What Do You Do When Work Sucks?
Careers are a hard thing to build and even when we love our jobs so much, sometimes they just don’t love us back — this can be a one-off thing or it could be persistent and the most unfortunate thing is, it can make us develop imposter syndrome and a long-term effect is we end up hating our jobs, that time when you start telling yourself, “maybe I should have been an influencer instead”.
We have all had bad days at work, some days worse than others. Those times when you hold your head and wonder to yourself if at all any of it is worth it? Yeah, those are the days I am talking about.
The reason I have decided to write about this, is because I recently went through such a slump where it felt like the bad days were lasting a bit too long — to be honest, the month of June was tough. While I can’t get into the details of why I was having bad work days, or in my case a bad work month, I will try highlight how I handled things and hope that I can inspire, as always, based on a true story 😄
Get Yourself a Quick Win
One of the major reasons for bad days at work is failing at new tasks. Say you are working on something you have never handled before — while the excitement of getting it done may be prevalent, the risk of failing or not doing the task well is just as high. Constantly not meeting expectations when handling new tasks can be heartbreaking and we tend to forget that it’s our first time and hence we need to be more gracious to ourselves.
In some cases, the stakes are just too high. Our manager is disappointed, heck, it could even lead to poor performance review. So we need to handle this with utmost care.
The trick I use when new tasks start weighing me down, is to look for a quick win. In this case, it can be picking up another side task that you could do with your eyes closed (that thing you do so well) or taking a break altogether and burying your head in a hobby that will excite you — the goal here is to feel the rush of a win then using this rush to ride the bad wave.
Ask For Help, No One Knows Everything
Another trick is to avoid the slump altogether by communicating before hand. Let your manager know that the task at hand is new to you and you’d like guidance on how to do it best. I know we all have that urge to appear as if we have all the knowledge and experience in the world but you’d be surprised how many people are out there winging it and crossing fingers it all works out so instead of risking a failure, just ask for help.
Call Out Blockers
I don’t know if you have ever been in a position where you’re not succeeding but it’s entirely not your fault, there’s a human being standing between you and your win — be a snitch.
Unless you work in a gang, no one will be giving you stitches. Don’t be the nice person who constantly takes the fall for others, if someone is a blocker, tell them privately, if they still don’t act on it, call them out to the wider team or at least to your manager — it’s the reason stand up exists.
Level Up
I don’t mean level up in terms of getting new skills, nope. I mean quit and move on. If you are not given the right tools and environment to succeed, just start looking elsewhere. Sometimes you are not the problem, the employer is — don’t go down with a sinking ship, unless kampuni ni ya mama yako then wah, sasa utado?
