Ten strategies for finding more joy in your work.
What gives you joy at work? Do you know?
I was thinking about this last week. What gives me joy in my work, and do people get to create joy in their work?
The statistics right now around engagement and quiet quitting are quite alarming. 67% of the workforce doesn't really want to be there. They're not engaged. A more alarming 11% of the workforce is loud quitting–they are actively disengaged and causing trouble in the workplace. What a shame. So, I had an idea–to share a bunch of ideas about how to find joy in your work and enjoy your work more.
Strategy #1 is to do a Joy Audit.
Watch my video about this on Instagram or LinkedIn and then take some time to answer the following questions.
1. What gives you the most joy at work?
2. What gives you the most joy outside of work?
3. When are you in flow? When do you get lost in your work, where time melts away?
4. What are the barriers to doing work that give you joy? How could you handle that?
Admittedly, there are some circumstances where enjoying your work might be made extremely difficult, due to poor treatment, bullying, incredibly harsh working conditions and so on. If you’re experiencing that, seek help. Please. For the rest of the population, let’s grab it by the horns and find a way.
Strategy #2: Find ways to use your strengths every day.
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People who know and use their Strengths are 3 times more likely to say they have an excellent quality of life and 6 times more likely to be engaged in their work. It makes sense then that you would find joy in using your Strengths; in using those talents that allow you to do things well, and to get your work done more easily.
Let's say you have a lot of relationship-building themes, but never get to talk and connect with people; you’ll starve.
** Find ways to connect with people and listen deeply
** Start conversations about work and projects
** Ensure you're in a role that allows you to connect with others daily
If you’re a Maximiser, and you like taking things from good to great, from great to excellent, then:
** Set goals to do the best possible job that you can in a limited time, then move on to the next task.
** Recognise that not everything needs to be done to perfection; your time might be better spent on the next task.
If you’re highly competitive:
** Seek out goals and challenges from your team and manager
** Find out what the last ‘best score’ or benchmark is, and beat it
If you’re not sure what your strengths are:
** Go back to the previous video on the Joy Audit
** Download the Free Clue to Talent worksheet on our website
** Take the Gallup Strengths Assessment
Here's a link to the worksheet
Strategy #3: Gamify your tasks.
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81,396 hours.
That's how many hours the average person spends at work in their lifetime. The idea that work sucks is everywhere. Even though over half the workforce is quiet quitting, there is still a percentage of people who are engaged, approximately 23% worldwide.
So what's the difference? Why are they engaged? Well, the most basic reason why people are engaged is that they know what is expected of them at work.
Another reason is that they have the opportunity to do what they do best every day. You could say, they’re enjoying it.
If you don’t get to do what you do best every day, then one way to create more joy in your work is to gamify it. Gamifying is not just for kids. In fact, the average age of a gamer is more like mid-30s. Think about that for a moment.
If you’re an Achiever and like to keep lists, make sure you celebrate as you tick things off. Too many Achievers are so focused on the next thing that they don’t stop to acknowledge all that they’ve already done. This can create the feeling of never having done enough, and lead to anxiety.
If you’re futuristic or creative, set goals for how many ideas you can create in a day or a week. They don’t all have to be valid, but you’re trading your brain to think creatively, and this is a muscle you can build through repetition.
If you’re a communicator, gamify how many headlines or stories you can come up with.
If you’re a learner, gamify how many books you can read – Gee, I reckon there are apps for that. Just make sure you can retain and use some of it. Maybe part of the gamification could be to teach others, to help embed your learning.
Use the Pomodoro app. I love it because I get a little red tomato for every 25 minutes of focused effort.
Create a visual scoreboard for yourself and or your team. If you don't like competing against others, just keep it yourself. That said, if you’re not the competitive type, and you work in a competitive environment, such as sales or finance, then this could be a problem. Worst still if management pits people or teams against each other. Research suggests this is a culture KILLER.
If you’re a manager, integrate recognition and positive reinforcement into your strategy. This is not an option or a nice-to-have for the new generation of workers; it’s a must. Gamification can help with this.
Have fun gamifying your workplace and finding more joy at work.
Strategy #4: Prioritise your work and eat that frog.
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This will be quick, but I can’t guarantee that what you’ll need to do will be painless. 🐸
Eat that frog!
To find more joy in your work, do the most difficult tasks first. Don’t carry them around all day, then carry them home and have them sit on your conscience.
Start with a list and prioritise your work, then do the most difficult, and usually most important, task first–eat that frog.
Does checking email fill your cup? Probably not, but it’s an apparent easy win that can turn into a rabbit hole if you don’t manage it.
Prioritise your work and do the things that you’re putting off first. It makes the rest of the day easier, lighter and more joyful.
The video describes how to prioritise. Do it for a week. It takes 7-21 days to create a habit, so 7 days is a minimum for this activity.
Let me know how you go.
BTW: If you are procrastinating like crazy and doing ANYTHING but what you know you need to do, then DM me and I’ll share a process to handle that. 😊
Part 2: The Secret Weapon. Watch my video about this: Instagram or LinkedIn
Strategy Five: Break it down! 🤙 And set mini goals.
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1. 🧩Break your day and week into chunks and milestones, or goals. Break your day into quarters and eighths. Break the tasks down into several bite-sized pieces that you can tick off in a day.
2. Every job has tasks that we don’t love, but if you plan your work so that doing the not-so-much-fun tasks lead into the tasks that give you joy, then it’s easier to swallow. Eat your dinner before dessert.
3. Consider delegating the work that you don’t enjoy if you can. Try swapping tasks with somebody who loves those tasks you don’t love.
4. Stack & batch. I didn’t talk about it in the video, but you can batch similar tasks in regular intervals, and stack tasks that you can do at the same time.
Tim Ferris gives a great example of batching in a video where he talks about laundry 🧺 : you wouldn’t run the washing machine for one pair of dirty socks, you wait until you have enough to create a load of washing. Think of the wastage in running the washing machine for one pair of socks–stopping what you’re doing, time the machine runs, energy, liquid, water, etc.
Task stacking is where you can do two things at once–checking emails while on the treadmill, chopping veg. while waiting for the water to boil, write blog post copy while you wait for a large video file to sync, and so on.
If you work from home, you probably do some of things already, and well.
We’d love to know how you chunk, batch and stack your days and tasks and how they help create more joy in your work.
Strategy 6: Do something you’re great at every day.
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Apparently, if you put an eagle in a cage, it eventually gets sick and dies. If you don’t get to do what you love or are great at, you’ll lose hope and resent your job–checking out and perhaps quiet quitting. So, find ways to do what you’re great at.
Get clear on what you’re great at, how it adds value to your role and propose a strategy to do more of that work.
If you don't know what you're great at, you can talk to your colleagues, ask your friends, or take the Gallup CliftonStrengths assessment and it will tell you what you're great at and how best to approach your work. It also tells you about your Blind Spots; a great opportunity to build your awareness of where there’s room for development.
Happy Great Days!!
Strategy seven: Make sure you know what a win looks like.
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How many wins have you had this week? If it’s the start of the week, how many wins did you have last week? How would you know? Check with your manager to get clear on what a WIN looks like. Maybe they don't know you're winning!
Here are three ideas to help:
1. Seek out feedback and recognition for your work. Not all managers are great at this. Maybe they’re overloaded and under-supported. Maybe they haven’t been trained to give constructive feedback.
2. Hybrid and remote have made it easier to be accidentally ignored or forgotten by your team or manager, but that doesn’t mean you can't take responsibility for it and be proactive. Start a conversation with your team and leadership to get clarity.
3. Set regular, weekly informal meetings one-on-one with your manager and ask how you're doing. You could also ask them how they are doing— the manager space can be lonely, busy supporting their team and not always being supported or checked in on.
We’d love to know what a win looks like for you. Send us a message :)
Strategy Eight: Connect to the values and purpose of your organisation.
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Our beliefs and values drive our behaviours. If you can connect your values to the organisational values, you’ll feel more connected to your work and contribution–you’ll find more joy in doing what you do.
Get clear on your own personal values
Find your organisation’s values
Find their Vision, Mission and Purpose
Look for connections between your personal values and the organisation’s values, purpose, etc.
If you can’t find the org values, etc., then that’s a great conversation to have with your manager and leaders.
Knowing your organisation’s values and purpose is just the beginning, and it’s an important contributor to your overall engagement at work.
One of the 12 key questions Gallup determined as the indicators of employee engagement is ‘Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?’ A great question to ask yourself.
Here’s some data to consider:
Only four in 10 employees strongly agree that the mission or purpose of their organisation makes them feel their job is important.
Only 27% of employees strongly agree that their organisation always delivers on the promises it makes to customers.
Less than half of B2B customers (46%) strongly believe that the companies they do business with always deliver on their promises.
“And if employees feel brand promises are unmet, they're likely to stage walkouts and publicly criticise their employers -- as Wayfair, Pinterest, Google and others have infamously experienced.”
Only 23% of employees worldwide fall in the "engaged" category. We’ve got some work to do, and although the responsibility falls on leadership, we can do something ourselves. Look for ways to create more joy in what you do, and be curious about how your organisation can support you to do just that.
Strategy Nine: Build connections at work.
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Research suggests that people who have a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged and also much less likely to leave the company.
Even if you’re working hybrid or remote, you can still connect with people. Often, it’s more important to make an effort to connect with your team when working hybrid because indicators of burnout and stress may go unnoticed.
Strategy Ten: Seek opportunities to learn and grow.
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It’s easy to become bored and complacent in our work. Often, this is because we’re not being challenged or learning and doing something new.
And there are a whole bunch of reasons why we might not want to learn something new, might not want to be challenged or have to start off that new skill looking and feeling wobbly. Perhaps we feel safe when we are confident in what we’re doing, and we protect that. But, it is when we do something new, or hard, or both, that we get a sense of achievement and feel good about ourselves–a bit like me doing the new TreeClimb at Kuitpo Forest recently… definitely out of my comfort zone. Anybody on the course, or within 1km for that matter, would have been wondering why I was talking to myself and celebrating myself so loudly!
Imagine if that thing that you just learnt how to do is something that you actually find joy in doing. You won’t know until you try. For some of us, we actually find joy in the process of learning something new. Maybe this is you, too?
Check out the Johari Window: a great tool for learning more about yourself. You may well have a hidden talent and superpower that you don’t know about yet.
2 questions and a thought:
What are you interested in learning that could add value to your work and career? Ask for it.
What one thing would make the greatest shift in how much you would enjoy your work? Can you study and learn it?
Just because you might not have been offered PD (professional development), doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to it or it doesn’t exist.
