How
to
Rejuvenate Your Job
Love or hate? If you are like most people, you have mixed feelings about
your job. There are parts of it you like, parts you dislike and even
parts you hate. But, let's take a worst-case scenario where you positively
detest your job.
Why are you still there? There is something holding you to it. Possibly it
is the salary you have become dependent on. Or the status your title
conveys. Or the hope that tomorrow will be better. Or something else
altogether, or some combination of all these.
It
does not matter. Write down a list of what keeps you in your job and
contemplate it. This is the positive side of the trade-off you are making.
Think of what it means to you and for those close to you and for others.
Be grateful for the salary you get. This is what you use to pay your
mortgage, run your house, feed your kids, and pay for vacations and
medical expenses. Think consciously about the fact that there are many,
many people who would trade places with you in a heartbeat.
Be
grateful for this. Take ten minutes or more and really, truly be thankful.
Next, think of what you do. Not everything you do during the day is
distasteful. There are some tiny bits that are actually fun and
rejuvenating. It may be calling on a particular customer. Or working with
a colleague in another department. Or the Monday-night company bowling
league. Think carefully and put down everything that leaves you
reenergized. You will be surprised by how long this list becomes. Do this
task over two or three days. Just keep the list with you and jot down
everything you can think of, including that the Coke in the vending
machine is really cold and the bathrooms are always clean.
Contemplate this list and be grateful for each item. Particularly feel
grateful for each job-related piece. For the tough project from which you
learned a lot. For the incessant travel that is making family life
difficult but lets you work out regularly at hotel gyms. For the officer's
post at the trade association that takes a lot of time but also gets you
known in the industry.
Feel the appreciation emanate out and envelop you.
Recognize that the frustration you feel is because you have spent and are
spending all your energy focusing on what you don't have. On the things
that trouble you in your workplace. On stuff that you would change by
force if you could. This is a hallmark of a me-centered universe.
Focus instead on what is right with your place of work. You can't do it
all the time, but do it as much as you can. Really do it. Put your heart
in it.
Do
you think of yourself as a meaningless cog in a giant gear wheel? Don't.
The enterprise in which you work is conveying real benefits to someone,
somewhere. There are households that are functioning because of the
salaries it provides, there are communities that offer services because of
the taxes it pays, there are customers whose lives are better because of
the products it puts out.
Think of the vast web of connections - with customers, vendors,
communities, the public, the government— that you are a small part of.
Does your company make the cables that go into the braking systems of
airplanes? Then you have a small role in helping millions of passengers
travel safely for vacations and for business. Be grateful for this.
A
magnificent cathedral was going up. Already it dwarfed structures in the
entire country and it had not reached half its intended elevation or a
quarter of the land it would cover. The incomparable frescos, the
marvelous stained-glass windows, the ornate carvings—these were all still
notions in the minds of the architect and the cabal of master crafts-men
he had assembled.
As
the architect walked along the dusty road to inspect his creation
unfolding, he passed three men toiling in the hot noonday sun. Each was a
young man in the prime of life. Each was performing the same task. A
painful, laborious task. Each would take a piece of rock, put it on a
large flat stone, and hit it with a sledgehammer till it broke. To each he
posed the same question, "What are you doing, my good man, and why are you
doing it?"
The first man answered: "Can't you see what I am doing? I am breaking
rocks and I do it because I get paid."
The second man answered: "I am making the small stones that will go into
the wall of yonder building. I do it so I can feed my family."
The third man answered: "I am helping construct this wondrous cathedral
you see before you. When it is finished, people will come here from many
countries to gaze on its marvels. I do it so I can learn how, for, truth
to tell, I can earn a better wage with less effort as an apprentice."
On
an impulse the architect summoned his assistant and asked him to keep
track of each of the men over the years.
Four decades later, the first man had died. He had remained a day laborer
working at even more menial tasks when his strength eroded. The second man
had retired and was living in modest comfort. He had, in time, become a
craftsman and achieved a reputation as a dependable, if unimaginative,
worker.
The third man? The architect had no need to ask about him. His fame was
still spreading, and the wondrous edifices he had conceived of dotted the
land.
DON'T break rocks that go into a wall. Be part of a team that builds a
cathedral. Even the water bearer in a caravan contributes to its success.
It's all in your head.
When you have done all this, it is time for the next step. Identify one
area in your work where you would like to improve your skills and become
more efficient. This should involve some learning on your part. Pick
something where your success will result in increasing the part of your
work you most enjoy.
Are you a financial planner who really hates cold calling but who loves
writing? Learn about direct mail and how to create compelling headlines
and copy so you can spend more time with clients and less time trying to
get appointments. Are you a boss who dislikes telling subordinates that
they are not pulling their weight but likes supporting your staff? Take a
course on Socratic questioning and providing effective feedback.
Do you wish you could stick up for yourself more when aggressive coworkers
invade your turf and "assign" you tasks you would rather not do? Go to a
seminar on assertiveness training or nonviolent communication. Do you like
dealing with clients who really respect your knowledge and the care with
which you provide services to them? Analyze your favorite clients, develop
a profile, and come up with a strategy for getting more of them.
For one month focus exclusively on acquiring the skill you have identified
and applying it appropriately. The learning is important. You have to
learn something that gets you out of familiar territory and increases your
knowledge base and your skill set. You will select the learning and the
measure used for evaluation.
If
you are the financial planner learning about direct mail, for example, you
may set a goal of learning what makes a headline effective and how to
compose a powerful one as your learning objective. Coming up with at least
ten headlines for the service you provide might be your performance goal.
Evaluate your progress at the end of the month. If you have not met your
goals, it may be because you need more time, or more resources, or because
your target was inappropriate. Set an-other target skill and performance
goal for the second month. It's okay to extend the previous month's
targets if you need more time and you have made progress. It's not okay to
do this simply be-cause you did not make an honest effort and therefore
did not accomplish anything.
You will often find that you are stuck and need to reach out to others who
have the knowledge and skills you lack. By all means, extend yourself. The
next exercise gives you powerful methods to elicit such help. Be
persistent.
Keep doing this for a year. At the end of this time, you will have learned
at least a half dozen new skills and improved your performance on many
functions. But more important, you will have rejuvenated your job. Not
only that, I will wager you dinner that you will also find that your job
performance has improved greatly and that you are actually enjoying it
much of the time.
Your increased satisfaction comes about for two reasons. You have acted in
your self-interest but you have also expanded your understanding of
self-interest. What you are really doing is using the Law of Increase and
the knowledge of the Universe as a force multiplier to your advantage.
When you stop explicitly focusing on yourself, on what you want and what
you don't have, and start focusing on how you can be of service to a
larger community, then you set loose some very powerful forces. Your
broadcast goes out, gets amplified, and comes right back to you. In fact,
this is the most efficient method of truly getting the happiness that you
crave.
When you first try this, you may feel that you are playacting. You don't
really feel sincere about being of service to others. That's okay. You
cannot overcome the "me-first" conditioning of decades immediately. Keep
playacting. Sooner or later, like the amateur actor mentioned earlier, you
will begin to sink into your role.
And that is when your life begins to take off?
Try it.
HELPFUL
HINTS
1.
Remember
that focus is the key. Your job makes you miserable if you focus on the
myriad things that are "wrong" with it. You can start making it totally
rejuvenating when you begin by focusing on what is
"right" with it. Ignore all the stuff—even if it is the vast
majority—that you feel is "wrong:'
2.
You will have many people tell you that when you ignore
the "horrible" things at work, you are actually helping them continue
and perpetuating the status quo. They might even accuse you of actually
"helping" the organization get away with all sorts of bad behavior.
Ignore all of this.
You
are doing this for you, not for the
company you work for. You always work in your perceived best
self-interest. Make this work for you!
Now that you
understand that everyone works in their own self-interest, you
can have a very different perspective on professional relationships. You
don't worry about what others will think
