Welcome to the Stop Sabotaging Your Success podcast, episode thirty-five. I’m your host, Cindy Esliger. This is the podcast focusing on what we can do today to take control of our careers and overcome the inevitable barriers to success that we encounter along the way. 

Have you ever taken the time to stop and think back to how you felt at the start of your career? Chances are you were excited about all the possibilities that lay ahead. You were probably full of ideas and most likely spent some time setting ambitious goals for yourself that you planned to achieve as you moved forward. You were excited to start developing your on-the-job skills and expertise, but is that how you are still feeling now that you are few years in on that career journey?

In this episode, we explore the options available to you when you experience a drop in your level of motivation and enthusiasm for the work ahead of you today and every day for the foreseeable future. I’d like to give you some encouragement as you struggle to find your work as exciting as you once did when your career first began. The reality is job satisfaction changes over time. 

At the start and possibly at the end of your career, you may feel like you’re on a bit of a high while it slumps or plateaus in the middle. There are several reasons for this. You may have mastered your current role and become a little complacent. That initial excitement may have faded into a distant memory of doing the same old thing, day in and day out. Or it might be a time to seek out new challenges to jumpstart your enthusiasm again. 

That may mean that you put yourself up for a promotion and let people know you’re interested in new opportunities. However, the competition is often fierce. You may find your peers are much less supportive than they were earlier in your career. It can be challenging to maintain good relationships with colleagues who are just as stressed and time pressured as you are, yet vying for the same few opportunities.

Family commitments may also contribute to a lack of motivation, and it’s common to feel pressured to find a healthy work-life balance. You might start questioning your organization’s driving purpose or be looking for some deeper meaning in your work. I’m here to tell you that you’re not alone in this. It’s natural to feel all of these things mid-career. It’s not necessarily a sign that something has gone wrong.

Your brain is looking for new challenges to focus on, and sometimes work doesn’t present those same cognitive challenges because you’ve mastered your current position and you’re not sure what’s next for you. You start questioning things. So you start wondering if the grass is greener somewhere else. And while changing jobs can bring exciting new challenges, it can also be incredibly stressful. 

A new boss may expect you to hit the ground running because of your expertise and may only provide minimal support. This can leave you feeling abandoned and doubtful that you’ve made the right move. Maybe you’ve even started questioning whether you want to continue in your field or whether it’s time to do something entirely new because you’re looking for a bigger challenge to keep you occupied. 

And then you start feeling unhappy, unmotivated, unfulfilled, and less engaged and you become less productive and less efficient with your time. Needless to say, quiet quitting may be a new term, but it’s not a new concept. Maybe it’s just becoming a bigger deal these days because more people are becoming aware of this feeling instead of just numbing it away. Maybe you notice yourself looking for excuses to take a day off because you’re feeling stressed, burned out, or even depressed. 

Remember, you’ve likely gained a lot of knowledge and expertise by this point simply from the time and effort you’ve invested in your career. You may even consider that you’ve learned all that you can in your current role and this makes you a valuable asset to your organization, but at the same time it can make you feel bored and dissatisfied. 

The best suggestion I can give you at this point is to add some new challenges to your routine to combat this, either personally or professionally. Take on some assignments that test your skills in new ways. Identify areas where you need to improve and figure out a way to expand your skill set. Maybe it’s time to focus on gaining some managerial experience if you have already explored all the facets of technical competence that are of interest to you at this time. 

And remember, you can do whatever you decide is worth doing, whether you particularly enjoy it or not. This is nothing new. By this point in your career, you’ve probably done a lot of things and I’m sure not all of them were fun for you. 

But getting over this one mental hurdle can open up all sorts of possibilities. It’s about shifting your mindset and trying to make adjustments to make your work more enjoyable, but you may never enjoy doing everything. And it doesn’t matter, you can still do it anyway. 

Tell your whiny inner voice to be quiet because the ordeal will be over shortly. You may be thinking, “I don’t want to”, and then just do it anyway. You’re doing it, you may not be liking it, but you’re still doing it. 

I’m sure you’ve been doing similar things all your life, like those good for you habits that we keep resisting, like exercise, health checkups, or even flossing. Our brains naturally come up with all sorts of reasons why we can’t do it, and there may be ways to make it more pleasant, but really that doesn’t matter. You don’t get a pass just because you don’t like it. You can do anything and you don’t have to enjoy it. You just have to decide that you’re going to do it. 

Instead of using all that mental energy to come up with the reasons why you don’t want to do it, just begin and you’ll be done in no time. Not all of life has to be fun. This may be easier for some people than for others. 

A few moments of not so fun stuff is not a big deal when everything else is pretty good otherwise. If all of life feels not fun, that’s a different matter. But we tend to have the ability to make a lot of life pretty enjoyable. 

With some strategic job crafting, you can spend the majority of your work hours on the things you really enjoy. With some planning in your personal life, you can have time for your own pursuits and even some interesting adventures. Be the sort of person who still gets it done even when you don’t like it, because you don’t have to like it all. 

Do you know what truly makes you happy? Happiness is different for everyone. What are the factors that contribute to your sense of wellbeing? It can be pretty subjective. Identify those and then try to incorporate more of them into your life.

Gain control over what you do and how you do it. That’s the dream job elixir. Having autonomy over what you do and when you do it can be priceless. It can change how you evaluate opportunities. But you can’t go after more control in your working life without a rare and valuable skill to offer in return. You will need something they see as valuable to offer in exchange.

You will undoubtedly encounter resistance from others since they may think that having more control over your work benefits only you. You will need to have built up enough career capital to exchange for potential flexibility in order to confidently ignore the resistance you will encounter by going against the status quo. 

Sometimes, to create a compelling career, you will need to develop a unique combination of skills that you can then leverage to get more of what you want. It’s about shaping your job to fit you better. 

Think back to a time when you worked on a project that you really enjoyed. Chances are the people were great, the work was meaningful, it brought you pleasure, and it challenged you enough to make you feel that you’d accomplished something really worthwhile. When a project resonates with us like this, we put forth our best effort because doing work like this feels like pure joy. It hardly seems like work at all. 

When we work on these projects regularly, we’re happy, productive, optimistic, and deeply engaged in what we’re doing. In order to target these kinds of projects that will give you this type of engagement, there are two crucial questions to ask yourself: 

• What type of work makes me feel good? 
• And, what are my strengths? 

I want you to consider that you could still find meaning in your current role.

Stop and think about which parts of your job you find most meaningful or rewarding. Which tasks fill you with excitement and purpose, and which give you a sense of achievement? Which are the most enjoyable for you, and what strengths or abilities do you demonstrate in doing those tasks? What comes easily to you that seems to be a struggle for others? And how can you use these abilities more in your tasks and projects?

The key is in finding the overlap. You can find a way to enjoy doing what needs to be done by doing it your way, by incorporating more of what makes you feel good into your daily routine. It’s about figuring out ways to spend more of your time on these activities while still accomplishing all that is required in your role. 

Many jobs are actually quite flexible. Their focus can be adjusted to fit the skills and preferences of the current job holder. It’s about subtly redesigning your job to play to your strengths and to improve both your satisfaction and your performance. Shift the emphasis of the job towards things that you can do really well and away from those where your performance is likely to be weaker. It might seem like a simple idea and what makes it a really powerful tool is that it allows you to increase the control you have over your own professional life, while impressing your employer at the same time. 

In our industry, practically any job can be crafted at least to some extent, and the best part is that you can start whenever you want, without necessarily consulting managers or having to wait for their approval. Achieving happiness in both work and life is feeling like your career is going somewhere and you’re improving at your craft. It’s a matter of consciously designing your work to make success possible while still working reasonable hours.

Here are five strategies to help create sustainable patterns, focusing on what matters most and minimizing what doesn’t. 

Number one is looking forward, by doing a weekly plan. 

Number two, doing real work, by making time and guarding that time for the compelling work that attracted you to this job in the first place. 

Number three, investing in people, by making time in your schedule to meet with people and mentor those who you see potential in.

Number four is being strategically seen, by making the necessary arrangements to join people outside of work occasionally. 

And finally, number five, building in margin. By ensuring that you get that decompression time, which is an opportunity to feel more connected to yourself. 

Maybe you have a job that sounds impressive on paper. Try to fall in love with your job all over again. If it sounds awesome to other people, it can feel amazing again for you too, if you make the time to do the stuff that attracted you to it in the first place. Block out time for that compelling deep work every week and protect that time fiercely. Because it’s important to still be doing the work that made you choose this career in the first place.

True happiness comes when we are so completely absorbed in our work, that time seems to stand still. That happens when you’re doing something difficult, but manageable, and you’re able to see real progress. When you’re finding the work fun to do, for its own sake, then you’ll be willing to shove everything else aside and stay up later than you should because you’re enjoying what you’re doing so much.

Maybe it’s about creating time to think, to strategize, and to plan. And when it all gets to be too much, and it’s no longer fun, try changing your scenery by going somewhere else for a bit. Even giving yourself an hour, perhaps at a coffee shop, can give you the quiet time to do the work you enjoy the most without taking you away from your in-office visibility. 

Morning hours tend to be great for getting things done, so match your important work to your most productive hours when you have the most energy and willpower. You can often find a sense of purpose in unlikely places, which might just transform how you see your job, have you feeling more engaged, and increase your feelings of job satisfaction. 

There are four basic steps to start crafting your job today:

1. decide what you want to change
2. look for a win-win solution
3. put those changes into practice
4. ensure those changes are having the desired effect

So back to number one, decide what you want to change because the two most important factors for job satisfaction include having an interesting role and having good relationships with the people at work. We can all make changes in any area of our jobs to adjust the way we work so that it’s closer to our ideal. 

That includes what you do, which are your tasks, with whom you do it, which are your interactions, and how you do it, which is your engagement. To change your tasks, improve the way that things get done using the skills that you already have. Change your working methods so that you generate better results and create opportunities to play to your strengths. 

Change your interactions by looking for ways to interact with people during the course of each workday. It’s important to have strong working relationships with your colleagues. The more connected you feel to others, the happier you’re likely to be. Build good working relationships by getting to know the people on your team. 

Make an effort to connect with someone this week. Consider getting to know someone you don’t often talk to. Show your appreciation when someone helps you out and do your best to return the favor. Most importantly, stay positive because people enjoy being around upbeat people. 

And to make changes in your engagement, redefine your existing work to reflect what you see as being the real impact of what you do each day. Find a way to do your current work in a way that you find more engaging and more purposeful. Forcing yourself to think in this way will lead to positive outcomes in your career. Creating more job satisfaction will in turn improve your efficiency and your efficacy. 

Crafting your job purpose may not involve any actual changes in the content of your work, but it can certainly add to your enjoyment. It won’t necessarily help you expand your skills or affect your output. So first, look for things that you can change in what you do and who you interact with to get the most out of job crafting. Then set meaningful professional goals. 

Take a step back and examine where you are and where you’d like to go. The first step in finding the right career direction is to develop a strategy to fulfill your ambitions. Spend time thinking about what you’d like to achieve in the next year, five years, or 10 years even. Then, figure out how you would need to improve your skills and expand your expertise to make that happen. 

Number two is look for a win-win solution. Evaluate how the change you want will impact you and your wider work environment. That might require taking into account your clients, your colleagues or your supervisor, and the organization as a whole. Effective job crafting depends on finding a win-win solution for everyone. It’s not only about what you get out of this change, which could be more enjoyment, a boost to your self-esteem, and more interaction with people from other departments, but it’s also about how your organization will benefit from this change. 

Avoid any temptation to turn a job crafting exercise into a win-lose situation where you win, but your boss, team, or organization suffers in some way. That might achieve your short-term goal, but the overall impact may well be negative. Make sure you’re headed for a mutually beneficial outcome and ensure that any changes are compatible with your work environment. If this isn’t the case, go back and see if other job crafting changes might work better. Make sure to take into account any responsibilities you have when considering what you’d like to do differently, because even small changes in how you work can have significant impacts on the people who depend on you. 

Number three is put those changes into practice. The key is to get rid of any symptom of ‘learned helplessness’, which is a psychological phenomenon where people become so accustomed to indifference to their contributions, that they believe that no matter what they do, nothing will come of it. Job crafting gives you the chance to turn this situation around. 

By refocusing your job on the things you enjoy and do well, you get to decide what’s going to make you feel more valued and more productive. And most importantly, it’s you deciding to make the necessary changes. Remembering that the only condition is that your decisions must have positive outcomes for your organization. 

And finally, number four, ensure those changes are having the desired effect. This means regularly checking on progress, and making adjustments, and continuing with what is working well. Because it’s important that these changes give you what you want, but also ensure that your boss and clients are happy with what’s going on. If everything checks out, and you feel good about what’s happening, you can let your changes become a habit.

There’s a few important things to remember. Your employer hired you to carry out your duties, and you accepted that when you took the job, so don’t expect to be able to redefine your job completely. And make absolutely sure that within your recrafted job, you’re fully meeting the objectives you’ve been given. 

You can always ask your manager’s opinion about how you’re crafting your job, but don’t wait for, or expect, their input or approval before you start. In job crafting, you take the initiative. 

You may want to compare notes with other colleagues who are appreciated at work and who clearly enjoy their jobs. You can ask them for pointers on how you might start doing something similar. You may uncover some interesting ideas that might also work for you.

Many professionals find their motivation and productivity lag when they are several years into their careers. This slump can leave you feeling unhappy and unfulfilled in your role. To overcome this, work on finding the deeper meaning in what you do, seek out challenges to test your skills in new ways. But remember, job crafting is something that you decide to do in order to change aspects of your current job so that it suits you better.

The idea is to begin to take tangible actions, no matter how small, towards your long-term vision. Focus on the skills that are important for what’s next for you. Follow the four basic steps: where you decide what you want change, you look for a win-win solution, you put those changes into practice, and then having checked that they’re having the intended positive effect, you make sure that they become a habit.

The most important element of successful job crafting is that it’s you who takes the initiative. You don’t need to wait for anyone to give you permission or instructions. Because the benefits you get from crafting your job include improved results, increased enjoyment, building new or improved skills, and a better ability to cope with your work. Creating a career you enjoy is about being who you are, and clarity comes from engagement, not thought. 

Your career is an experiment. Look for opportunities to take on responsibilities that will increase your exposure and skill in areas that matter to you. Don’t just do more inconsequential tasks. What you choose to add to your plate must in some way support your long-term vision, even tangentially. This may take you in some new directions, and this experience can help you determine whether this new direction is even a path you want to pursue. You might want to treat it somewhat like an internship, where you get some visibility into more aspects of what goes on in your organization, beyond your team or department. 

There are many ways to build skills and endless ways that you can reshape your role to fit you better.

And that’s it for this episode of Stop Sabotaging Your Success. Remember to download your Guide to Job Crafting at cindyesliger.com/podcast, episode thirty-five. 

Thank you to our producer, Alex Hochhausen and everyone at Astronomic Audio. Get in touch, I’m on Instagram @cindyesliger and my email address is info@cindyesliger.com. And if you liked this show, please tell a friend. Subscribe, rate, and review. 

Until next week, I’m Cindy Esliger. Thanks for joining me.