Rozina Asif
IF you have to look at the time clock after every few minutes, wanting to go home eagerly, it’s a high time to switch the job. Most of us start our careers when we aren’t even sure what do we want to do and we just get these jobs just for the sake of getting into that professional practical life, or we’re just bored. We hardly get time to explore our interests and find our hidden talents so we could choose a profession that best suits us. However, after spending years and years of your life dedicated to that profession and you’re still not happy means that some efforts are lacking on your part to develop interest
If you can’t be in the job you love, love the job you’re in (or the way you do it) – Stephen Stills. Interest in anything triggers innovation and creativity and it leads to self-fulfillment and achievements. You feel motivated, charged, and ready for a new role. Every new idea and its implementation make you feel more empowered and stronger, hence as a chain reaction, you start enjoying every work you are doing. All you have to do is to find a meaning out of your job, working for the sake of job will not satisfy you internally until you start realizing your role in supporting the society in your given capacity.
• Analyzing yourself and your work environment is very important. Achieving on the basis of strengths and skills, working on weak areas, looking out for opportunities, and preparing for possible threats will help you develop confidence and interest in your job. • Train your mind, whatever you have learned till now may not be enough or at times may not be correct according to the situation in hand. Be always ready to learn, unlearn and re-learn. It is very important to follow the rules of the organization, they are made keeping in mind the needs and requirements of the employees and the employers. Without any rules, no organization can work, so respect and follow the rules until you become part of the decision-making team yourself.
• Connect with the people of the same profession, learn from their experiences. Read the literature of your organization and also of other organizations of the same type. Undergo different internal or external training sessions to further enhance your learning. Trust me all this will make you fall in love with your job. • Work on the principle of KAIZEN (a Japanese term for continuous improvement). One-minute improvement daily will bring magic to your life. Whatever you are doing, try to do it with little change and improvement this time.
Approach your day with little change in the way of greetings, or plan the same training session at a different venue…Maybe open-air collaborative sessions are more interesting than a monotonous style of training in an auditorium.
• Compete with yourself, not with others. You will grow when you learn. Never view the job as “I work for them,” but view it as, “I am working on myself, and my skills and they are paying me to learn while I become more valuable to them or someone else.
• Celebrate if you achieve your targets, involve people around. Companies win through sentiments. Mainly it is a culture of an organization that makes you either comfortable or uncomfortable. Be a source of positive energy for others. Such types of engagements and celebrations make you feel good and you are indirectly teaching others who are struggling as well.
We spend most of the time at work, so why not just try and enjoy and excel? These things will contribute to bringing about a positive change regarding your profession but if you are still not happy after implementing all these things, it’s high time to upgrade your CV and start looking for new job opportunities.
—The writer is an educationist based in Islamabad.