Does this sound familiar? It’s Sunday afternoon, the weekend should still be enjoyable, but your mood takes a turn for the worse. The mere thought of Monday morning, the emails, the meetings, and the tasks ahead triggers stress, anxiety, or even fear.

An occasional “Oh no, not Monday again” is normal. However, if you suffer emotionally every week and Sunday evenings are regularly plagued by stomach cramps or insomnia, this is a serious warning sign. Your body and mind are rebelling against the approaching work week.

Remember when you first started working? Everything was new, exciting, and challenging. Now you can do your tasks in your sleep. That might sound comfortable, but it’s dangerous. If you haven’t learned new skills, taken on new responsibilities, or mastered any intellectual challenges for months or even years, you’re experiencing professional stagnation.

A job should challenge you, not underwhelm you. Those who stagnate not only lose touch with the job market but also their motivation. Stagnation is professional regression.

You do good work, but nothing happens. Your salary has stagnated for years, even though the cost of living is rising. A promotion is nowhere in sight—either because the positions above you are permanently filled or because there simply isn’t a career path.

If you feel like you’re stuck in a rut and your performance isn’t valued (neither financially nor through development opportunities), frustration is inevitable. A job is a trade: time and energy for money and prospects. If the balance is no longer right, it’s time to leave.

Perhaps the company has changed, or perhaps you have. Suddenly you realize you can no longer align with its values. The focus is solely on short-term profit, while sustainability is important to you. The atmosphere is harsh, while you need a respectful and collaborative environment.

Or perhaps a toxic culture prevails: backstabbing, shirking responsibility, and suffocating micromanagement. If you have to compromise your principles every day just to go to work, you will ultimately become unhappy.

This is perhaps the most important warning sign. Your job shouldn’t make you sick. If you’re suffering from chronic stress that leads to sleep disturbances, headaches, digestive problems, or a weakened immune system, something is fundamentally wrong.

The situation becomes even more serious with mental symptoms: Persistent irritability, difficulty concentrating, anxiety, or a feeling of inner emptiness can all be signs of burnout. No paycheck in the world is worth ruining your health.

The opposite of burnout is boreout – and it’s just as debilitating. You have too little to do, your tasks are trivial, and you spend most of the day watching the clock. You feel useless, bored, and underchallenged.

You might even hide how little you have to do for fear of being seen as superfluous. This kind of emptiness can be extremely demotivating and severely damage your self-esteem.

You constantly hear rumors about cost-cutting measures. Management’s communication is contradictory or opaque. Important decisions are made that you can’t understand and that seem to be detrimental to the future of the company (or your department).

If you’ve lost faith in the vision and competence of the leadership, it becomes difficult to remain motivated to pursue the company’s goals. If you feel like you’re on a sinking ship, you should start looking for a lifeboat.

Overtime is the rule, not the exception. You take work home, check emails on vacation, and are never fully present, even on weekends. Your friends, family, and hobbies constantly suffer.

When your job dominates your personal life and you have no energy left for the things that are important to you outside of work, you’ve lost your balance. A job is a part of life—it shouldn’t be your whole life.

When you meet new people and the question “What do you do for a living?” comes up, you tend to evade the question or be vague. You’re not proud of what you do or the company you work for.

Perhaps you find the products pointless or the service dubious. If you don’t find purpose in your daily work, it’s almost impossible to stay motivated in the long run.

The most obvious sign is this: you’re no longer spending your working hours actually working. You’re excessively surfing news sites, scrolling through social media, or—in classic fashion—constantly checking job portals.

You’re fantasizing about what it would be like to quit. You’re reading every article about “changing jobs” (like this one). This is no longer a vague feeling; your subconscious is signaling to you with full force: “I want out of here!”

Not every one of these signs is necessarily grounds for quitting. Sometimes an open conversation with your supervisor, a department change, or an adjustment to your responsibilities can help.

However, if you painfully recognize yourself in three or more of these points, you should take the signals seriously. Your job is a marathon, not a sprint. If you’re unhappy in the first few kilometers, you won’t be able to finish.

Use this list as an opportunity for honest self-reflection. Life is too short for a job that makes you miserable.