These are very important questions you must ask yourself when assessing your job satisfaction. If your work isn’t pressing your buttons the way it should be, then it will likely hinder your learning and performance, both in and out of work.
When I graduated from University I fumbled my way through a few jobs, feeling very frustrated with my own performance and not gaining any job satisfaction. I always knew that I could provide so much more value to people, if I could only find the right line of work.
After reading Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People some words on the page jumped out and struck a chord. It said something like, ‘it’s easy to get caught up in the busy-ness of life, trying to climb the ladder of success, only to find that when you get nearer the top it’s up against the wrong wall.’
It immediately became obvious that my ladder was up against the wrong wall.
I’d been working in market research for three years and knew I could serve other people to the full in so many other ways. So I quit, took some time out to travel and made it my mission to return home knowing with a high degree of certainty my ideal career direction.
This involved plenty of thought and research, but it was well worth it. I focused on the fact you tend to enjoy what you’re good at and you tend to be good at what you enjoy. The end resulted saw me starting my current business.
Want more articles like this? Check out the choosing a career section.
In the last five years of working for myself, I have found that as long as you can consistently provide enough value to enough people doing what you love, quickly and effectively at a price that they perceive to be less than the value they will gain, then you can make a very enjoyable and rewarding living.
Working out how to make money doing what I love has given me the ultimate foundation, one that I believe should come before everything else in your work. Without this foundation, the same problems and obstacles will hit you again and again. Drive, motivation, persistence, focus, enjoyment, customer management and your overall results are all limited when you’re in the wrong job. And when you’re in the wrong job, you’re probably not in it for the long haul.
If you have low job satisfaction and you feel that your ladder is not up against the right wall, then you might want to look into this. Sometimes it only takes a few adjustments. Sometimes it takes a complete career change. Whichever it is, once you’ve done it, you can then learn how to climb it, and even better – learn how to climb it fast.
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