Posts

What Do You Still Like About Your Job?

/in /by

The pandemic led many people to consider why they work, and millions of people changed jobs during the resulting Great Resignation. It’s not clear, though, that changing jobs actually allowed people to increase their happiness or satisfaction with the work they do.

Leaving your job because you’re dissatisfied with the work you’re doing seems reasonable, but if you haven’t given thought to what would actually make you happy, you might end up in the same dissatisfying situation. It’s worth spending some time figuring out what you actually like about your job before making any moves.

To engage in that exercise, start by distinguishing between happiness and satisfaction and exploring which aspects of your job relate to each of these emotions. From there, figure out which parts of your job are the ones that bring you the most joy. That way, as you think about your future, you can best strategise about new positions you might want to aim for. To help you along the way, here are three questions that will provide you with valuable insight into the best parts of your work life.

1. Where do I find the most satisfaction? Is it in the process of doing my work or in the final outcome?

We often use the words happiness and satisfaction without reflecting on the differences between them. Happiness is a momentary experience that reflects the positive feelings that result from pursuing some desirable outcome. Satisfaction is a positive feeling that reflects a longer time horizon in which you’re pleased with what you’ve achieved over a period of time.

These emotions are related to two components of your work: There’s the day-to-day work that you do (the process of your work), and then there’s the set of things you achieve as a result of your efforts (the outcome). The process of your work affects your daily happiness with what you do, while the outcome is typically associated with your sense of satisfaction.

Because the process of your work is associated with happiness, it affects your day-to-day interest in the work you’re doing. When you like the particular tasks that are part of your job, you look forward to engaging with those elements of your work, and you’re motivated to increase your skills in the areas where you find the specific duties enjoyable. Conversely, if you find a lot of the tasks unpleasant, you may dread those aspects of the work. There’s a particular satisfaction that comes from performing well on elements of your job that you find intrinsically rewarding.

The outcome of your work relates to the mission of the organization you’re working for. Do you believe in that mission? Do you believe your efforts are making the world a better place? When you work toward a significant outcome and make progress on it, you feel a sense of satisfaction with the work you’re doing.

Research suggests that taking pride in the outcome of your work provides long-term satisfaction with it. Even on the days when you know you have to engage in some unpleasant tasks, the knowledge that you’re doing them in service of an important outcome is a valuable motivator. Paradoxically, if you engage in a lot of tasks you don’t enjoy in service of an important goal, you may feel a lot of satisfaction in your work, even though it doesn’t bring you much happiness.

Ultimately, when you reflect on your work, you should think about both the happiness it brings you as well as the long-term satisfaction.

2. How do my values align with my work?

After you identify the aspects of your job that you like, try to understand why those aspects of work are appealing. This evaluation is rooted in your values.

Values reflect key aspects of what people think is important about their life and work. Your work needs to align with your values. If you value helping others, then the mission of the work may be a critical component to whether you appreciate your job. If you value pleasure in life, then your daily happiness at work (reflected in the particular tasks you do) will be central to helping you to live up to that value. If you value achievement or power, then your personal accomplishments at work will influence your satisfaction with your job.

Shalom Schwartz identified 10 core human values that are consistent across many cultures: self-direction, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, power, security, conformity, tradition, benevolence, and universalism. The ones people adopt and the ways they act on them reflect both the culture in which they were raised as well as individual decisions they make. Taking a values survey can help you understand the aspects of your job that bring you satisfaction. In addition, because research suggests that values can evolve, it’s important to track yours over time. For example, early in your career you may value achievement, so you might enjoy aspects of your job that bring you individual recognition, while later in your career, you may value benevolence and derive more satisfaction from aspects of your job that enable you to help others. That shift in values will alter which parts of your job you find enjoyable.

3. What do I want to be able to say I’ve accomplished?

You’ve probably heard the saying that nobody lies on their death bed wishing they had spent more time at the office. But whether that’s true for you depends a lot on your answers to the questions in the previous sections.

Alignment of your work with your values means considering not just the particular tasks you do daily, but also the accumulated influence of those tasks over time (or what you might think of as your legacy). To think about legacy, take advantage of the remarkable human ability to project yourself mentally to your retirement and look back. What do you want your work to have been about? Do you think that the path you are on currently will support having that impact? Will this impact fit with your values?

You should use this alignment between your values and the processes and outcomes of your work to evaluate your current work trajectory. You should focus both on whether you currently feel like your work aligns with those values, but also to explore what future positions might also help you to be satisfied with your work. If you feel like your work and current trajectory will enable you to continue feeling that alignment between your job and your values, then focus on your current career trajectory. But, if you have a significant mismatch, that’s a good indicator that it’s time to think about alternatives. If you’re unsure about how to find a path that fits with your values, it might be time to talk to a career coach. Just make sure to find one who is committed to helping you find that alignment.

Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?      

Request a free demo: 

B_txt_14

Sources:

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/blog/what-do-you-love-about-your-job/
https://www.nijobs.com/careeradvice/what-did-you-like-most-about-your-job
https://www.proactiveinsights.com/article/articledetail/5

Your Job Is Not Your Whole Identity

/in /by

Reducing yourself to any single characteristic, whether it be your title or your job performance, is a deeply damaging act. Thanks to major shifts in the labor market, workers are switching organisations, functions, and even industries much more frequently than past generations. But as our careers take these dramatic leaps, we ourselves are not wholly reinvented. We often bring pieces of our past work experiences with us, making our work selves more like a manuscript than a whiteboard that can be wiped clean with each new role. 

Are you a self-objectifier in your job or career? Ask yourself a few questions, and answer them honestly.

  • Is your job the biggest part of your identity? Is it the way you introduce yourself, or even understand yourself?
  • Do you find yourself sacrificing love relationships for work? Have you forgone romance, friendship, or starting a family because of your career?
  • Do you have trouble imagining being happy if you were to lose your job or career? Does the idea of losing it feel a little like death to you?

If you answered affirmatively to any or all of these, recognise that you will never be satisfied as long as you objectify yourself. Your career or job should be an extension of you, not vice versa. Two practices can help as you reassess your priorities.

1. Get some space

Maybe you have been in an unhealthy relationship or two in your life but only recognised this when you had a break from it, whether voluntary or involuntary. Indeed, this human tendency probably contributes to the fact that most trial separations lead to divorce, especially when they last more than a year. Space provides perspective.

Use this principle in your professional life. To begin with, it should be the main goal of your vacation—to get a break from work and spend time with people you love. As obvious as this may sound, that means taking your vacation, and not working during it at all. Your employer should thank you for doing so.

In religious traditions, rest isn’t just nice to have; it is central to understanding God and ourselves. “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day,” the Book of Exodus reads. “Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” If God rests from work, maybe you should too.

Such a practice doesn’t have to be religious, and can be done in a lot of ways besides simply avoiding all work on Saturday or Sunday. For example, you can take a small Sabbath each evening by proscribing work and dedicating all your activity to relationships and leisure.

2. Make friends who don’t see you as a professional object

Many professional self-objectifiers seek out others who admire them solely for their work accomplishments. This is quite natural—it makes you feel good when a person you meet for the first time recognises you for your work. This type of relationship can easily become a barrier to the formation of healthy friendships, which we all need. By self-objectifying in your friendships, you can make it easier for your friends to objectify you.

This is why having friends outside your professional circles is so important. Striking up friendships with people who don’t have any connection to your professional life encourages you to develop out of work interests and virtues, and thus be a fuller person. The way to do this goes hand in hand with recommendation No. 1: Don’t just spend time away from work; spend it with people who have no connection to your work.

Perhaps challenging your own self-objectification makes you feel uneasy. It can freak you out. The reason is simple: We all want to stand out in some way, and working harder than others and being better at our jobs seems a straightforward way to do so. This is a normal human drive, but it can nonetheless lead to destructive ends. There are people that would rather be special than happy.

The great irony is that by trying to be special, we end up reducing ourselves to a single quality, and turning ourselves into cogs in a machine of our own making. Our work is our medium, and it becomes our message. We learn to love the image of our successful selves, not ourselves as we truly are in life. Don’t make this mistake. You are not your job. Take your eyes off the distorted reflection, and have the courage to experience your full life and true self.

Losing a Job That is Your Identity

If your job is your whole identity, losing it can be catastrophic. “But when your personal identity is heavily tied to your job, losing that job-even through no fault of your own, such as in an economic downturn or a restructuring- can seem catastrophic, causing an existential crisis or what the authors of the book Difficult Conversations call an ‘identity quake,’” says Rebecca Zucker of Harvard Business Review.

The Cell Phone in Our Pocket Prevents Work Separation

Like many of us, you may not be able to resist checking emails, chats, or texts, even on vacation. The 24-7 access is so tempting that most can never truly disconnect. Working from home further blurs the line. When our jobs are our identities, we think that we should be doing more of what we love.

But is it possible to be creative and connected to others with a constant work distraction in our pockets? When do we hit burnout? “When you’re overworked, you’re actually less productive,” says author Jeffrey Davis of Psychology Today.  “When you get more sleep, develop a healthier work/life balance, and actually learn how to separate yourself from your work, you will find that you’re capable of not just enjoying more meaningful (and productive) work, but also of creating a more meaningful and well-rounded life.”

The ever-more-volatile state of our world means that plenty of leaps await us in the years ahead. Increasingly, our psychological health and career fulfillment will hinge on our ability to assess and execute transitions without betraying our authentic selves. The VME framework can help you predict how difficult it will be to dislodge incompatible aspects of your lingering identities, or what facets might be worth fighting to keep.

Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?

Request a free demo:

B_txt_14

Sources:

https://hbr.org/2022/11/when-changing-jobs-changes-your-identity
https://www.artemisconsultants.net/what-happens-when-your-job-becomes-your-identity/
https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/how-to-handle-jobidentity-loss-hot-jobs