When you hate your job.
You have 2 choices.
The start of every workweek fills you with dread. You have a deep sense of futility and frustration. Something has got to give.
What to do?
- Quit your job and find something else to do in the firm belief that it is this place that is the problem and that somewhere-else is the solution.
- Quit the way you currently approach your job and try something else with the recognition that it might not be this place but your beliefs or attitudes that are the problem.
- Do nothing and wait for the job fairy to fly into your home office and grant you the opportunity of your dreams at an unbelievable salary working with all your best friends.
Ok yes, there are 3 choices and the title indicates only 2 but we all know number 3 means you really just gave up and decided that you will be miserable until someone rescues you. Not really a good option.
Number 1 is where you will spend many hours fantasizing as you scroll through job boards and probably doing nothing. Because you aren’t really convinced yet that the other place will really fix the problem. You read all the job descriptions and think that it sounds just like the place you already work.
Now if you are serious then, by all means, do take action and move to that other place and you may find that things are, in fact, a lot better but there really is no guarantee and even a healthy raise will only dull the pain temporarily.
Maybe you need to change everything.
Walk away from this whole career that you somehow landed in without really meaning to and found some success and got stuck.
This too is a real option if you want to put in the effort and have learned that your interests lie elsewhere. Maybe you even want to start your own gig and do the entrepreneur thing.
If you are serious then please do it. Staying miserable in a job that occupies a big chunk of your time is not a good use of life units.
Stop fantasizing. Do the research, take action, plan your escape and go!
You will thank you and your coworkers will thank you. Probably your family will also thank you. And your dog.
(note — all suggestions to leave your job are made under the assumption that you are doing so responsibly and that you will not explain to your family that you impulsively followed the advice of some guy you read on Medium).
However —
You might want to take a hard look at number 2 before you jump to number 1. It will help you make sure - you are sure - about how sure you are - about jumping ship.
More importantly, you may learn some very interesting things about yourself and how you handle work and stress and people and even success. You may learn more about what you really want from your job and that what you want is, in fact, available right where you are if you were to approach things from a different perspective.
Maybe lose a little of that perfectionism. Maybe measure your success a little differently. Maybe stop trying to clear your inbox every 5 minutes. Maybe not let irritating people irritate you so much.
Maybe there are some good things you’ve stopped noticing that you loved when you started but now all you see are the things that frustrate you and they have come to dominate your experience.
Perhaps you are unhappy because you have decided you are powerless to change things. But are you really? Or are you just afraid you might…lose…your…job? Wait, weren’t you about to quit?
What if before you run away, you decided to test yourself and your courage and step into the problems to see if you can make this place more of the place you want to work. And if you do make an impact, then, wow. That’s a massive accomplishment. Everybody wins.
How might that change your entire perspective? Even if you aren’t successful in creating change to the degree you intended, you will learn a great deal from the process. The things you learn will help you in the next stage of your journey should you still decide to move on.
Not only will you be going to a new job but a new version of you will also be going to that new job.
So there you go. It’s as easy as 2–1-not-3.
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