How to Love Your Job

It can be easy to forget why you love your job, especially when you have tight deadlines to meet, someone on your team isn’t pulling their weight, or if there is office conflict. For many people, remembering why they took the job in the first place can be a good place to start to remember why you love your job.

If it’s the core responsibilities of your job that bring you down, you might need to review your original job specification. Has the role changed significantly and have you moved away from the tasks you enjoyed doing when you started? Or is it that you need to ask for extra responsibilities? If you’re often bored at work, taking on a few extra tasks might engage you again.

If you still like the organization and what it stands for, then it’s worth discussing with your manager a way of reassessing your role to include the activities you enjoy doing but perhaps forgot about along the way.

People often begin to resent their job if they feel undervalued at work. If you try to give praise to your colleagues for the roles you think they perform well, you might find that giving praise means you receive it back. This could give you a boost in motivation.

Even if your job isn’t your passion, money can be a big motivator. If you think you’re worth more than your current earnings, benchmark yourself against the market using salary surveys and present your findings to your Manager.

If you feel your values are no longer aligned with your company, then try and concentrate on your specific role and making your work environment more enjoyable. If you can’t change the organization, you can at least make a difference to your team or department. If you really have a conflict of interest with your company and aren’t in a position to change that, you may find that staying there is stressful. It’s probably time to consider other options.

Although the office isn’t the place for a social life, it does help to have friends at work. Developing professional relationships is worth while; try organizing drinks once a month, so you all have something to look forward to and can socialize outside the office.

How does your role impact the wider business? If you ever feel like you don’t make a difference, find a way to measure the results of your work, and you might see the effect you’ve had. Use your appraisals to talk to your manager about your objectives in order to evaluate how you’re meeting them.

You’re not expected to love work every single day; everyone has times when they don’t feel they’re performing their best. Think about it from the bigger perspective; it’s important that you love the career path that you’re on, even if it’s not on a daily basis.

Not everyone can remind themselves why they love their job, perhaps because they’ve fallen out of love with it. For many people, it’s simply because they never loved their job, to begin with. If this sounds like you, maybe it’s time to move on. Browse our current jobs or talk to a Michael Page recruitment consultant to find one you’ll love.