By Fiona Craig -
Dear Fiona,
It may be the colder weather but I have been feeling very negative at work and dread the thought of the week starting. How important is how I feel about Mondays when it comes to working out my career future?
Erik
Dear Erik,
I’ve been there. I got to the stage of crying on a Sunday night at the thought of going to work the next day. It’s a terrible feeling and it’s the reason I now do what I do – I vowed I’d help as many people as possible who felt that way NOT feel that way.
You need to be a realist – it’s not realistic to expect that you will LOVE your job every day. We all have times when we’d rather pull the doona back up over our heads and sit the day out. That’s natural.
However, I recommend to clients that you aim for 70/30. That is, 70 per cent of the time you enjoy your job – you look forward to the work, to seeing the people you work with, and to talking to and working with clients. Then 30 per cent of the time work may not fill you with so much joy. Maybe you have a difficult conversation coming up, or you have stopped growing and need to start learning new things.
So the question you need to ask yourself is: is this a 30 per cent thing? Or is it more serious? If it’s more serious you may need to consider a change in your working environment, or perhaps in your career full stop.
How do you know? I recommend you take the following steps:
