How to Increase your Job Satisfaction

Stuck in your current job? Sometimes you can't just up and leave for the dream job that fulfills you and also gives back to the world, but you want to be able to survive or improve your current job.

Here are 8 tips to help with making the job you have more aligned with your values, and to make it more satisfying and meaningful:

1. Build relationships

Hang out with positive co-workers, get to know more people, join groups so you can expand your at-work social network with great people.

2. Get involved in social benefit opportunities provided by the company

Make a contribution that extends beyond yourself. Join, or create a movement that has some eco or social goal within the company.

3. Mentor a colleague

Help a team mate or intern advance their skills.

4. Change the way you work

so you can spend more time and energy on tasks you find fulfilling. 

Or change existing tasks by introducing elements that inspire you.

5. Take stock of where you are relative to your future goals

Examine where you in relation to where you see yourself going. Are you on track?

6. Set some self-improvement goals

Think how you can add to and expand your skills so that you are moving towards your longer term goals.

7. Try a lateral move within the company

Would a lateral move provide a job that is more aligned with your values?

8. Incorporate your passion and interests in your work life

For example, you love to help people; where can you use this in your current job? 

'Work That Matters' means what anyway?

How do we know we are doing work that matters?

How can we tell that the work we are doing is work that matters? How do we define 'Matters'?

Probably the answer to this depends a lot on your personal values and culture and society - so a religious group is going to define it differently to a close-knit tribal society, or an autonomous and freedom-seeking modern urbanite. But here is how some others have defined it.

In a study of ethical work Garner, Csikszentmihalyi and Damon defined 'Good Work' as "work of expert quality that benefits the broader society".

The Pachamama Alliance talk about "bringing forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, socially just human presence on this planet".

Buddha: "Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others."

Lao Tzu: "If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence".

Rumi: "Your work is to discover your world, and then with all your heart give yourself to it."

I think 'Work That Matters' is work that helps the world to thrive, that makes the world a better place for everyone. I think that giving, not getting, is the way forward. And that many of us want to contribute to something meaningful and purposeful in this way.

Imagine: What if everyone was engaged in work that matters?

Imagine: What if you were?

What is Meaningful Work?

What exactly is meaningful work anyway?

A similar question is: What does 'matter' mean, in the sense of the results of work, but we'll examine that in the next post. That will also address 'meaningful' to others and the world. This one is about how does work become meaningful personally to you. What aspects of a job make it of personal value to you?

Roman Krznaric, in his book 'How to find fulfilling work' suggests that there are 5 aspects that make a job meaningful:

1. earning money

2. achieving status

3. making a difference

4. following our passions

5. using our talents

He defines Money and Status as extrinsic motivating factors - ones where work is a means to an end. The other 3 - making a difference, passion and talents - are intrinsic. Work has value as an end in itself.

Now there is a lot to say about all of these, but here's a snapshot

Money

The problem with being only motivated by money is the 'hedonic treadmill' - so enough is never enough. Our expectations are always rising the more we get, and we end up forever yearning and never arriving.

Social Status

As Krznaric defines it, this can come in 2 forms - having a prestigious job that is admired by others, and our position relative to others. A bit like the money one, there is no 'there' there, we don't arrive, as there is always a higher level of status to be achieved. And, at its core, it's really all about what others think of us.

Making a Difference

This is about doing work that makes a positive contribution, to people and the planet. As Krznaric says "we want to be able to look back in old age and feel we have left our mark". This is work that benefits broader society, or furthers a transcendent ethical cause.

Passions

Do what you love, love what you do.
Can you transform your hobbies or interests into your job? Works for some, not for others.

Talents

Do you want to realize your potential by stretching your talents? The choice here is to become a specialist, or high achiever in a narrow field, or a generalist or wide achiever across many fields.

Back to Krznaric: "pursuing a career mainly because it offers the tempting rewards of money and status is an unlikely route to the good life". "...following our values, passions and talents is the most likely way to satisfy our hunger for fulfillment".

So there's our choices laid out. Now we need to look at what we are trying to do.

Living with Passion and Soul

Your purpose in life is to live with passion and choice and soul. Sounds easy, right?

Well, let's unpick this a bit to see how. There are lots of different areas in our lives. So, does this mean your hobbies? Your relationships? Your recreation? Your work?

Hobbies are not so hard, most people do hobbies that are aligned with their soul because, why bother otherwise? It's a hobby, totally optional and done for fun. So you like to quilt. Or garden. Or play the flute. It's your happy place, when time flows, and you enjoy it. You doing it with passion and choice and soul.

But where do you spend the most time? Where do you put the most productive effort? I would be picking that it is at work. So, how do you live a life of passion and soul at work? This is the essential question I think. And there are several different strategies, that fall basically into the following categories:

1. Make your current job better

2. Change jobs to a better one

3. Start your own business

4. Do things out of work hours that compensates for lack of soul in your job

So, I think each of these deserves a bit of investigation, and in the next few blog posts I'll dive a bit deeper into each.

How to Live a Life you are Proud of

OK, so you have applied the Life Regret Test, and are making choices that won't be disappointing to your 90 year old self.

But what about the advanced version? The Rocking Chair Test? Is it enough to just not regret your life? I don't think so. I would like to thrive, to have a life that I am proud of when I look back at 90 from my rocking chair.

And have you bought into the story that you need to find your 'thing', so you can do that, and then you will be proud? If only you could just find that 'thing' then you know you will be OK at 90.

But maybe its not actually like that. Maybe, to be proud of your life at 90, you just need to do things that are aligned with your soul and values. You need to live with passion. Each choice in your life can be weighed against "does this feel good and right for me?" rather than "what is the special meaning of my life and how do I do that?".

Wouldn't that be so much easier? And what if it is true? Well, then, let's get started! There's no 'thing' to search for, each choice is a 'do' or 'don't do' and you can do it right now.  Like, RIGHT NOW. No waiting to find your purpose, but your purpose is here. And it is to live with passion and choice and soul.

How to Avoid a Life of Regret

This one I call 'The Life Regret Test'. Or maybe 'The Rocking Chair Test'.

So, you are faced with many choices, on a day-to-day basis. And each of these choices add up to life directions. And some of these life directions are just what you are hoping for. And some are not. Some might even seem like a backwards move.

You know, that job that you took that turned out to totally suck, the boss who had no morals, and the client who was the devil's spawn. That type of bad choice. But...you have to pay the bills, maybe this is all you can get, maybe its all you are good enough for...?

Or the little choices...do you have a hissy over that thing that he said, because it is just so wrong and disrespectful? Well, maybe.... How to tell?

And this is where the Life Regret Test comes in. It works like this:

Imagine you have survived and made it all the way to 90. Sitting in your rocking chair contemplating your life. Is this 'thing' that you are wondering about, did it turn out to be important? Do you regret making a decision this way? Or what about if you make it the other way?

Some things will turn out to be totally meh, of no consequence at all, probably not worth even stewing over. Some will be huge - that job you might stay in, or not - and have large impacts. Others will be acts of love, or ego - your choice. Which will you be most proud to remember as a 90 year old? Which will register on your Life-Regretometer?

Your Life's Purpose

Have you felt, all your life, that you have a greater purpose? You know, that sort of purpose that only you can do. That you alone have been sent here to perform, and if you mess it up there is a hole in the world caused by your failure to perform. Your unique talents and skills and passion and ... yes, purpose. Pressure much!

And if only you could figure out exactly what it is, then off you'll go, lala, into the sunset to do it, living happily ever after, following your passion, doing the one thing that you are destined to do. Or not, leaving the world without your specific, necessary contribution.

Yes, so have I. How insidious it is, that feeling that I am so special there is a particular, predestined thing that I must achieve before I die. Quick, quick, better get on it then, right now!

Well, what if that is all a lot of bunkum? What if living your purpose is not so much about finding the one thing, that preordained specific thing, but about living with passion and vigour, following the moment, allowing things to unfold and choosing those things that resonate with your inner soul. Wouldn't that feel so much better?

So, I'm going to explore this in posts that follow, see what unfolds, and where that might leave us destiny seekers. Could be quite a journey.