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4 Reasons Your Job's Not Fun Anymore

Featured Author:

Renee Weisman

Renee Weisman, owner of Winning at Work, charted new territory as one of the first woman engineers, managers, executives and working mothers in the male-dominated semiconductor industry. Over her 40 years in education and industry, she learned to make gender differences work for her — and teaches others how to do the same. She is a frequent speaker at corporations and conferences around the US. She teaches classes tailored to enhance women in their careers and to enable male managers to better understand how to capitalize on the differences between men and women in business. She is the author of Winning in a Man’s World and 5 Ways to Get a Man to Listen. Add her to your Excelle network!

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• 10 Tips to Always Get What You Want
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What happened? You used to love to go to work, in fact people said you had so much fun at work, you’d probably work for nothing. But somewhere along the line, you lost that spark. Where did it go? Even more importantly, can you get it back?

Don’t worry. This is actually a very common mid-career “crisis” for a lot of people, although it has been especially aggravated by today’s difficult, depressing, do more with less, downsized environment. But if you are finding that work is no longer interesting and has become a chore, it’s time to take stock and reevaluate where you are.

The reasons your job has lost your excitement usually fall into one of these categories

1. You are bored, unfulfilled or no longer challenged by your job.
2. You feel overworked and underappreciated.
3. Someone is making the environment less pleasant (your boss, a coworker)
4. It has nothing to do with work but something outside is affecting your attitude

1. Bored and Unfulfilled

Let’s start with the first. Every career has ebbs and flows. When you start, you are on a rapid learning curve and everything seems exciting and fresh. As you get more comfortable in your role, you start to contribute and people start coming to you to get their problems solved or for advice and answers. You get results and you get recognized. You feel like you are a key contributor.

But eventually, if you are not expanding your role or bringing in new challenges, it all gets to be old hat. If you find as you approach a task that you are saying to yourself, “here I go again” or “I’m doing this for the 200th time” or “ho hum”, then you need something fresh to bring you a new perspective.

In most cases, you can do that in the very company you work for, perhaps even in the same position. Is there a new project coming up? Is anyone leaving who has been working on something you would like to get more involved with? Perhaps it is time to schedule a career planning session with your manager.