The Two-Year Test
You keep waiting for a reason to leave. A clean one. A fireable offense, a reorg that makes the call for you, a sign from the sky, permission from someone. Something that lets you say, "well, I had to."
It rarely comes. Most roles don't end. They just quietly stop growing.
And quiet is easy to sit in. There's no crisis, no villain, nothing to point at. The pay's fine, the people are fine, the work is fine. So you stay. And another quarter goes by, and you keep half-waiting for the reason that's never going to arrive. Because "fine" doesn't generate reasons. It just generates more fine.
So stop waiting for the reason, and run the test instead.
Picture your job exactly as it is today. Same boss. Same scope. Same title, same problems, same trajectory. Now move it two years down the road. And change nothing. Nothing improves. Nothing breaks. No promotion, no blowup, no rescue. It just continues, exactly like this, for twenty-four more months.
Sit in that version for a second. Really sit in it. That's the test.
Now the only question that matters: is that a future you'd choose on purpose? Not tolerate.
Not survive. Choose. Walk into knowingly, eyes open, with everything you know right now.
If the answer is yes. Good. That's real information, and it's a relief. You can shut off the background hum of "what if," stop keeping one eye on the door, and put both feet where you already are. Half-in is its own kind of tax. You pay it in the energy it takes to keep a door propped open you're never going to walk through. This lets you stop paying it.
If the answer is no. That's your answer too. And notice what it actually means. You didn't just learn you might leave someday. You learned you've already decided. And the only thing still open is timing. Everything after that is logistics.
Now the reasons will show up fast. The market's soft. You just got here. The next thing isn't lined up yet. Those are all real, and not one of them changes the answer. They're about when and how, not whether. Don't let a timing question wear the costume of the decision. You've already made the decision. You're negotiating the schedule.
And that's the whole point of the test. It doesn't tell you to go. Plenty of people run it and choose to stay, on purpose, and walk out lighter for having chosen. What it does is take the decision out of the fog and set it in front of you, where you can finally look at it straight.
Because the thing quietly costing you right now isn't the job. It's the not-deciding. The low, constant drain of a question you keep almost answering and never quite closing.
Run the Two-Year Test. It won't tell you to leave. It'll just tell you to stop pretending you haven't already decided.
The Right Altitude. Available now. therightaltitudebook.com
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