journal

The Productivity Hangover

I am treating mundane life like a high-stakes corporate turnaround project, and learning that simply sitting down to relax is a routine my system completely rejects.

Jill Boullin

— 4 min read
Share
A close-up photograph of a drink on a clean counter in a bright, modern room with natural light pouring in through the windows
The 5:00 PM forced transition. Learning to sit with an empty calendar without feeling like a failure.

I left my corporate job exactly twenty-six days ago. Or, to be precise in the language of the world I just departed: three business weeks.

"I left" is a polite euphemism. I was asked to leave due to a corporate restructuring. For nearly twenty years, my headspace was occupied by multi-million-dollar ad spends, team metrics, and constant availability. Finding my new self in the debris of that exit has been interesting.

Mostly, I have been busy. Very busy.

A close-up, minimalist photograph of a freshly painted white porch post catching natural sunlight.
A marathon sprint to achieve an imaginary KPI. Treating a porch spindle like a high-stakes corporate turnaround.

I have painted our porch. I have decluttered drawers that were already perfectly organized. I have written exhaustive lists of things to do, checked off tasks, volunteered at school, made new mom friends, had coffees, learned new AI skills, and mapped out the future.

The last three weeks have felt like a marathon sprint. I am running at top speed, desperately trying to achieve an imaginary KPI, chasing a way to measure my daily outcomes just to feel accomplished at 5:00 PM. I am treating mundane domestic life like a high-stakes corporate turnaround project.

Everyone tells me I should relax. I want to relax. Instead, I am stressed, wound tight by a deep, vibrating anxiety I can’t quite articulate. I believe it is a detox. My system is purging twenty years of corporate cortisol, and simply sitting down to exist is a routine my body completely rejects.

Instead, I live in a state of constant, exhausting justification.

A close-up photograph of a smooth round of baking dough being sliced down the middle with a metal bench scraper on a clean kitchen counter
An internal debate over whether the effort of homemade cheese crackers is actually worth it, or if I should just buy the store-bought ones.

When I speak to my friends who still work, the old identity ghosts return. I feel like a loser. Everyone wants to know what's next. If it’s not a new title, they want to know what I’m learning, what skills I am mastering, what I am training myself to become. I can successfully push the conversation away for now by saying, "I’ll get back to the market in September, after the summer." But the secret I keep to myself is that I don't think I ever want that corporate lifestyle back. The people who still work think I am too young to drop out.

Then there are my newly made friends at the school gates. Our daughters go to a bilingual, international school in New York, mostly filled with expat families. Because many of these women are only here for a two-to-three-year rotation, they operate on an entirely different timeline, devoid of any professional urgency. Their mornings are beautifully, bafflingly open, spent at the sports club, walking, and talking. Lots of talking. I understand it, I respect it, but I am just not there yet. I don't know how to chat for three hours without feeling like I'm missing a deadline.

And then there is my husband, Greg.

Greg is wonderful, deeply supportive, and entirely modern. He does not want me spending my time on manual housework. But this has created a bizarre internal conflict, a double guilt. In my head, I want to get shit done during the day to take the pressure off him, so our weekends are completely free. But he views my sudden urge to cover the home basics alone as an old-school, unnecessary burden.

I feel guilty that I am not accomplishing something more intellectually stimulating than a sourdough loaf or a dinner that is actually ready at 6:00 PM. He feels guilty that he is doing less at home. He wants me focusing on our future, our next business idea, or our landscape design, not mowing the lawn or over-engineering our daughter’s birthday party.

The absolute craziest part of the data? My current output isn't scaling.

Our house was always lean and clutter-free. I have already been baking our bread for the last two years. Everything I am doing now to fill my 'business hours,' I used to do in parallel to a demanding executive job. I am working just as hard to maintain the exact same baseline, down to cutting the identical dough on the kitchen counter to create a quick batch of Sourdough Cheese Crackers for school snacks or baking a tray of seasonal Rhubarb Rolls using the high-protein base I always rely on.

But beneath the guilt and the pacing, the small shifts are starting to break through.

I am experiencing things I never had time for before. I am picking up my girls in the early afternoon and just hanging out with them on a Tuesday. I am standing in the sun, pushing my youngest to learn how to ride her bike. I spent an entire morning volunteering at the Bundesjugendspiele sports day, watching my older daughter run, completely present.

A photograph from behind of a young girl balancing on a bicycle on a sunlit path lined with green trees.
In the middle of the day, just me and my youngest daughter seeing her start riding her bike. She is the biggest Knutschkugel.

I am sitting there, next to my husband, and my hand isn't instinctively reaching into my pocket to check for incoming texts from a client.

That is a massive change. I am deeply grateful for this empty space. Now, I just have to find the rhythm to live in it, and shake off the hangover of trying to earn it.

Read more