Working any career comes with its own sacrifices and adjustments, perhaps the most pressing of all being that you actually have to show up, and can’t just claim for salary for being a cool person. We know, it’s heartbreaking.
Jokes aside, it’s true that once we pick a path, or make use of an opportunity, or just find somewhere with prospects in a shrinking market, it’s good to give your best effort and try to feel responsible in the role.
Yet this can be difficult if we don’t feel actualized in our career path. However, that doesn’t give us the right to put in the bare minimum effort, even if you’d rather be working in another field altogether.
Thankfully, even in that interim period, there are ways to feel more actualized and cared for in your career. It’s not always easy to know how or where that begins, but in this post we hope to explain why it’s possible, no matter where you work:
Do Your Best & Take Responsibilities With Sincerity
It’s good for our minds to begin approaching work with genuine intention, no matter how temporary the position feels. Our colleagues also notice sincerity in the workplace, and more importantly, you notice it too. You’ve likely also found that the way someone carries themselves through daily tasks says a lot about their character, and that character development doesn’t pause just because the job isn’t perfect.
When you handle tasks with care, colleagues start trusting your judgment more, which opens doors to different kinds of work and can sometimes give you opportunities that weren’t there before. Moreover, your reputation becomes something that travels with you from role to role, building up over time like interest in a savings account.
It’s nice to show up to work and know that you’re not there to do the bare minimum effort with a sense of frustration all day, if anything, managing your own attitude can be a healthier way to deal with the necessity of work.
Focus On What You Can Learn & Grow From
Every workplace can easily feel like its own small world with challenges and solutions that you can pick up on if you’re paying attention to what’s happening around you. In your office, the person answering phones might know more about customer behavior patterns than anyone in marketing, and the maintenance staff are often down to earth and worth talking to as well.
You can learn a lot with your eyes open, as the most valuable lessons often come from situations that initially seem pretty mundane. You might learn how to handle difficult conversations, or you could figure out how decisions get made in different organizational setups, or maybe you become better at pushing issues up to management thanks to this effort.
You may also find yourself picking up technical skills you need, which could become very helpful later on in ways you never assumed. For instance you might apply for your BLS renewal which could potentially help you save the life of someone in danger, which isn’t a bad outcome in any sense of the word.
Dig Into The Industry & Learn How It Operates
Whatever field you’re in, there’s usually a whole series of connections and plans plugging away behind the surface. For example, people hear ‘hospitality’ and think of waiters and chefs, but there’s logistics, sourcing, health standards, customer psychology and more going into each service. That’s the same with retail, same with admin, same with trades. Peeling back the curtain even slightly and seeing what you could learn makes it a lot easier to care about what’s happening.
Of course you don’t have to be an expert, but it’s more just so you’re not feeling like you’re doing random tasks in a vacuum. If you understand what the team two steps away from you is doing, or why the company pushes a certain policy change, it stops the weird disconnect that creeps in when nothing seems to make sense.
Work On Optional Placements Or Positions If Possible
Most places have one extra role no one wants to do, or the trial program that keeps needing volunteers. A lot of the time, those are easy to ignore, and if your plate’s full, that’s fair. But if you’re bored out of your skull, or not really feeling connected to the job, putting your hand up once in a while can help.
Now, that’s not because it’ll land you a promotion or you’ll be rewarded for it, but if it t switches up the routine, gets you working with different people, and could give you context you didn’t have before, maybe you can look at your job in a new light. Sometimes just shadowing someone else for a week makes the rest of the month easier, because it changes the pattern.
It also helps shake off the autopilot that sneaks in after a few months of repetition, which can happen in any workplace.
Seek To Collaborate & Relationship Build
Even if a job’s dull, the people rarely are. You’ll soon find out that not everyone will be your type, but there’s always someone around with decent energy, or weird hobbies, or a surprisingly smart take on something. Connecting with people without expecting anything in return is still one of the best ways to soften the edges of a draining role.
As such, being available for conversation, or not rushing out the door every chance you get, or offering help now and then, can change how people relate to you, and that usually opens up more support than you’d get otherwise.
Take Your Time & Get Into A Healthy Routine
This part doesn’t sound that interesting, but it probably matters more than everything else. If the only process in your day is sleep, work, eat, repeat, it’s no wonder the job starts feeling like a chore. Even having a small thing in the morning that’s just yours, like a quiet coffee, a walk, or reading something that isn’t on a screen, can reset your brain a bit. If you feel energised because you’ve worked on your sleep pattern, that’s a win too.
With this advice, we hope you can feel even more actualized in your work duties going forward.
