mental capacity for wandering, for dallying, for feeling something unproductive yet essential to my being. The “empty” space was under the floorboards, tucked away beneath the surface. To make the necessary improvements at work, I needed to recruit all my mental faculties. I couldn’t afford to have any empty corner of my mind distracted from the main goal of getting better.

The Descent

I cleared out this crawlspace to make space for work. The desire for books, music, podcasts all fell away. Essay and business ideas halted. Nothing moved me, nor did I seek to be moved. My world began to feel more monochrome and my mind more foreign without this protected space, but I had more pressing issues. I needed to keep from getting fired. I needed to learn how to think and be productive. I needed to learn how to be useful, and for that, I had to focus singularly on evolving who I was. I told myself I’d come back for the crawlspace trinkets later.

Month after month, I continued contorting myself into new shapes to be passable at my job. I feared I’d become a stretched rubber band, unable to snap back into my old shape. This terrified me because I believe my whimsy to be my greatest asset. It felt like selling out.

I muffled that voice because the alternative was quitting, which wasn’t an option, and I stretched further and further, slowly forgetting how it felt to have my crawlspace filled with trinkets that made me feel like me.

What Lived in the Crawlspace

In this moment of respite, I’ve had some space to process the last year and dissect the late nights and painful conversations (with myself or others). I’ve thought hard about how to define the contents of that crawlspace. If I could articulate what I think I’ve lost, I might be able to reverse-engineer how to get it back.

Before, I’d write to put words to the feeling I had in the pit of my stomach. I’d follow the feeling until I felt it come alive in the words in front of me. Once the words were just right, I’d feel my tumblers and needles click into place, unlocking a catharsis. The feeling would move from living in my stomach or at the base of my skull to living on the page.

Now, I’ve realized I’ve lost this guiding sense. I’m grasping in the dark, desperate for a signal in which to anchor my message. When I close my eyes and try to fixate on the pulse inside me, there’s nothing. It’s barren. Tumbleweed quietly blows across my soul. My intuition has atrophied into a distant whisper.

I’ve concluded that this is what lived in the crawlspace—my intuition. The compass in my body that knew which creative choice to make next and when something was good or finished is cracked. As such, my creative confidence is gone. Everything feels like an intellectual exercise someone else could perform better.

Moving Back Into My Body

I’m writing this now to document the process.

I want to look back at this period of my life as a turning point, where I finally learned the importance of balancing my cerebral job with cultivating well-tuned intuition in my body. I now know the emptiness I feel when I ignore that balance.

Between continuing to grow and be effective at work, and learning how to amplify the drowned out rhythm of my intuition, I know there are still plenty of challenges ahead. I hope the struggle makes me better at all of it.

Intuitively,
Vandan🏡