Tweet

Time to Quit Your Job - Or Your Career?

Written by: Elizabeth Lengyel

Article Overview: How do you determine if you need a job change or a career change? Are you feeling tired? Are you dreading Monday morning? Are you short-tempered and impatient with coworkers and family members?

Time to Quit Your Job - Or Your Career?

Are you feeling tired? Are you dreading Monday morning? Are you short-tempered and impatient with coworkers and family members?

Everyone, even people who love their jobs, sometimes experience Sunday night blues or irritability from time to time. However, if you feel blue every Sunday night, pay attention, you may be suffering from work inertia.

Here are the symptoms:
o You often feel tired and lack energy
o You are last to arrive and have difficulty getting into your work.
o Your work doesn't motivate you - you just go through the motions.
o You dread going into work, especially after weekends and holidays.
o Things that you used to care about no longer elicit the same strong emotions.
o You are impatient and short tempered with coworkers as well as family members.
o You are indifferent about things you once felt strongly about and don't stand up for your
beliefs or situations you'd like to see changed.
o You lack interest or pride in your work.
o You complain - a lot.
o You think about quitting but don't for one of these reasons: "It'll take too much effort to
look for a new job." "I'm too tired to even think about a change." "Better the devil you
know than the one you don't."

If you have these feelings often, you know you're not happy at work. How do you change your situation? Do you need a job change - or a career makeover to put that spark back in your days?

To figure out whether clients need a job change or a career change, I often ask them to reflect on the following questions:

o What is really getting in the way of being happy at work?
o Is it the actual work you're doing?
o Is it the people you work with?
o Is it because your employer doesn't recognize your strengths and value?
o Do you even know what your top strengths and values are?

Take Susan, for example. When I asked her these questions, she discovered that she loved her current pay and benefits, but she felt bored and frustrated at work. She had no passion for her profession. She worked alone with numbers all day, but she craved a team environment where she could use her innate creativity and apply her wealth of ideas. In short, Susan needed a career change that encompassed her interests and ignited her passions.

Ask yourself what makes you unhappy at work. Armed with honest answers, you'll be in a position to determine if you're bored and have reached a plateau; if you enjoy what you do, but not where you're doing it; or if you need to find a better career fit.

Don't stay in a career rut. Be open to new ideas and explore new professional goals. Shake things up a bit! Confront your job lethargy with change, and then make a commitment. Find a friend, mentor, or coach to help you. Above all, don't settle. You deserve much more than that.


© Copyright - Elizabeth M. Lengyel, PeopleCoach, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Reprint guidelines: Feel free to reprint this article. You must include the above copyright notice and the author biography that accompanies this article. You may not sell this article or the content contained herein.

Related Articles
  Moms Not Working
  Develop your talents even if bored
  How To Turn Work-Related Stress Into the Motivation You Need To Succeed
  Are You On The Verge Of Quitting
  Dads Working From Home presents question #10: When should I give up?

Article Tags: coworkers, devil, dread, emotions, family members, feelings, inertia, irritability, jobs, lack energy, monday morning, motions, new job, pay attention, pride, sunday night blues, weekends and holidays



Related Forum Posts
Re: UPDATES: New Campaign! New Layout! New Ideas! - We've also expanded the list for Contest and All-Time Leaders. It's great to now see David and Yinka on the All Time list and recognize the contributions they've made to the forums!
No B.S. Time Management - A great book I read on Time Management is No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy.
Re: Require Info on CAD Fed/Prov Grants for Restaurant Start-up - I know the Ontario government is starting a "Second Career" campaign, full of internship opportunities for new chefs and catering staff. It may be worth your while to research the possibilities with that. It may work itself out to be cheap labor in the form of a grant. Good luck regardless!
Book: Comeback Moms - Comeback Moms: How to Leave Work, Raise Children, and Restart your Career even If you Haven't Had a Job in Years Monica Samuels and J. C. Conklin 2006 Jacket: Millions of educated, professional women are quitting their jobs to stay home and raise their children. That would never be you, right? You worked hard for your degree and even harder to get to this point in your career. Quitting now, even for a few years, would kill your career, right? That's what Monica Samuels thought when she found out she was pregnant... Over 60 percent of professional women who leave work to raise children want to get back into the workforce someday. If you even think you might want to go back to work, be it in one year or twenty, you need to lay the groundwork now for a successful reentry or your options will be limited. 1. Quitting: When is the best time to cut the cord 2. Feathering the nest: How to financially prepare before you quit 3. Departure strategies: leaving the office 4. Money and Power: Constructing a new life on the home front 5. Backlash: handling family, friends and angry strangers 6. One foot in, one foot out: How can they miss you if you don't really go away? 7. Part time: It ain't perfect, but it's doable 8. Going back: the when and how of returning to work full time 9. Career counseling: When you need a change 10. Entrepreneurs: True Stories Resources Index
Re: What to do at the first roadblock? - Quit! JK. You need to make a serious decision about what you plan to do and if you can handle the competition. Personally, I like less competitive niches because it typically means success is slightly more guaranteed, as long as you are sure there is a demand. I would rather pick a niche and dominate it rather than rally it out with the big boys. For example, what if your idea is to start a new search engine? Unless you have some amazing revolutionary new idea, forget it. What about if you wanted to start an online social network just like facebook? Again, your idea won't go anywhere unless you have an amazing revolutionary idea or something.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Environment and productivity at the office

Live To Work Or Work To Live?

Sales Courage and Resilience

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.