4 min read  ·  Friday, April 28, 2023

Is your job still just “fine”?

When people are asked, “How’s your job?”, for too long, too many people have responded “It’s fine. It’s alright.” It’s never “great”, it’s never “I’m having fun.” It’s just “fine!”

And when you asked them “why don’t you find another job?” they often don’t have an enthusiastic response. They may never admit it or they may have not realised it, but this might just be a “fear of the unknown”. The unknown is much scarier than what they have. So they choose to settle for a job which is just “fine.” Slowly and steadily that becomes their comfort zone. And at that point, for too many people, their career becomes stagnated.

Now what does stagnated mean here? In my experience, and if I may borrow from experiences of my friends and past colleagues, there are a few prominent signals that tells us that our career is stagnating.

Doing just enough to fulfil your role and responsibility

If you have been doing just the bare minimum when it comes to you job, then that is your first red flag.

Do some digging in your own organisation and I bet that you will find a common trait among all the successful employees there:- They have always done more than what they promised. Doing the minimum is a sure shot way to ensure you will never get promoted, while your colleagues get promoted faster than Usain Bolt. And in case you feel that your boss doesn’t want to give you special assignments and projects, you should shake off that feeling. Your seniors and super-seniors want to be able to depend on you. They honestly do, but they will never get that confidence unless you show your work.
Doing “just enough” is not enough.

Not up-skilling yourself

If you have not learned a new skill in the last 3 months, you must do so now!

Gone are the days when a person could retire without having to learn anything new. That was a different era. Now, with constant innovation across all industries, no one can afford to keep doing the exact same tasks and still stay financially strong. You will need new skills; and it is not necessary that they should align with your current role. With Covid raging on across the world, almost everything you can learn can be learned online. Take up (and finish) courses, attend webinars and online workshops, and absorb the knowledge and keep learning.
No matter what industry you work in, up-skilling yourself should be your priority throughout your career.

Not levelling up with your “playing field”

You probably had to pass competitive exams or go through a selection process to land your job. During that process, the other candidates were your competition. In other words, all of you were in the same “playing field”.
And after securing this job, did you realize that your playing field has changed? This time, your colleagues, who must have been selected just as carefully as you have been, are now your new competitors i.e. your new playing field. Here, everyone is just as accomplished as you are.
You were the top ranker in your previous playing field, but now your rank has been reset, and you have to work harder and earn new accomplishments.

Each time you graduate from one playing field to the next, your achievements before that loses a lot of its value.

Not defining your ambition

If anyone asks you about your ambition and you cannot find an answer, then consider this your final red flag.

A lot of people will say that ambitiousness is something you are born with, that it is not something you can learn. If you know such people, just avoid them from now on. I believe there are four main steps to defining your ambition:-

• The first step is to teach yourself that it is okay, in fact it is recommended, to want something from life, even if what you want is unreasonable. Do you think Elon Musk wanting to spend his last days on Mars is a reasonable wish? No, right? And yet after all these years at SpaceX, he is now close to start missions to Mars! He wanted something unreasonable and is working his ass off to make that a reality.
• The second step is to write down what you want absolutely everywhere you go in your daily life: your bedroom, living room, even your bathroom. Hell, make it your screensaver. You have to hammer that goal into your head every chance you get.
• The third step is to tell everyone your goal. And I mean everyone. Tell your family, your colleagues, your friends, anyone you want, but tell it to as many people as you possibly can. This step might seem daunting because it is easy to think what if you fail after telling everyone your goal? But that is the point! After announcing your dream, you cannot allow yourself to fail. Another bonus of this step is that if you were brave enough to announce your goal, then you are brave enough to achieve it.
• The fourth step is to keep repeating to yourself that you will achieve it. Now that you have written your goal basically everywhere, from then on, each time you look at your goal, consciously read your goal and repeat it 5 times in your head like so, “I will achieve…”, or “I will become…”, or “I am…”. No matter what, never relent.

So then, how’s your job?