Take radical action to revamp your career
Often dissatisfaction at work is just burnout and can be fixed by adjusting your mentality or taking a decent vacation, but sometimes there is something wrong that is more fundamental — you are in the wrong role, wrong industry or wrong career path entirely.
Telling one from the other can be tricky, especially for those who are new to the workplace and unsure about what is a normal level of malaise.
So how can you tell garden burn-out from a real need for career change? Watch out for these warning signs and if you suffer from several of them, consider talking radical action to revamp your career:
1. Your Mondays ruin your Sundays: Is your job so daunting that you wake up Sunday morning already dreading Monday morning? If so, get out now.
2. You do not respect your superiors: While you may not always like them, you should always have respect for your superiors — they represent where you would like to be one day. If you do not, then the pay-off for all your hard work may not be what you wanted.
3. Lack of satisfaction or accomplishment: After hours and hours of work, you should be proud of yourself for a job well done. Even for the most trivial of tasks, if you are happy knowing that you contributed in some way to your company, your job is worth it. But if you are continually having ‘What does it all mean?’ moments and never finding satisfaction or feeling accomplished in any of your tasks (granted, not every cup of coffee or copy made will feel meaningful), then maybe two-weeks’ notice is in order.
4. Boredom: By boredom we do not mean you are sick and tired of making copies everyday — that is a task no one enjoys. No, what we mean is you have become bored with the industry; you look at what your superiors are doing and do not find any interest in it and the job descriptions for positions above you should dull as dirt.
5. Misery loves company: Do you find yourself gravitating towards the disgruntled employees of your company, bonding over the anger you have towards your job? You tend to be the company you keep, so if you are attracted to a more miserable crowd, you should get out before you become permanently bitter and cynical.
6. Conflicting ideas: Try to pick a career that is relevant to your ideas. If you find that your job conflicts with your principles, then save yourself the sleepless nights and restart your career search.
7. Your life has taken a turn for the worse: If your animosity towards your animosity towards your job is affecting your personal life, end this career now. Your job should not force you to take frustrations out on the people you love.
