5 reasons why you should love your job, or leave it
If you love your job, it makes the rest of your life a lot easier: You’re in a better mood so you’ll stop pissing your boyfriend off, you’re able to make rent and still buy shoes, you’re less stressed so you’re nicer to strangers–it just sort of makes everything better. And if you don’t love your job? It can make you feel like your whole life is less-than-ideal.
The Engineer and Leadership Blog listed some good reasons why you should like what you do:
1. At least half your waking hours are spent at work
If you’re upset about being at work… that’s no way to live. Uh, this is pretty much a given, right? I really hope I don’t need to explain this.
2. It will be very difficult for you to invest in your career
If you don’t love what you do, you’re not going to want to invest your time or money into the gig, period.
3. You’ll never be truly great at what you do
This isn’t entirely true, and it depends on what the work itself is. When I was in college, I was an awesome cashier. But that didn’t mean I wanted to do it until retirement.
4. You won’t get promotions.
Again, not entirely true. A lot of people are skilled in something they don’t necessarily like doing (for example, I’m great at cleaning up after my roommate), and they’ll be recognized for it. Except me, because my roommate won’t even tip me for cleaning up his mess all the time. Ahem.
5. You’ll lack fulfillment
This one is true. If you hate what you’re doing, it’s not going to make you feel good. It’s going to make you feel tired, resentful, depressed and possibly angry. Is that really what you want?
Obviously, especially in this economy, you may not adore every job that’s available to you. But these guidelines are good as a reminder to keep having goals and aspirations to move on to something better when you can.
By: Jessica Sager
Jessica Sager is a contributing writer for The Grindstone, where a version of this article first appeared.