by TIM HERRERA | Jan 24, 2020 | General
Are you doing what you actually want to be doing? Maybe. Maybe not? Who knows? It is one of the toughest questions we’ll grapple with in our lives.
When was the last time you were completely honest with yourself and thought about it? If you’re like most people, probably not recently.
“I’m a big believer in evaluating where you think you are in your life about once a year,” said Art Markman, a psychology and marketing professor and author of the book, Bring Your Brain to Work.
A full-time worker will spend about 80 000 hours at work over the course of his/her working life. Setting aside the fact that that can account for a majority of your waking hours, consider the intangible costs. If you’re in the wrong career, it could mean tens of thousands of hours spent devoted to something you don’t even really care about, much less that you feel is your passion.
That said, passion alone isn’t necessarily the best indicator of whether you’re in the right career and sometimes it can lead you down the wrong path. But one of the factors that might be a deciding one is thinking about your values.
We all have core values that help define us. Maybe you put a priority on achievement, helping others, doing good, having structure in your life or just plain happiness.
Whatever your core values may be, putting time into genuine, honest introspection to figure them out can help point you in the right direction when deciding whether the work you do aligns with your values.
In fact, people with high levels of this type of self-awareness have stronger relationships, perform better at work and are more creative.
If you’ve never put much thought into it, one helpful way to identify your values is to stop asking “why” questions about yourself, but start asking “what” questions. For example, when you’re thinking of a situation that caused you to feel bad at work, you might ask yourself: “Why do I feel so terrible?”
It may seem like an insignificant word swop, but you might be surprised at the different answers you arrive at or how those answers have changed over time.
“When you look at that set of values, you may realise that the path you’re on is never going to lead to the right level of satisfaction, because you’re not actually doing something that fits that core set of values that you have,” said Markman.
So, what do you do?
Our work identities are so wrapped up with our personal identities that we sometimes fail to differentiate between the two, and that’s a trap that can keep people in careers that don’t make them happy. Certain job titles come with certain connotations and assumptions. Leaving one role for another can shake a person’s identity and confidence to their core.
But instead of tying those connotations to the person, he suggested looking at job titles a different way such as verbs, rather than nouns.
“When you go to a party, one of the first things you ask someone is, ‘What do you do?’ because of that belief that it tells us something deep about who they are,” said Markman.
“One of the things we have to do is to really try to treat our career more like a verb than a noun. There’s a lot of research on nouns that shows that as soon as you give a label to something, you come to believe that somebody or some object has essence of that thing. A cat – why is a cat a cat? It has essence of a cat. That’s true not just for biological categories, it’s true even for professions.”
So what does that mean for you, the potential career switcher? In essence, your job title doesn’t define you. It is just one slice of your identity; changing one for another doesn’t change the core of who you are.
But that’s not all.
Maybe it is the main – or only – question on your mind: what about the money?
Unfortunately, no one can answer that except you. Considerations like family, location, age, debt load, savings, relocation plans, retirement goals and other factors come into play.
It is true that some studies have showed that money starts to offer diminishing happiness returns, while other studies have found different results. However, something you should try to weigh is that you can’t spend your way out of doing something that makes you genuinely miserable.
“Doing something you feel is satisfying can actually increase that level of happiness in ways that no amount of money will,” he said.
The pursuit of happiness, all things considered, can sometimes lead you down surprising paths.
“I’m a big believer that we shouldn’t be the ones who edit our life story. We should allow the world to edit our life story,” said Markman. “Take advantage of opportunities, try things, give a job a shot. There’s very little cost to putting yourself out there.”
This article first appeared on The New York Times.
by TIM HERRERA | Dec 14, 2019 | General
It is an inevitable part of having a job. At some point we all feel a little uninspired. Maybe you’re not excited about a new project or you just can’t pump yourself up to finish something that’s been dragging on, but you know when the feeling hits.
But it is a problem that can be solved.
“Often people lose motivation because they no longer find their work meaningful and that can take many forms,” said Liz Fosslien, the co-author of No Hard Feelings, which looks at how emotions affect our work lives.
“Losing that spark can hit at any time and sometimes you might not even realise you’re in that slump until it’s pointed out to you,” added Mollie West Duffy, Fosslien’s co-author.
“I think it can be a slow progression,” said Duffy. “It’s sort of like the boiling frog, it slowly starts getting more and more distracting to you, and you might not realise it.”
Feeling uninspired or demotivated can sometimes lead to burnout. The overlap in symptoms is clear: it’s that “blah” feeling when you approach a task or the feeling of just being stuck in a rut. It can sometimes be hard to pinpoint or recognise that you’re in a slump, but it is quite common. One American study from 2018, found that one in five highly engaged employees is at risk of burnout.
So if burnout can result in deep job dissatisfaction and unhappiness, the road there is a slippery slope of a lack of inspiration. But there are ways to counter it.
One of the most common sources of lowered motivation at work is what Harvard researchers called the progress principle, which is the idea that making progress in meaningful work is the “single most important factor” in boosting one’s “emotions, motivation and perceptions during a workday”.
“Often you’re not motivated because your goal is too big,” said Fosslien.
“So, if you can just break that into mini milestones, like what are you going to do today that you can cross at the end of today?
Even tiny units of progress, like sending an email you’ve been meaning to write forever, can contribute to a sense of accomplishment, which can boost your overall motivation,” she added.
But ticking items off your to-do list can take you only so far if you’re in a spiral of a lack of inspiration. Focusing on your relationships, instead of your actual work, can remind you of the impact you have.
“Take note of how your work has impact on the people at the company you work with. There’s not always external impact, but there’s internal impact,” she said.
One technique she has found success with is to take a timeout during the day and write down three ways your work has helped your colleagues. These small moments can help to put you in the mindset of remembering that even if you’re dealing with a lack of motivation, you can still help those around you.
“Anywhere you can look for little reminders of the impact that your work has, whether it is your colleagues, the people your company impacts on or the people affected by your personal projects,” Fosslien said.
Fostering those relationships can often be the motivation you’re looking for. Research has shown that motivation at work often comes from working with people you care about and people with friends at work tend to find their jobs more satisfying.
According to a 2018 poll from Gallup, “When employees possess a deep sense of affiliation with their team members, they are driven to take positive actions that benefit the business – actions they may not otherwise even consider if they did not have strong relationships with their co-workers.”
When all else fails and you just can’t find that spark of inspiration, fall back on a tried-and-true strategy – take a little time away from your job.
“Often when work is negative, it is because you’re working too much and it is taking over our mental capacity,” said Duffy. “Remember that work doesn’t define you, but it is only a part of you.”
Said Fosslien: “When it feels really bad, it is the hardest time to do it, but it is also the most important time to seek out something not work-related that brings you joy.”
She added: “Keep doing the things that bring you lightness.”
This article first appeared in The New York Times.
by TIM HERRERA | Nov 22, 2019 | General
You don’t need to change everything about your job to see major benefits – a few changes here and there can be all you need.
Do you like what you do?
Now, I don’t mean that in the broad sense of wondering whether you’re on the right career path. I mean on a day-to-day basis, if you thought about every single task your job entails, could you name the parts that give you genuine joy? What about the tasks you hate?
It’s an odd question. We don’t often step back to ask whether the small, individual components of our job actually make us happy.
But maybe we should. Many don’t feel engaged at work. The reasons vary widely, and everyone’s relationship with work is unique. But there are small ways to improve any job, and those incremental improvements can add up to major increases in job satisfaction.
A study from the Mayo Clinic found that physicians who spend about 20 percent of their time doing “work they find most meaningful are at dramatically lower risk for burnout.” But here’s what’s fascinating: Anything beyond that 20 percent has a marginal impact, as “spending 50 percent of your time in the most meaningful area is associated with similar rates of burnout as 20 percent.”
In other words: You don’t need to change everything about your job to see substantial benefits. A few changes here and there can be all you need.
“When you look at people who are thriving in their jobs, you notice that they didn’t find them, they made them,” said Ashley Goodall, senior vice president of leadership and team intelligence at Cisco and co-author of the book “Nine Lies About Work.”
“We’re told in every commencement speech that if you find a job you love you’ll never work a day in your life. But the verb is wrong,” he said, adding that successful people who love their jobs take “the job that was there at the beginning and then over time they transform the contents of that job.”
To be sure, transforming your job isn’t easy. But you have to start somewhere, and there’s a wonderfully simple but surprisingly revealing trick that can help.
For a full week, carry a notepad at all times.
Draw a line down the centre of a page and label one column “Love” and the other column “Loathe.” Whenever you perform a task, no matter how small, be mindful of how it makes you feel. Are you excited about it? Do you look forward to it? Does time fly when you’re doing it? Or did you procrastinate, dreading every moment and feeling drained by the time you’re done?
It seems silly, I know. But this exercise — which Goodall and his co-author, Marcus Buckingham, co-head and talent expert at the A.D.P. Research Institute, write about in their book and practice in their lives – can show you hidden clues and nuances about work.
“It’s a beautifully simple way to inventory your emotional reactions to the reality of your day or week at work,” Buckingham said. “Understand what it is that lights you up. Understand what you run toward. Understand where you are at your most energetic, your most creative, your most alive, and then volunteer for that more and more and more,” he added.
This is, of course, just a starting point. You won’t instantly be happier at work once you have a list of things you dislike about your job. However, this exercise gives you a road map about how to focus your time and energy on the things that get you excited. Rather than trying to get better at things you hate doing and know you’re not great at, reframe the issue and try to do more things that energise you and that you excel at. No one can tell you what those things are, and discovering them can be transformative.
“If you don’t know what you’re like when you’re in love with your work, no one can do that for you,” Buckingham said. “This has always been in your hands, and it cannot be in anyone else’s.”
This article first appeared in The New York Times.
by TIM HERRERA | Aug 7, 2019 | General
YOU don’t need to change everything about your job to see major benefits. A few changes here and there can be all that you need.
Do you like what you do? By that I don’t mean that in the broad sense of wondering whether you’re on the right career path. I mean daily. If you thought about every single task your job entails, could you name the parts that give you genuine joy? What about the tasks you hate?
It is an odd question. We don’t often step back to ask whether the small, individual components of our job actually make us happy.
But maybe we should. Most of the workers I have spoken to said they don’t feel engaged at work. The reasons vary widely and everyone’s relationship with work is unique. But there are small ways to improve any job and those incremental improvements can add up to major increases in job satisfaction.
A study from the Mayo Clinic found that physicians who spend about 20 percent of their time doing “work they find most meaningful are at a dramatically lower risk for burnout”. But the fascinating thing was that anything beyond that 20 percent has a marginal impact, because “spending 50 percent of your time in the most meaningful area is associated with similar rates of burnout as 20 percent”.
“If you look at people who are thriving in their jobs, you notice that they didn’t find them, they made them,” said Ashley Goodall, the co-author of the book Nine Lies About Work.
“We’re told in every graduation speech that if you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. But the verb is wrong,” he said, adding that successful people who love their jobs take “the job that was there at the beginning and then over time they transform the contents of that job”.
Transforming your job isn’t easy. But you have to start somewhere and there’s a wonderfully simple but surprisingly revealing trick that can help.
For a full week, carry a notepad at all times. Draw a line down the centre of a page and label one column “Love” and the other column “Loathe”.
Whenever you perform a task, no matter how small, be mindful of how it makes you feel. Are you excited about it? Do you look forward to it?
Does time fly when you’re doing it? Or did you procrastinate, dreading every moment and feeling drained by the time you were done?
It seems silly. But this exercise, which Goodall and his co-author, Marcus Buckingham, wrote about in their book and practise in their lives can show you hidden clues and nuances about work.
“It’s a beautifully simple way to inventory your emotional reactions to the reality of your day or week at work,” Buckingham said. “Understand what it is that lights you up. Understand what you run towards. Understand where you are at your most energetic, your most creative, your most alive, then volunteer for that more and more and more.”
This is, of course, just a starting point. You won’t instantly be happier at work once you have a list of things you dislike about your job. But the exercise gives you a road map about how to focus your time and energy on the things that get you excited.
Rather than trying to get better at things you hate doing and know you’re not great at, reframe the issue and try to do more things that energise you and that you excel at. No one can tell you what those things are; discovering them can be transformative.
“If you don’t know what you’re like when you’re in love with your work, no one can do that for you,” Buckingham said. “This has always been in your hands, and it cannot be in anyone else’s.”
This article first appeared in The New York Times.
