How to Get Excited About Your Job Once Again - The Muse

How to Get Excited About Your Job Once Again - The MuseHow to Get Excited About Your Job Once Again When you landed this job, you were thrilled- schedule a celebratory dinner, call your entire family, shout it from the rooftops thrilled.But after months (or years), it feels like a grind. You post a different TGIF meme every week and youre familiar with the Sunday scaries. To be clear Youre not miserable, or ready to throw in the towel and look for a new role. Its not like youre asked to meet impossible goals or dread reporting to your boss.Its just that your work has lost its luster, and youre not excited about your job anymore. Translation Youre stuck in a rut.And the classic advice Talk to your boss, work on a project on a different team, make new work friends, can feel unrealistic when your plates pretty jam-packed as is. The trick to making this advice work is to shift your mindset. To recapture that feeling when you were starting at your company- pretend youre new once again. Ba ck then, you were introducing yourself to new people, asking lots of questions, and inquiring how different teams worked together to advance the mission (so I know you can do it). In other words, its an expectation game. When you were pushing yourself to stretch out of your comfort zone and do new things, you did. But now, youre probably pressuring yourself to be as productive as possible and making time to connect with new colleagues, research a pet project, or learn a new skill fall into the category of things you keep pushing off until you have time.BORED AT WORK?Its OK. Actually, its not, but we can help you break out of that rut.Talk to a Career Coach Today So, look at your upcoming task list, and ask yourself a lot of the questions you would if you were newIs there someone on my team who knows even more about this than I do? Yes? Send them an email or set up a time for a short chatAm I advanced at every skill I need to do my job? No? Ask your boss about time (and budget) for t aking a course to grow your expertise.Is the way this has always been done the best way? Unsure? Research a new process to improve it.Will I need to work with someone from another department to complete this? Yes? Along with asking project-related questions, ask them about their job and department.Do I actually know my colleagues? No? Join an upcoming social event or ask someone you dont know well to meet for coffee.Is there anything I could do outside of work thatll help me? Unsure? Consider a relevant book you could read, person you could network with, or lecture you could attend.Not quite sure how youll fit all this in? First, remember that you dont have to ask and answer all of unterstellung questions, all the time. Second, you can set aside time to make this possible- say Friday afternoons so that you always end the week on a good note. (Unsure how to make that a reality? Follow this plan to get five days of work done in four, so youll have time on Friday to pursue these activi ties.) If you havent quite figured out how to mix up your routine, acting like you did when you were first hired can help your job feel new again. Only this time around itll be even better, because you know the best way to ask your boss a question and how to work the coffee pot.