What to do if the work has ceased to be fun
TEXT: Olga Miloradova
Work is a very strange social paradox: when she is not there, everyone is looking for her; when she is, they complain about her. In this case, it is not only a banal necessity to look for means of subsistence: often other factors have a far greater effect on our satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the workplace. Actually, it is about these factors that it makes sense to talk about, if we want to figure out what makes up our motivation.
Most often, the success of a person's employment is estimated by the level of his salary. But various studies suggest that job satisfaction is often more important than earnings. So, if your friend manages to overwhelm you with a bunch of messages on social networks during the working day, you may need to stop jealous of him and ask if he is satisfied with his work and doesn’t want to talk about it.
The feeling that something is about to happen (the company closes, the places will be cut down - in a word, uncertainty about tomorrow), it would seem that we should be pushing us to exert our last strength and to prove something. But, first of all, the “fight or flight” reaction helps only for short periods of stress, and in a chronic condition, it just exhausts. Secondly, if stress does not stimulate you, but vice versa, it forces you to hide your head in the sand (evolutionarily we reacted to danger, hiding, in the hope that the predator would not notice us), there is a risk to spend all our life (or will be reduced) in an uncomfortable, unloved work that delivers only suffering.
The lack of positive confirmation, as adopted in our society, where you are more likely to be scolded for the shortcomings than to be praised for the successes, also over time greatly reduces motivation. Why do something if you do not appreciate, never praise, and the better you work, the more they charge you? No less important is the relationship with colleagues. Everyone understands that work is not entertainment, but everyone also knows that it is much more pleasant to come to where you are smiling, where you can have a couple of phrases and jokes than where you are not happy with anyone and, accordingly, too.
It helps to stay up over the years in one department, to slightly change the direction of work
All of the above, it seems, is clear to everyone and has long been known - it would seem, why do you want to raise this conversation? And the fact that the only way out of all these situations is to change the workplace. And since most of us often find it unpleasant, scary, or too lazy to change anything, even if the place is extremely bad, we will always be tormented by the thought that “sometimes worse” or “there is at least a good salary” . In response to these dubious arguments, it should be recalled that we live only once and life in a situation of chronic stress can be very short (arterial hypertension, stroke, heart attack - only a few of the possible effects of stress).
Last but not least, it is worth mentioning burnout syndrome, also known as professional burnout. In fact, it is such a mechanism of psychological protection, when in response to the psycho-traumatic effects, the emotional reaction is partially or completely turned off. It sounds seemingly good: we do not respond to psychotrauma, protection mechanisms included. But besides the bad emotions, the good ones are turned off - if it is a question of the working process, this means that interest in it completely or partially disappears.
This syndrome is characteristic of representatives of those professions whose work is connected with constant contact with people: doctors, teachers, social workers, rescuers and others. Agree, in this case, without interest, it is quite difficult to continue to move on, while remaining a pleasant person. The reason for this is the predominance of demands over human resources: starting with the need to present emotions that you do not feel, high psychological stress, often monotony and hopelessness of activity, and ending with the same insufficient support, evaluation and feedback. To fight this state, you need to relax more, find new meanings, try to move within the framework of the profession, at least "horizontally."
In principle, some small shifts, if you are not ready for radical changes, are useful for everyone, and not just for representatives of "contact" professions. It helps to stay up over the years in the same department, somewhat change the direction of their work, even if within the framework of the same specialty, it is possible to get new knowledge and to migrate a little to nearby areas. Considering what a huge part of our life is work, try to make at least a little more interesting what you have, and take risks and start anew, if nothing pleases at all.