"Find a job you like and you add five days to every week."
-H. Jackson Browne, author of Life's Little Instruction Book


Only 29% of workers said they were engaged (i.e., passionate and profoundly connected) with their work while 16% defined themselves as actively disengaged, or acting out their unhappiness.

- Gallup Poll, 2004

APRIL.MAY EXCLUSIVES
"I Hate My Job"

By Melanie Lasoff Levs

Find out how to make a job you hate tolerable – or what to do next when you've decided to leave.

Persevere While Planning
While you look for a job and persevere in the miserable one, immediately build pleasurable activities into your everyday life, says Rebecca Kiki Weingarten, a career and life coach and co-founder of New York City-based Daily Life Consulting. Go for coffee or a walk during the day, or plan enjoyment for the weekend. One of Weingarten's clients started a side business selling her paintings. Another went horseback riding every weekend. "When people are miserable, everything looks terrible and everything seems hopeless," Weingarten says. "It releases some steam so you can look at [the situation] clearer."

Experts also recommend is designing your dream job. Write down what it feels like and looks like to walk in the door, where you sit, what your tasks are, who is around you, your salary, your work hours and every other detail. Draw on this ideal situation in your current job and as you search for a new one, Weingarten says. "We're making it conscious so you're empowering yourself to make this decision, to plan it as opposed to your life just happening to you," she says.

That's what April Prather, an executive with a long career at Eastern Airlines and American Express, did. Her college-aged daughter was tired of hearing her mother complain and suggested she'd be good at medical massage. Prather, now 58, went to school at age 50 to train for a whole new career, which she started in 2000. Her practice in Bethlehem, Pa., is thriving, she says, adding that she did not let her unpleasant job paralyze her. Instead, she kept her options open and took action for the more fulfilling career she deserves. She advises other dissatisfied working women to do the same. "If you leave yourself open, an answer will come. It's not easy to get there," Prather says. "But if you're open to that change, you can find some real happiness."

Thinking you hate your job?

Here are some resources and experts mentioned in PINK's April.May article to help you make sense of your situation and figure out your next steps to deal with job dissatisfaction.

1) Sherron Bienvenu, career coach: chinup.net

2) Liz Ryan: WorldWIT online professional women's network: worldwit.org

3)Laura Berman Fortgang: author of Now What? 90 Days to a New Life Direction (Jeremy P. Tarcher, 2005), available at stores and online: laurabermanfortgang.com

4)Rebecca Kiki Weingarten, Daily Life Consulting: dailylifeconsulting.com

 

10 Ways to Fall Back in Love with Your Job

1) Try to improve relationships.

2) Openly communicate with your boss. You may have to brag on what you do because he or she may not know.

3) Delegate some of the things you don't like to do.

4) Get feedback. Ask people how you're doing.

5) Do something for yourself, such as a project that reminds you of why you took the job in the first place.

6) Get rid of at least one task that doesn't need to be done.

7) Enjoy working with other people.

8) Keep a sense of humor.

9) Your health is your wealth. Take care of your body. No job is worth sickness.

10) Get a life outside of work.

 

Source: Jane Boucher (janeboucher.com), consultant, associate director of the McGregor Organizational Institute of Antioch University and author of How to Love the Job You Hate (Beagle Bay Books, 2004)

 

Hate your job? Read the full-text of "I Hate My Job" in the April.May issue of PINK.