On unlearning the myth of total control

Luck, context, and the quiet pressure we place on effort

One of the most exhausting beliefs I carried before burnout was that success was almost entirely a function of effort.

If I worked harder, I’d get better outcomes. If I stalled, I just hadn’t pushed enough. If something didn’t work, that was a signal to try again, but louder this time.

That belief is seductive because it feels empowering. It suggests control. It tells you that with enough discipline, sacrifice, and persistence, you can manufacture the outcome you want.

It’s also a fast track to burnout.

After burnout, I started seeing my career differently. Not in a cynical way. In a more honest one.

Success isn’t luck or skill. It’s both. And pretending otherwise puts an impossible amount of pressure on effort.

Looking back, there were moments that clearly weren’t earned in the way I once framed them.

For one role, I was coached through the entire interview process because I happened to know the hiring manager. For my current role, I was connected with the hiring manager through a Slack community I was already part of. It was an easy foot in the door.

I still had to show up with the right skill set. I still had to interview well. I still had to do the job once I got it. But I also had help along the way, and pretending otherwise would be rewriting history.

At the time, I treated those moments as proof that my strategy was working. That if I just kept doing exactly what I was doing, the trajectory would continue.

When things later slowed down or shifted, I assumed the problem was me.

That’s the trap.

When you over-attribute success to skill, you also over-attribute setbacks to personal failure. You internalize things that were never fully within your control. You respond to changing circumstances by pushing harder instead of stepping back.

Burnout, for me, was the moment that belief finally collapsed.

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I still catch myself comparing my career to others’, usually through titles.

When I left a Director of Engineering role and joined Zapier as a Senior Engineering Manager, it felt like moving backward. On paper, it looked like regression. A step down. A signal that something had gone wrong.

That story was hard to shake because I’d internalized the idea that progress is linear and always visible. Bigger title, bigger impact. Anything else felt like a miscalculation.

In reality, the move gave me broader scope and more influence than I had before. I now work inside a much larger organization, on more complex systems, and affect outcomes at a scale that simply wasn’t possible in my previous role.

Nothing about my capability decreased. The context changed.

But when success is framed as entirely skill-based, context disappears. Titles become shorthand for worth, and normal career shifts start to feel like personal failures instead of structural differences. That distortion doesn’t just affect how you view others. It quietly reshapes how you see yourself.

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Post-burnout, my relationship with ambition looks different. Not smaller, but more realistic.

Effort still matters. Preparation still matters. Making thoughtful decisions still matters. What changed is that effort is no longer treated as a guarantee.

There is a quiet relief in acknowledging that context plays a role. Markets change. Teams change. Leadership changes. Life changes. You can do everything “right” and still find yourself stuck, sidelined, or starting over.

That doesn’t mean you weren’t capable. It means you were human, operating inside systems you don’t fully control.

This realization didn’t make me less motivated. It made me more discerning. I’m less interested in grinding myself down to prove something and more interested in noticing when conditions are right and deciding whether I want to step into them. I’m also more willing to walk away from environments where effort is endlessly demanded but rarely rewarded.

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Luck, seen clearly, doesn’t cheapen success. It softens failure.

It allows you to say that something didn’t work without turning it into a referendum on your worth or work ethic. It creates space to stop punishing yourself for outcomes that were never fully yours to engineer.

Burnout forced me to give up the fantasy that I could control everything if I just tried hard enough. What I gained instead was a healthier sense of agency. I can prepare, choose, and follow through, while accepting that not every outcome is mine to own.

That shift has made ambition feel lighter. Not gone, but no longer carrying the weight of the world on its back.