Posted by fxckfeelings on September 17, 2020
The only thing worse than getting stuck working for decades in a field or job we hate is getting stuck in unemployment, poverty, and having to use take-out containers as toilets. So, if like our reader from earlier, you’re unsure about whether it’s worth trying to find new work, here are five ways to assess whether you can and should leave your shitty job.
1)Define What Makes Work Worth It
Become your own reverse HR department and make a list of the important things you need for a potential job; a certain amount of money is obviously important, but you may also require anything from a time-limited commute to flexible hours to a clear path to promotion. Don’t forget possible worst-case scenarios, like the likelihood that you’ll need a rainy day fund for an illness or disability. It’s not what you feel you need, like respect; it’s what you know you need to survive and make your hard work worth it.
2) Identify The Downsides
Once you do your objective assessment of what you want from a job, identify the things you dislike most about your current job and would never want again. Evaluate their impact, not in terms of negative emotions like anger or hurt but in business-like measures. For instance, consider whether the job makes it too hard for you to spend time with your family, exposes you to risk of harm or violence (from handsy bosses to unsafe equipment), or prevents you from gathering the experience and skills you need for your next job.
3) Explore Available Alternatives
Now that you know exactly what you do and don’t want, start looking at what’s out there in terms of better alternatives or even a job that will pay enough and meet all your absolute and/or have an additional something that makes it worthwhile to possibly move. Don’t hesitate to network or get informational interviews to figure out whether realistic alternatives exist.
4) Ponder Possible Improvements
Since finding a new job, let alone one that checks all your boxes, is never a guarantee, consider possibilities for improving your current job. It’s possible that just by faking happiness and a better attitude–by keeping negative feelings out of your voice and choosing your words more carefully—you might be able to reduce tension and criticism and improve your current situation as well as your possible future ones. Get coaching on your communication if you think it will help.
5) Make An Unemotional Choice
If you review your scorecard, you’ll be able to decide whether to leave based on objective criteria, not overwhelming hatred for your co-workers or your boss. Determine which essentials your job does and doesn’t provide, which irritants really threaten your family life, safety, or future, and what alternatives exist in your community that might justify a job search. Then, whether you enjoy your job or not, you’ll know you’re doing your best to make a living, using whatever opportunities life offers at this time.
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 3, 2020
Loving your work is nice when it happens, but when it comes to professional labor, the intended fulfillment is financial, not spiritual, or emotional; if it were always fun, worthy, and challenge-free, they wouldn’t call it work. There are a lot more important things than loving your work, like feeding your family and keeping the lights on. So if you really hate your job and want to leave, think hard about what you hate exactly and how/whether it could truly be better elsewhere. It’s all-too-normal to hate your job, but before you leave make sure it’s the job you hate and not work in general.
-Dr. Lastname
I’m in my 20s and have started to loathe my job at a very big company. My negative feelings aren’t arbitrary; my job has become very clerical and is dedicated to trying to influence a large bureaucracy with regards to projects I consider unambitious, in which I have little ownership or personal interest. I have nothing against making money or large organizations but want to work on problems that I find interesting and potentially meaningful. I think I appreciate that every path in life has some dirty work. But my sense is that my current path has more dirty work than it makes sense to accept and that the end of my current path is not one I care to reach. Even though I believe that I have logical reasons for wanting out and have made practical yet worthy plans for the next stage in my life, however, I still worry that I’m making an overly emotional decision fueled by frustration and unreasonable expectations. I don’t want to have to quit because I bought too much into feelings, or because I was a dumb millennial who thought the world would be handed to them on a silver plate after graduating from an elite college. My goal is to know that I’m making the right choice for the right (unemotional) reasons.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on September 28, 2017
It’s hard to watch your child struggle in school, even when your child is old enough to rent a car and the school work that’s giving him trouble is for his master’s degree. Your parental reflexes tell you that you’re responsible for alleviating his pain and, when you can’t, you still can’t help but feel like a failure. Remember, however, that the pressure shouldn’t be on you to absorb his pain, but on him to absorb your values so he knows how to persevere and do tough things when he decides they’re worthwhile. You can never fix your kid’s problems, but if you teach him how to approach problems with the right ethics and expectations as his guide, he’ll have a set of tools he can use to help himself for a lifetime.
-Dr. Lastname
I have a son who has continually struggled in high school and now in college. He is very bright but has difficulty keeping organized and completing his work. The doctor prescribed him medication which he doesn’t like taking because he doesn’t like how it makes him feel, but when he does take it he does do better at getting his work completed. He’s now in his third year of college and is still struggling. He feels that there is a stigma attached to medication… that it’s a drug and he’s cheating by taking something. It also prevents him from getting a good night’s sleep. But he’s otherwise so slow at completing tasks it takes him nearly an hour to eat his dinner when I cook a meal. My goal is to get any suggestions that you might have to make his life easier.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on December 13, 2016
“Work,” like “nazi,” or “feces,” is one of those words that has an inherently negative connotation (except for a very select group of Germans). That’s why, if you’re unhappy with your current job, it’s important to remember that work is supposed to be unpleasant and that the chaos and instability of a major career change might be even worse. Here are five things to consider before changing career tracks so you don’t end up a train wreck.
1) Brace Yourself and Make a Budget
Force yourself to do a full audit of your expenditures so you can figure out how much you need and how badly you need it. It’s easy to spend as much as you’ve got when you’ve got it, but some expenses are necessities (electricity) and others aren’t so much ([insert sports team here] cable package), and you need to know before dropping your current career what they add up to over time so you can estimate how long your savings will cover you.
2) Assess the Amount of Work-Time You Can Take
Working extra hours at a job you love, whether you need them or not, can do you serious harm if it consumes all the socializing and parenting time required to keep you sane and your family happy. Avoid switching to a job that will be too time-consuming, particularly work that absorbs you, until you know how much time you can really afford and how much time you absolutely need for other priorities. Your job is to manage your priorities, not be managed by whichever one grabs you the most.
3) Scout the Market for Your Offered Skills
Even when you’re highly trained and good at what you do, the market for your specific services may vary greatly according to where you live and whether those previously trained and equally gifted have also chosen to live in the vicinity. Don’t jump to a more interesting field until you know what the market will pay for your services and if you do or can live where that market is strongest.
4) Investigate Your Partner’s Earning potential
If you’re in a committed relationship, never assume that a career that’s perfect for you will work well for your spouse; Of course you want one another to be happy, but if your new career destroys your family dynamic, or the schedule that either one of you thinks is necessary for the kids, or even the other guy’s career, then your whole house will be an unhappy one. Partnership isn’t about unconditional love, but about mutual planning, so that you know the limits that you have to work with.
5) Ponder Plan B
If you don’t know how you can face another day of the job you hate but discover you can’t easily leave, don’t despair; failing to make a change now won’t doom you to eternal unhappiness. Even if you can’t find an alternative now, a good option may present itself later, and in the meantime you can consider ways of making your current job a little less painful, like working from home, finding an engrossing off-the-clock distraction, or just giving yourself little gift incentives for every week you get through without murdering your manager. Don’t promise yourself escape or career happiness, but do promise to make the best of what’s available and to respect yourself for doing so.
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 22, 2016
Young people in search of their vocational calling are often told to “find a job you’ll love.” What they aren’t told, however, is that most people love eating, having a roof over their heads, and getting to keep all of their teeth, and it’s easier and better to find a job you hate that helps you achieve those beloved goals than to search endlessly for work you’re passionate about while homeless and hungry for soft foods. Job satisfaction is never guaranteed nor fully under our control, so if working a shitty job is often unavoidable, working hard, whether your job calls to you or not, should be a source of pride, not shame.
-Dr. Lastname
I started my own business almost ten years ago, and it’s since grown really well with a staff of about 17 or 18. The problem is, I don’t enjoy the business I’m in very much at this point, so I am grappling with whether I should stop and do something else, or just carry on putting up with it. It’s hard to give up on something I’ve invested a lot of time and effort in, the business is doing well, I don’t want to put all my employees out of work, and I’m scared that I’d be throwing something valuable away and live to regret it in the future. My goal is to figure out whether (and how) I should stick to a job that I can no longer stand. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 18, 2016
When you’re deep in the throes of anxiety, it can be hard to manage your breathing, let alone your thoughts. Still, for some people, like our reader from earlier this week, anxiety can find a way to take over. Here are five ways to manage anxiety and launch a preemptive counter-attack before things get out of control.
1) Learn to Recognize Real Catastrophe
Tame your inner “Chicken Little” and learn how to appreciate how easily a fear of catastrophe can make you feel a catastrophe has actually occurred. Once you get better at reining in the overreacting, you can respect the way fear can help you run faster, and avoid the way it can run you into a wall.
2) Work with the Worst Case
If you’re stuck fixating on every possible impending disaster, then try using your almost-Casandra-like abilities to prepare instead of just giving yourself an ulcer. Do what you can to improve your odds, taking pride in your ability to act and make rational risk management decisions despite the urge to run and hide.
3) Gain Anxiety Expertise
Instead of looking for the one treatment that will work, become knowledgeable about all of them (which, given the limited number of treatments, is not too hard). Then try them out, looking for several partially effective treatment to provide some relief some of the time. Learn enough about treatments so you know what to do if it gets worse and your usual attempts to manage it stall out.
4) Reject Relief
Whatever relieves your anxiety—work, drink, hiding out and playing RPGs for days at a time—may become addictive, so be prepared to limit your favorite relief activities if you have to. Limiting them will, of course, make you more anxious in the short run, so relief can never be your biggest goal, because then you’re just replacing one issue with another.
5) Get Back To Your Goals
If you dropped certain goals figuring that anxiety would make reaching them impossible, pick them back up again and keep trying. Success isn’t based on how normal you feel or how much you were or weren’t able to achieve compared to your healthy self, but how well your life reflects your usual values, and how much you can still accomplish, in spite of the distracting, painful burden of anxiety.
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 16, 2016
Despite the bad rep it always gets, we like to remind people that anxiety can be a blessing and a curse. After all, anxious people sometimes do better work because they’re afraid of failing (and were once better at survival since they were afraid of being eaten). On the other hand, sometimes their fear of failing prevents them from working or doing anything at all. So if you’re an anxious person, learn how to use your anxiety to your advantage. Then, when it flares up too much, you will know how to use it for motivation while protecting yourself from the curse of paralyzing panic.
-Dr. Lastname
I recently completed several large and important projects at work in a brief amount of time. I am satisfied with my work and proud of myself for finishing, but due to the emotionally and mentally taxing nature of this work, I am exhausted in every way that it is possible to be exhausted. I find myself getting sick a lot, and I have had two anxiety attacks in a single week. Because I have a tendency toward anxiety, introversion, and depression, my exhaustion takes the form of wanting to withdraw and shut down. My supportive spouse is willing to shoulder more work at home (which leaves me feeling guilty), but, as much as I would like to, I can’t reduce my workload at my job at the moment. But I find it very difficult to deal with people there without feeling panicky and irritable. What I really need is like a month’s vacation, but I know that I am not going to get it without destroying my career. If I hang on for one more month, I will get a week off, but I have to make it until then. My goal is to get through the next four weeks without totally collapsing or burning bridges with colleagues and friends.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on February 11, 2016
Unlike with love, ‘tis better to have always been broke than to have known big bucks and lost them all. If, like our reader from earlier this week, you find yourself in the latter situation, you don’t need to find yourself poor in both cash and self-respect. Here are five ways to build pride when you’re poorer than you used to be.
1) Forget Myths About Former Success
You probably think your prior success was due to hard work, strong ability and perhaps some unique talent/chosen one status. If you re-examine the role of luck and remember the people you know who worked just as hard and got nowhere, it’ll become clear that you weren’t quite so chosen as you recall. When you realize you don’t control success, failure becomes less personal, and future success, should you be lucky enough to find it again, becomes that much sweeter.
2) Judge Job Quality Objectively
Since we’re often far too hard on ourselves, evaluate your employment situation as if you were considering a friend in the same position, using objective criteria to define good performance (and being a friend to yourself, as well). Never use criteria like how much you’re making, whether it’s more or less than before, or whether it’s more or less than your friends or, worse yet, enemies.
3) Don’t Avoid Downsizing Decisions
Cutting back has undoubtedly required painful and sometimes humiliating sacrifices, not just for yourself, but for your family, and often within judging distance of the neighbors. As much as you’d like to forget them, list them instead to remind yourself you had the courage to do what was necessary, even though it hurt.
4) Value Evaluation
Using the friend POV again, ask yourself how much you respect someone who is hardworking, happy, and rich versus one who lost his dough and is now hardworking but unhappy and poor, perhaps to the point of suffering. Remember your answer whenever you feel like a loser, and don’t hold back from reprimanding yourself for being a judgmental jerk.
5) Rate Effort, Not Outcome.
Without comparison to your former self or dreams of obscene wealth, evaluate your efforts to do a good job using the mental equipment and other resources that you actually have, not what you wish you had. If you’ve prevented discouragement from diminishing your effort, give yourself a high score. Just because you lost your good luck doesn’t mean you’ve lost your ability to work hard, try hard, and value what you do; you may have lost your wealth, but that doesn’t mean you’ve lost your worth.
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 9, 2016
If you find yourself going from a higher income bracket to a lower one, you don’t just lose income; you also find yourself changing where you live, whom you socialize with, and how you feel about yourself as person. So don’t allow the lingering humiliation of downward mobility make you feel like a failure. Work hard, not just to climb back up, but to remember what success really is.
-Dr. Lastname
Although I know that the best thing to do is to live in the present, I have been reliving and brooding over my past mistakes (mainly professional ones) quite a bit recently. I had a much better financial situation in the past than I do now, what makes it almost impossible not to beat myself up since I keep comparing the “today me” with more successful “past me.” My goal is to be able to start again, fresh, having learned the lessons of such mistakes.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 21, 2016
At the start of a new year, you don’t have to be like our reader from earlier this week—someone in an usual career going through an usually hard time—to feel motivated to get your shit together. Here are five easy steps anyone can follow to get back on track no matter how rocky the terrain of your life happens to be.
1) Get A List of Goals
Obviously, if you’re trying to figure out how to get organized and motivated, you need to know what’s important enough to you to work for. Define these goals in terms of values, not results, e.g., include making a living, not making a mint. Think about what’s necessary, healthy, and fun in the long run, not what your wildest dreams are made of.
2) Put Together Your Priorities
The hardest part of prioritizing is learning to both accept the fact that two or three things deserve highest priority and the skill of juggling them all at once. It gets easier over time, and in the process of learning, you also get better at figuring out whether some of your priorities are actually worth dropping or putting aside.
3) Choose a Coach/System
Without a domineering spouse, day job, or ticking bomb in the basement, most people have to develop a system for self-management, particularly when they have to juggle their own obligations on top of their spouse’s, kid’s, dog’s, etc. Since most schools don’t teach you executive functioning skills, take a course and/or hire a coach. It’s amazing how much better you can do with a good to-do list, a set of urgency categories, and an omnipresent schedule.
4) Suss Out a Schedule
Assuming you have lots of responsibilities, limited time, and a strong desire to have fun, you need to create a schedule. A schedule helps you develop habits and shortcuts, so that you can reduce procrastination, deal with top priorities first, and make time for the things you really want to do. Again, don’t hesitate to take a course or use a coach.
5) Learn Your Limits
Many people experience endless feelings of responsibility once they engage in a serious task and those feelings can become consuming, particularly if an outside source (boss, spouse, parent, etc.) believes your share of responsibilities is never big enough. Train yourself to judge your responsibilities objectively by comparing them to your job description, taking into account your resources, and determining what a good person should do. Then you can remain focused on what’s really important, not overextend yourself, and not only get your shit together, but get shit done with a real sense of pride.
