Did you know that the majority of the global workforce are disengaged at work? The statistics in this regard are quite alarming and that is precisely why most of us need to take a good hard look at our careers given that we all tend to spend the majority of our lives at work. In the newly published book Designing Your Work Life coauthored by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans the concept of life design originally made popular by the two academicians at Stanford university has now been applied to our jobs and careers.
Feeling stuck at a job that you don’t like could be one of the least desired emotional states that one could ever wish for and the majority of the people who feel stuck do so because they cannot just leave their work and look for something new due to financial constraints. That is why the concept of reframing as put forth by the book is such a marvelous mental tool that we can use to temporarily deal with the agony of feeling stuck at work. Reframing your current work as good enough would surely imply passivity and lack of drive; however, once you add two magical words then the entire notion changes and those two words are: “for now”.
Good enough for now has such a strong psychological impact that the person literally moves from utterly disengaged at work to at least curious if not downright interested! An average person will have multiple jobs and careers in his or her lifetime and once the myopic perspective of seeing the drudgery of going to a work that you don’t like day after day and week after week is replaced with a long term perspective of all the careers or gigs that you will have in the future then the hustle and bustle of the present moment seems like a training ground for what is yet to come and you no longer live for the weekends and holidays! That attitude alone can make anyone more engaged at work because progress equals happiness and seeing your current job as a temporary means of making that progress towards your ideals will certainly make you happier and more interested at work.
“Good enough for now” doesn’t mean that you deny the facts, it doesn’t mean that you will give up your search for new jobs, careers, projects, or clients, and it definitely doesn’t mean that a bad job can all of a sudden become good, it simply means that it is good enough for now while you simultaneously keep looking for new opportunities or go out of your way to expand your abilities. The truth of the matter is that almost any job can be reframed by thinking of it as good enough for now because any job can teach you something new and as you gain experience and ideally build up your contacts you can then expand your horizon and look for the next big thing. To find out more about the aforementioned cognitive toolkit and many other ways to improve your level of job satisfaction checkout the book Designing Your Work Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.
Daniel Molgan Official 