Are you getting TOO Comfortable at work?
Reading through the one of the last posts of Money and Investment, (I seriously recommended it) where the author presents us with the need of an Exit Door for most negotiations in your life. I start thinking of where does this door come from and how do you manage to get to it.
If you are reading this chances are you are some kind of professional, maybe with some college education and some years of experience; that may have given you an exit door, but in no way the ability to use it.
We’ve all been there, at the comfortable job. That job that becomes a routine and plain-easy, that we can do while “facebooking”, reading books and blogs, spending too much time at the kitchen, taking long lunches and leaving early every day. Even though for some this may sound like paradise (it did to me at some point), this is the definition of career suicide. Sure it’s nice not to feel work-associated stress in a daily basis, but if your job became a routine that prevents you from challenging your skills or acquire any new ones, you are just wasting your time.
How to know if you got to that comfortable cloud of mediocrity:
- When you realize that your “job description” hasn’t changed in more than 6 months
- You have been using the same templates over and over
- You haven’t stayed late in over a month
- People only talk to you when they run into you at the kitchen or the restrooms
- Your email inbox seems to be quite empty every morning
If you have noticed some of these “symptoms” chances are, you got too comfortable and your job has just become so easy that a monkey could do it, and chances are your bosses boss will notice at some point.
Sometimes its quite unavoidable, you may be in a position that is not really needed and some other monkey in the company could push into his to-do list. Some other times your boss may lack of some management skills; or any other reason/excuse for your misfortune. But there is only one thing to do… RUN! …as fast and far as you can. Look for a job that will challenge you, that will teach you, and help you achieve new levels of professionalism and skills, or soon you will become obsolete in your early 30′s.
I hear you; the economy is bad, and with an almost 10% of unemployment it’s hard to find a challenging job these days… Then make yours challenging one way or another. There are at least 50 ways to do this, but all of them start with deciding to bring some change to your professional life. When? Today, you already wasted enough time, or you would have never found yourself in this position.
** Some useful ways to challenge your stalled career:
- SwapYourShop Blog
- Start a volunteer program at work
- Propose a new plan of action that includes your boss’s boss
- Make a plan to re-ignite your career
- Frank
September 22nd, 2009 at 1:58 PM
Great post,
It’s pretty easy to get comfortable and begin to rely on the workplace to get all of your personal ‘stuff’ done- from facebooking to paying bills online. All of which I think is ok if it’s done with care. It’s one thing to take a few minutes to pay your cable bill online, it’s another to spend the whole day online shopping for a new cable provider.
There are days when it’s nice to just be able to take a deep breath and relax…a bit…. after you’ve finally dug yourself out from the piles of things to do and play catch up a bit on smaller tasks.
But it’s mind numbing to spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week staring at your computer screen and playing solitaire. Someone will notice… if not by catching you, then by the vacant look on your face! Good advice on starting the volunteer service…another thing to do is to look up new skills/training that you might be able to attend or to take a little time familiarizing yourself with other departments in the company to make yourself more in the know and valuable. – K