Are You Happy With Your Job?

I took the "Are You Happy With Your Job?" online quiz from the Ladies Home Journal (isn't it amazing how long this magazine has been around in this age of Vogue, Lucky, Oprah, and Martha Stewart magazines?!). Admittedly, I took this at work during my 10-minute, union-regulation, break after I was harangued by my boss' boss for a bit of miscommunication that had some minor political implications.

According to my quiz results that I listed below, I don't love or hate my job. Apparently LHJ thinks there's a way I can make my job better. I work in government and politics in the areas of research, planning, and public/media relations. There's aspects of the job I like, particularly the writing and feeling that I'm doing something to help the greater good...yada yada yada. Sometimes, like during today's office shinanigans, I'm convinced that there's something else out there...some job that's more rewarding and more suited to my personality. I would love to be in a more creative field...it's just about pulling the trigger and trying something new with a higher level of risk.

My quiz results:

You Have Good Days and Bad Days:
You're not exactly having a love-fest with your job, but it doesn't make you miserable, either.
But that's pretty much what society expects, says Tom Welch, a Florida-based career coach and author of Work Happy, Live Healthy (Rhodes and Easton, 1998).

"It's ingrained even in our music. Songs like: "Monday, Monday, can't trust that day," and "Just another manic Monday, wish it was Sunday," he says. "Why fix your job if everybody else is miserable? That must be the way work is supposed to be."
But it doesn't have to be that way. You can make changes to improve the parts of your job that you don't like.

"My attitude is life is way too short to do things you don't like to do," says Alice Jorgensen, a certified career management coach with All-Write Resumes and Career Management in Libertyville, Illinois. "I would hope everybody somewhere along the line finds their passion. They owe it to themselves to find that passion."

Sometimes even subtle changes to your job can make the difference in your everyday happiness.
In order to improve your work life, you have to analyze your job to determine exactly which parts you're not happy with. You'll learn one of the following things, Welch says:

* You'll discover why you love your job.
* You'll see you're partially satisfied. Perhaps you're not happy in the days when you have to do some administrative work, for example. Welch says you can improve your work life by perhaps trading those tasks you hate with someone who enjoys them and is good at them. In return, you can take on more of the responsibilities you enjoy.
* If you're not using the talents you have, but you work for a great company, maybe you can move within the company to do some other tasks you enjoy.
* Perhaps you like the work you do, but you work for a company or with a boss who's moving in the wrong direction. You could try doing the same kind of work for another organization.
* You may decide you're in the wrong career and at the wrong company.
Whatever the answer, discovering the answer is the key. Once you understand the roots of your dissatisfaction, you can take steps to improve your job situation. You'll know if you're better off trying to fix the problem with your current job or if you should start searching for a new one.
"It will give you points of discussion with your supervisor," Jorgensen says. "Or, it might show you you're not in the right shaped hole and the peg isn't fitting in."