How to Enjoy Your Job

Are you happy with your job?

Research has shown that 50 – 70% of employees do not enjoy their job! As we spend over a third of our lives in work, you need to find a career you enjoy, to help gain a positive work and life balance.

Many employees enjoy the industry they are in, only to find they have easily become bored in the company they work for.

Before you jump ship, first see if you can new ways to enjoy your job.

Find the Passion

Once you find the passion, you will be absorbed in your role; you will quickly start enjoying your work more. First, write a list of all the things you do enjoy about your job?

For each item, ask yourself “what is it, that I enjoy about this particular item?” and write down your answer.

Example “I enjoyed designing the website” why? “I enjoyed the free-range I was given, I love being creative and not having to follow orders and procedures”

Once you know the details of what you enjoy, you can start to use this in other tasks, making your duties more enjoyable. Once you’re more passionate about your job, you will put in more effort and gain better results. These better results will help boost your passion even higher.

Turn Your Job into a Game or a Sport

One of my first jobs after leaving school was collating and rolling advertisement posters, before packing them into boxes ready for dispatch. As I found this a little dull, I turn the task into a game, pretending that the job was a sport. As with all sporting professionals, I had a coach (this was a made-up voice in my head) telling me how good I was and that I could roll more posters in an hour than any other poster competitor.

I really wanted to be the best and was always motivated to do the job well, each day setting myself new goals or personal best. After a couple of weeks, my manager noticed my enthusiasm or gave me a new responsibility and a pay rise.

Routine or Not Routine? That is the question!

On average you will enjoy routines and following procedures or you will prefer to have choices and options, ask you answered the questions in section one; your answers may give you clues if you are motivated by options or procedures.

If you like routine, make one for your job – travel to work the same way, make a procedure for your working day, start with a certain task that will lead on to the next. When given a new task or role write a new procedure for it. As you do this every day your job role and task will become routine.  Use list and to-do books.

If you prefer options, start by choosing different ways to travel to work each day-this will make the beginning of the day more fun, if possible use flexible hours to alternate the time you start and finish work. When given a task to complete, look at all the possible choices you have to complete this task and work out which way will suit each particular task. Brainstorm and write on post-it notes. By choosing your own way to complete the task, will help you feel more positive.

Build up Your Works Social Calendar

First find a common interest with your colleagues, this way you always have the interest to talk about. Once you have several friends in work with similar hobbies you will have something to talk about and something to look forward to each day.  From this you can meet at dinner and break times, find somewhere to “chill out” and arrange social days outs or even drinks after work.

In many cases, people often make close friends that begin as working relationships. If you enjoy the people you work with, you often start enjoying the job more.