Losing Passion for Your Job? Why Quitting Might Be the Right Move

Pursue your passion. Follow your dreams. These common phrases, etched on everything from mugs to throw pillows, urge people to build their lives around what they love most. But what should people do when their interest in a passion starts waning?

Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Jon M. Jachimowicz says many people are afraid to give up a career that has lost its luster, often because they're concerned that others will judge them harshly. This can prevent workers from leaving jobs, making them feel trapped in unfulfilling careers. These fears might even stopping them from speaking out about inhospitable working conditions.

Yet it turns out that other people don’t look down on those who abandon their passions as much as those bailing might think, Jachimowicz’s research shows. And at times, quitting just might be the right move, opening up opportunities for people to pursue new passions, he says.

“The assumption is that pursuing your passion is linear and easy, a eureka moment. You find what you’re passionate about, select a career, and do that for the rest of your life,” Jachimowicz says. “But for many, this is an idealistic dream that doesn’t exist.”

Jachimowicz coauthored the article “People Overestimate How Harshly They Are Evaluated for Disengaging from Passion Pursuit” with Zachariah Berry, a professor at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, and Brian J. Lucas, a professor at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. The article was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in July.

The findings could provide a salve for large numbers of employees who are struggling to find meaning in their work. The results come on the heels of a recent Gallup poll finding that employee engagement in the United States has reached an 11-year low, with employee satisfaction tanking and many people looking for new work. Those who are sticking with their current employers feel more disconnected than ever—a phenomenon Gallup called “the Great Detachment.”

Younger workers are especially yearning for meaningful work, with roughly nine in 10 Gen Zs and Millennials saying a sense of purpose is important to their job satisfaction and well-being, according to a 2025 Deloitte survey.

Afraid to give up

Many people seem to stick with jobs they no longer consider exciting because they feel the need to commit to a single passion, whether it’s working well or not, the research team says. Across 10 studies with nearly 5,000 participants—including doctoral students, nurses, and teachers—the researchers found:

• People who are passionate about their work believe others will be critical of their moral character and levels of competence if they quit their current passion pursuit. Meanwhile, other people actually judged those who quit much less harshly than participants predicted.

• This misperception is specific to those giving up on a passion and does not exist when people give up on work they view as “just a job.” That is, for the latter, people’s predictions of how others would judge them for quitting are accurate.

• People who pursue their passions may endure poor working conditions, such as low pay or intense emotional and physical demands, rather than voice their concerns. Ultimately, failing to speak up increases the chances they’ll continue to face workplace challenges.

• Teachers who felt passionate about their work but had considered quitting became more comfortable with the idea after learning that others don’t usually judge people harshly for walking away. These teachers had higher expectations of being evaluated as moral and competent if they left the profession, compared to others who weren’t aware of others’ perceptions.

Is it time to move on?

When people are concerned that they’ll be judged for disengaging from a passion, they may not take steps toward making a change, such as creating an exit plan or seeking out a career coach. As a result, Jachimowicz says, they may miss out on discovering an exciting new passion.

“Some people who pursue work they are really passionate may jump from one job to the next. Not everyone’s passion pursuit is amenable to a stick-it-out approach. How do people even find out what it is that they’re passionate about? For many, they need to experiment. You don’t experiment by imagining what’s going to happen. You experiment by doing and then, importantly, by quitting and doing something else,” he says.

Jachimowicz suggests that romantic passions provide a helpful analogy. In romantic relationships, change is more accepted. People regularly break up and move on without fearing they will be stigmatized.

“It’s fine to leave a relationship that’s unhealthy for one that’s healthier. Of course, there is a time and space for committing—after all, marriages often take work,” he says. “But when it comes to work passion, there seems to be an unhelpful assumption that the hallmark of a passionate person is one who sticks it out. And the challenge is that many people who want to pursue their passion for work over-index on this view and don’t quit enough,” he explains.

Potential quitters should know that others don’t care as much as they might think.

“It’s the same thing with a breakup: It can often feel like the end of the world. And it is tough! But your best friend will often say, ‘Don’t worry. Somebody else will come along.’ That’s our paper in a nutshell.”

Learning to let go

Are you burned out but afraid of disengaging with your current role? Jachimowicz makes the following suggestions.

Reframe quitting as experimenting

“If you want to pursue work that you’re passionate about, a key component is experimenting. And experimenting, by definition, requires you to also give up on things over time. You can’t just keep adding new things,” he says.

Even if quitting seems impossible because of realities like mortgages and health insurance, “are there low-cost experiments you could run—communities to engage in, people to talk to, ways to volunteer?” he suggests. “There are so many ways that we can experiment that don’t require us to quit but remind us that we can consider quitting: It’s OK, and it’s possible.”

Passion is about the trip, not the destination

“I like thinking about it this way: The pursuit of passion is not a train with a destination, but a train with many different stops along the way,” he says. “It’s OK if you take detours along the way to figure out where you’re going.”

Your first success doesn’t need to define you

Jachimowicz points to professional athletes who retire due to physical limitations and have no choice but to try something new. Just look at former soccer star Mathieu Flamini, who now runs a biochemical company that aims to commercialize ingredients that replace harmful fossil-based components still found in products people use daily. After living out his passion for soccer, he is now driven by his passion for sustainability.

“Among this population of people who are forced to quit, you realize: They actually find other work that they’re passionate about,” Jachimowicz says.

Stay curious about your future

Jachimowicz recently wrote a case study about Elizabeth Rowe, a principal flutist for the who quit the plum position in 2024, mid-career, to pursue a leadership coaching business.

“There was a moment she talks about when the thought entered her mind: ‘I don’t have to do this. What else could I do?’ That’s a really powerful way of thinking,” he says. Ask yourself the same question: Who would you be if you had a choice?

Control the narrative

When Rowe left her coveted position, surprising many in the music community, she was deliberate in her framing, countering the misperception that quitting is about defeat. In a public statement, she framed her career change as being “called forward” into something new. “I think of it like a trapeze,” she said. “You have to let go of one opportunity to catch the next one.”

Image: Ariana Cohen-Halberstam for HBSWK