About Work

For me my goal was always to have a job like a hobby. Something I actually like doing. Maybe it’s not very nice every day, as when my hobby were volleyball and we lose a match, but in general I would like to love my job. In the morning I would wake up and go to work because I genuinely like it.

However when talking with people on the street you easily get the impression that most people don#t like their jobs. About 80% don’t like their job I would say.
Excuse me, I have a simple question: WHY?

Why don’t the people quit their job and find another one?
Of course not everybody can do every job, like become a football star when you are 50 years old or something like this. But most people can actually change their lives and get educated in what they actually want to do and then do that job or stay in the same job and at least change the company if they don’t like the current one. Only that would already dramatically increase the competition between companies for good workforce and so improve joy at work for everybody.

Habituality:

Somewhere deep in our societies soul we have saved that there are bosses with a whip and everybody who is not a boss is a slave and gets beaten when they don’t work. Slaves are FORCED to work.
Somehow our society in general appears to have the picture that work is bad and that one „must go to work“. How about sitting at the breakfast table and telling your spouse: „I WANT to go to work now.“ Sounds pretty weird, right?
But it is actually true. There is nobody with a whip who will kill you if you don’t go to work.

Different Desires

Actually I think it usually is a mix of different desires in our brain: Some part likes to stay at the breakfast table, some part wants the money to pay the rent, some part likes the challenges and reputation at work, some part fears the stress or the horrible colleague you have to work with.

Your Responsibility

In my point of view as an employee you should grow up and admit that there are those different desires in you and that as a result of those you make the free decision to go to work – or not.
You are responsible for yourself. It’s not your boss, nor your parents, it’s you. It’s not necessary to complain all the time – and also complaining doesn’t change anything. Accept it. 🙂

Once you agree that it is all in your hands, the first step I would recommend is to make a list of the things you like and you don’t like. Then see what you can do about those you don’t like. Think on what you can change and what you can’t. And even for the things you can’t change, maybe you can still find a different way to make the task interesting.
Once I worked as a driver and had the same client every morning and this client wanted no talking and no music. So this one hour was very boring. I didn’t like it. Until I challenged myself to drive as smooth as possible: Only very gentle breaking and acceleration, and gear shifting in a way you won’t recognize it. From that moment on the rides were pretty interesting for me. 😉

In case you are unhappy about your work situation overall for a longer time and can’t fix it: Find a new job and then quit the old one. Many people are afraid that they won’t find a new job, but how many have really seriously tried? It’s not always easy, I admit. But in many cases it may be pretty easy. At least you can try, can’t you?

The Environment

Of course the environment is also pretty important. A self-winding team with a vision. Where jokes are flying around and you have the feeling you work for something meaningful. People help each other, it’s not boring, but you are also not in panic. All this helps to make employees happy.
Many companies already realized this and introduce things like SCRUM, a table tennis room, or they run sections of the company as independent startup-like sub-branches.
And also as an employee you can probably team up with your fellows and or the head of your group and introduce things like this. – At least I had positive experiences doing so myself: I did changes to the way the our team worked with the team while our boss was on vacation. We just saw it making sense, so we did it. I thought the boss will kill me once he’s back … Instead he said: Thanks for doing my job! This is great!

Conclusions

Yes, sometimes there are reasons to be unhappy at work.
But first of all often it is the mindset, not necessarily the circumstances. Second, also the circumstances can be changed. And in the worst case you can at least try to find another job … In your field or in another?
Probably my key message of this post: You can shape your life! Do it! Find allies, spread the word, be happy all together! 🙂
Sounds like a good idea? – Let’s do it!
Have a comment? – Let me know! 🙂