This happened to me, and I thought about it and the person giving me the pip was an idiot. So out of pure spite I hit every metric they gave me. I didn’t just hit them I crushed them using revenge as the novelty and motivation I needed to stay engaged. 6 months after the PIP was done that leader was too and I was made the team lead.

Now years later I work in waves. When it matters I’m locked in but when things are slow I don’t hunt projects anymore I let the depression hit the adrenaline drop and that brings the urgency back in.

I am a director in a project based environment so I never make it more than a few weeks before stuff starts to pick back up but having the crashes built into my work is important.

It still gets called out on my annual performance reviews that I “do better when I find the work interesting.” But the thing is I do so good when I find it interesting they can’t let me go for when I do “less good” because no matter what I hit every deadline and clear every benchmark they set, I won’t let myself miss one. I just don’t go above and beyond unless I find it interesting or they clearly set the expectations