There are lots of ways to hate your job. Some are obvious, like choosing a job you know you’ll hate. But, there are also some ways to hate your job that we aren’t always aware of. In case it wasn’t clear, this is a list of things “not to do.”
I’m definitely guilty of doing these things. This is exactly how I operated several years ago. My vision (derived mostly from society) of what it meant to be a working person, and my willingness to accept that vision as gospel, led me to make some poor choices. I paid for those choices with misery and depression.
It’s time we start choosing our jobs/careers with care. This isn’t something to be taken lightly. We don’t need to follow what everyone else is doing or has done simply because it’s the “normal” way of doing things. Are “normal” or “average” or “mediocre” really what we’re shooting for in life? Not thinking for ourselves is almost guaranteed to lead to boredom at work, hating our jobs, and a sense of having no purpose in life.
You spend at least 8 hours a day working, if you’re doing the corporate gig. That’s a HUGE chunk of your life. Take some care in how you choose to spend it.
After you’re done reading, leave a comment below to expand on this list with your own nuggets of wisdom. I’d love to read them, and you can help many other people out at the same time.
What Not To Do:
1. Work for money
If you want to hate your job, choose your job solely based on money.
Sure, you might get lucky and land a job that makes you money and you love, but without any other consideration outside of money, the chances are remote. If you don’t want to leave it up to luck, you need to purposely seek out jobs that align with who you are, your core values, and your strengths.
Money is great for buying stuff, and for a while you might convince yourself that it matters a lot. But, coming from experience, once you reach the amount of money necessary to survive, the excess really doesn’t help you become much happier. In fact, if you’re doing something that makes you miserable to get that extra money, you’re going to be miserable no matter how much extra stuff you buy.
2. Work for prestige
Prestige sounds great on paper. Your peers look up to you. You can tell everyone what you do and get this nice, approving nod. Your mother will brag about you to all her friends. You can be the envy of all your neighbors! Yay!
But, why do you care about prestige? How does it enrich the quality of your life? Does it align with your values at all?
The effects of prestige will wear off. At a certain point, you will adjust to those effects and they won’t make you any happier.
3. Not have a “Why”
Your job might be what you’re doing, but why are you doing it? You need a “why” that speaks to who you are. It should be as unique as you are. Your why should match your values.
Without knowing the why, it might turn out you’re working at a job for all the wrong reasons. Without the right reasons, you will eventually lose interest. As you lose interest, you’ll get bored and you’ll start hating your job.
Avoid all of this pain by knowing your why before you even go looking for jobs. You can discover your why by working through the Free Passion Toolkit. Then, make sure the job you’re considering matches with your why.
4. Question nothing – Follow the crowd
As you reach the end of university, everyone wants to go off and get a “good job.” For some reason or other, that means a good paying job at a respectable company. It all boils down to money and prestige.
Following this mentality will end in disaster.
Question everything! Why are you doing what you’re doing? Do you actually just want money and prestige? Is that your goal in life?
Find out what excites you. Do something uniquely you!
5. Set the bar too low
This might seem strange, at first glance, but setting the bar too low is a sure way to be bored at work. You might like what you’re doing, to a certain degree, but if you can’t learn and grow from it, it will get old very quickly. You won’t feel challenged.
Think about it – if you love math, and I tell you to do simple addition all day, 8 hours a day, for a job, it won’t really matter how much you love math.
6. Do work that doesn’t matter
Ultimately, our job needs to contribute something to society. We need to feel that we’re doing something that matters. You need to give something back, so that you feel like you have purpose.
If you start with your why, this can be avoided. By knowing your why, you usually end up thinking about who you can help. If you don’t, then take some time to think about it.
What mark do you want to leave on the world? What do you want to be remembered for having done? If you do something that matters to you because it changes the world in some way, then a fulfilling career is inevitable.
Your thoughts?
Leave a comment below to expand on this list with your own nuggets of wisdom. I’d love to read them, and you can help many other people out at the same time.