Contemplating Life’s Choices

I remembered I needed to get a post together for this week on Tuesday and ended up sick and slept most of the day on Wednesday so here we are a little late but making it happen. Our question for this week is…

Early in my career the answer to this question was super tactical stuff like I don’t enjoy filing papers or making copies. It wasn’t that I ever felt I was above it I just didn’t enjoy routine tasks that felt like same work different day. I loved work that allowed me to learn new things or to grow in some way and printing monthly reports was not it for me.

Now, I will say as I’ve matured into my career I realized that literally every job will have some component of it that you don’t LOVE. Sometimes the things you don’t love about your job are unavoidable because it is a piece of what you’re responsible for that you can’t delegate, automate, or otherwise get around and that’s ok. If you find there are large portions of your work you absolutely hate that’s an indicator to look for a different role and that knowledge is helpful too. If the portions you hate are small you may be able to find ways to automate or delegate or you may just create systems that allow you to blast through the stuff you don’t love so you can spend more time on the things that make you happy.

This question helps you understand if it’s time to look at preparing yourself for your next or a different role or if maybe it’s not your job but another factor that’s making you question if it’s time to move on. Sometimes when you look at this question you’ll find there’s really nothing about the job itself you don’t like but perhaps it’s the company, your boss, your team, or something else. That’s great insight to help you understand if it’s time to move on or if you can find something new within the same company. Often organizations will have ways for internal applicants to explore other roles and if your company provides that option doing a job shadow or some informational interviews could help you find something that’s a better fit.

So what are your least favorite parts of your role? Are they really specific or is there more of a theme like preferring to work alone vs in teams or enjoying working with data over people. There is no wrong answer.

We’ve got two more questions to run through for this Career Discovery series and then we’ll spend a week wrapping things up and talking through how to action what you’ve discovered. If you haven’t started yet, or this is the first post you’ve seen in the series, I’d encourage you to go back and jot down your thoughts on all the questions and be prepared to contemplate with me in a couple weeks. I’ll share more of my insights as I’ve been reflecting too and hope this is helpful for others as it’s definitely been helpful for me.