life@work

Finding Happiness at Work

This post was contributed by Holly McCarthy, who writes on the subject of job search sites. She invites your feedback at hollymccarthy12 at gmail dot com

Finding Happiness at Work

For many people out there participating in the daily grind, work is not something that makes them happy.  As a matter of fact, getting out of work is probably the highlight of their day. While this may be the case for a larger than normal segment of the population, there is a way to find happiness at work—if you are willing to look for it. If not, maybe it’s time you started looking for something you might find more fulfilling.

Look Back and Reflect

Is this your career or just a job? Many people have trouble finding happiness at work because they are not doing what they think they would like to be doing. Looking back and reflecting on what made you ultimately start working at your current job can give some much-needed perspective to the situation.  Remembering our past motivations can give us insight on where we now find ourselves.

Visualize Your Ideal Situation

What would make your work day perfect? There are so many factors that contribute to our feelings throughout the day, from the commute you have to take to the rapport you share with your colleagues. If you could change anything about your current job or career, what would it be? This is a great question to ask yourself when dealing with the happiness at work scenario; it helps to know what is actually contributing to your feelings. Visualizing an ideal situation gives you an idea of how far you need to go to reach that end result.

Stop Focusing on What’s Wrong

As in other aspects of our lives, the more we focus on what is wrong with our situation, the worse things actually seem. If we continue to focus on the bad things, these bad aspects will be the only thing we see and feel, ultimately creating more negativity down the road. Start finding good things to focus on at work, whether it is a friendly colleague or the smell of coffee in the break room. 

Be Thankful

Keep in mind that there are many people that may feel the way you do; however, the current economic situation has put many out of work who would be happy to simply have any job to bring much-needed income into the family coffers. Be thankful for the gainful employment you do have right now and remember that there is always a way to make a bad situation better—if you are wiling to look for it.

Photo by greggoconnell

How to Stop Procrastinating

What are you putting off?

Most of us have many minor tasks we're saving for "tomorrow" - picking up the dry cleaning, paying bills, returning a phone call, or even drawing up a new will.

More than 90% of the people who hire me do so in part because they have procrastinated answering large questions, completing major projects, or addressing longstanding unease. It's natural - when we lack clarity, feel overwhelmed and notice our doubts, we put off carefully looking at the causes and crafting a plan to move forward.

Also many of us are deadline oriented and just can't seem to get started without one imposed on us. Self imposed deadlines are easy to get around.

Research shows that there is a link between how we think about a task and our tendency to postpone it. Turns out that the more concretely you think about what needs to be done the less likely you will to put off doing it. Abstract thinking, on the other hand, makes it more likely that we will put off doing something or never get to it at all.

I've found this to be true in my own experience. For example when I have to make a difficult phone call, I can sit around all day fretting about it, thinking about what might happen to my relationship with the person because of it, ruminating about how I feel about it, and wondering why I'm getting worked up about it.

When I focus on simply dialing the number, I get through the call almost before I realize what just happened. I don't allow myself time to dwell because I am only thinking about the task in concrete terms.

In the words of the authors of a study published in Psychological Science,  "Merely thinking about the task in more concrete, specific terms makes it feel like it should be completed sooner and thus reducing procrastination."

For concrete examples of strategies you can use to stop putting off your resolution to stop putting things off, check out this from getmoredone.com.

The tricks I use most often are breaking down large, gnarly problems into tiny bite-size pieces and keeping my focus on those pieces, and the tried-and-true checkoff list, which I attempt to plow through in order, starting with the most unpleasant task.

What works for you? What do you do to get things done today?

What to Do When You're Overwhelmed by Too Many Career Ideas

 Many of the people who hire me as their coach aren't struggling with a lack of career options. Rather they are stuck because they have too many ideas and don't know where to start to narrow them down.

This reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me who moved from the U.S. to New Zealand for a year. She lived in a town in New Zealand where the local store had four kinds of cereal, two kinds of soap, one kind of lettuce - you get the picture. Decision making was easy.

Fast forward to her first trip to Target after moving back home. She made it to the laundry detergent aisle where she was bombarded by twenty different choices. Powder or liquid? Spring-fresh or no fragrance? Big jug or little box? It was paralyzing. She had to leave the store, she was so overwhelmed by how complicated it seemed just to wash clothes.

Of course laundry detergent choices aren't exactly life-and-death. All of those products are going to get your clothes clean - it's hard to go terribly wrong.

But it would have made my friend's trip to Target less overwhelming if she had thought a little bit beforehand about what she wants in a detergent. Then she could have filtered out all the products that didn't match her needs. She could have made a beeline for the high efficiency fragrance-free powder and gotten the hell out of the store.

Obviously we want to take a little more time and care with our career choices than our laundry. But there are tens of thousands of different jobs. O*NET lists over 55 different job titles just in the "Healthcare Practitioners and Technicians" job family alone.

Career option overwhelm doesn't only happen to twenty-somethings who are still exploring. Even if you've been in one career for years or have had a succession of careers, there will come a day when the question, "Now what?" starts nagging at you, and you can think of ten or more options to consider.

Many of us "go shopping" in the job market before looking inward to decide what our career priorities are. We end up feeling like my friend at Target. We become dazed and confused from all the possibilities and have no idea how to choose. We end up having conversations with ourselves that go something like this:

"I could stay here and go for that promotion."

"Maybe I could try to do something with my photography."

"Microsoft has great benefits, and they are less likely to lay off people in my kind of work."

"An MBA is probably something I need if I want to keep going with this career."

"I've always wanted to make a difference the world - is it too late to consider the Peace Corps?"

The key to getting unstuck is to become clear about what you want.

Although this sounds pretty basic, most of us don't spend much time thinking about what we want in an ordered or systematic way that helps us make good decisions.

What do you enjoy doing? What are key priorities for you now? What elements are non-negotiable? What kind of work environment do you know works well for you (or is terrible for you)? Sometimes the answers are easy to reach, and sometimes they are surprising or even painful.

I help people ask and answer these questions about themselves so that they can make key decisions about their careers that are a good fit.

We live in a time and culture that overwhelms us with options. Clarity helps us stay calm in any context that presents us with multiple choices, whether it be creating a career plan, deciding which book to read next, choosing a cell phone plan, or buying laundry detergent. 

So what do you want? I'm interested to hear what you know is important to you in your career right now.

Is Your Head Spinning From All the Career Advice You've Been Reading?

I read a lot of career advice, and I dispense my fair share of it, too. In the past couple of months I have done both of these activities with above average vigor, and I must admit, tension.

Until I read Eve Tahmincioglu's post yesterday on CareerDiva, I was only vaguely aware of a restless and unsettled feeling I was having reading and writing career advice. Was it the proliferation of gloomy economic forecasts? The effect of hearing too many personal stories of loss and discouragement? Was I just needing a vacation?

Although I wouldn't turn down a trip to Hawaii right now, Eve's post articulated exactly what has been bugging me - the over-reliance people are placing on following advice at the expense of creating their own game plan.

No wonder people's heads are spinning, including mine.

Career advice is general, Eve's post reminded me. It's targeted to corporate employees in cities. It's often geared towards the younger generation.

Your situation may not approximate in any way the typical situations career advice addresses, and this is probably pretty frustrating.

There are fabulous, knowledgeable people giving out incredibly useful career advice for free, on blogs such as Career Hub and others. I'm grateful we can get key information when we want it on all kinds of career strategies.

Tempting though it can be, when we make too many of our plans based solely on the advice and opinions of outside experts, we get stuck.

First of all, the experts often disagree with one another. We've got to keep our own critical thinking skills sharp so we can take in what's useful and weed out what isn't resonating. Otherwise we don't know what to do with the contradictions we're hearing.

Secondly, no one knows your priorities, needs, wants, or opportunities better than you. They may not be easily apparent to you right now, or they may be disguising themselves, but you are still the expert on you.

When you make a career decision based on what a magazine article advises, for example, how good a fit is that likely to be? What if you don't have the education, skills or local job opportunities that would make it a good option for you?

So my advice, which I encourage you to ignore, is to limit the career advice you are taking in. Let the advice have a supporting role, and allow your own wisdom to be the star. If your head is spinning from all the career advice you've been reading, stand still for a few moments and regain your balance.