Here’s what high performance can actually look like from the inside: pumping between meetings, running dinner while on an evening call, booking a weekend babysitter because Fridays had become firefighting days, and waking up early to finish work before the house woke up. Checking every box. Delivering on time. Labeled one of the most consistent performers on the team.
And yet.
By October 2025, my doctors told me to take a medical leave of absence or risk ending up in the hospital. My body had been keeping score long after I’d stopped paying attention.
The insight I wish I’d had earlier: reliability without autonomy isn’t sustainability. It’s just a longer path to burnout.
I’d built what looked, from the outside, like a well-managed life. I was exercising three times a week, meditating, eating well, setting boundaries “as best I could.” I had a full-time nanny, a supportive husband, and genuine help at home. And I was still coming apart.
What I didn’t understand then and do now is that optimizing the logistics of an unsustainable life doesn’t make it sustainable. It just makes you more efficient at running yourself down.
The Evidence I Kept Explaining Away
In March 2023, I returned from maternity leave for my third child. Even on a formal gradual return-to-work plan half-time hours at full pay I was told I should be operating close to 40 hours a week. So I did.
My year-end review: good ideas, slow to implement. So I pushed harder the following year. Traveled to China. Delivered multiple products on time.
Meanwhile: my 88-year-old grandmother needed emergency surgery for diabetic foot ulcers. My husband developed a condition we still don’t have a full prognosis on. I was called back repeatedly for a breast cyst (benign). My oldest son had recurring allergy attacks. I got rear-ended on the highway the evening before an exec review. And in September 2025, I witnessed an ICE raid at my neighborhood gas station.
I kept absorbing each thing and moving on. That’s what reliable people do. What I didn’t see was that I wasn’t moving on. I was just adding weight without ever setting any of it down.
What Rest Actually Did
When I finally took the leave, I expected relief. What I didn’t expect was just how much I’d normalized dysfunction.
The first two weeks, I slept like I hadn’t slept in years. The second two weeks, I started functioning normally again. By month two, the brain fog and exhaustion I’d been attributing to “middle-aged perimenopause” just lifted. I felt like myself: calm, clear, capable.
The world around me hadn’t changed. The chaos was still there. But I had stopped being fused with it.
Rest didn’t just restore my energy. It restored my perspective. Those are not the same thing.
The Pattern I Finally Recognized
This wasn’t my first burnout. In my late 20s, a freak accident forced me to stop. I learned from it. And then, slowly, I forgot.
What I kept returning to during my leave were the periods in my life when things felt genuinely manageable, even during the pandemic, pregnant with my second child.
What those moments had in common wasn’t fewer responsibilities. It was autonomy. I was pushing back consistently, protecting my own growth, choosing which moments got my full presence.
High performance and autonomy can coexist. But high performance without autonomy is just compliance with extra steps.
Choosing the Alternative Path
After returning from leave, I knew I needed to change more than my habits. My husband and I planned my exit strategy. It was hard. It was also the clearest decision I’d made in years.
People react to this like I won the lottery. “Poornima is living the dream — she quit her job!”
I want to be precise about this: quitting wasn’t the dream. Choosing an alternative path was. I’m still working. I’m still building. Humans need purpose. I certainly do. What changed is the pace, the terms, and who sets them. I’m still fundamentally the same person. Just more type A−/B+ now. 😉
In the past month I’ve spoken with many people who’ve made similar calls: jobs that demanded everything, lives pulled in too many directions, and a quiet moment of deciding that the cost of staying the course was higher than the cost of changing it.
The question worth sitting with isn’t “can I keep going?” It’s “what am I actually building toward?”
The Practice Going Forward
I’ve set a recurring reminder to check in with myself: weekly if possible, quarterly at minimum. Not to audit my productivity. To ask whether I’m taking care of myself before I try to take care of anything or anyone else.
It’s a small thing. But I’ve learned that the small, consistent things are exactly what I used to skip first.
If any of this resonates, I’d love to hear where you are in your own version of this. We’re probably not as alone in it as we think.
If this resonated, I write about navigating ambition, autonomy, and what it actually looks like to build a life on your own terms. Join my newsletter and I’ll send you the next one directly.
