Work Satisfaction
What really drives you to go from one day to the other
Your manager has reminded you to follow up with the client on two new requirements that just came in. It’s right in the middle of two weeks planned work. Two pending work assignments are in dire need of your attention, but the production outage last week has kept you up on your toes. At last, when you thought you could get to at least one of the pending tasks, your team member needed help. Which took you way longer than either of you anticipated. That was just the right amount of diversion for your brain to lose focus.
What about those quarterly goals? Getting certified on that latest tech trend that everyone’s been talking about? While you know the importance of keeping up with technology for career expansion and growth, there is absolutely no time for investment in self-development and adding a new skillset to your profile. And those early morning and nightly meetings are the real killers; they leave you exhausted. Though the scenario here represents the hustle of someone in IT, most professionals must have experienced a similar rush at work, no matter the industry.
A year has only so many months and a month has only so many days.
Time indeed dissolves before your eyes, silently and steadily like those melting icecaps and calving icebergs. The magnitude of impact can only be experienced when the seasons don’t gradually change like they did when we were children.
Since you are still reading, I assume you are either in this boat or have been here.
So the question is, how do you overcome daily challenges which, despite being part of the job, still succeed in keeping you away from enjoying the daily hustle. After all, we have selected our hustle, and if that doesn’t make you happy, there isn’t really a point in dragging it from one day to the other.
It all comes to mastering the art of your daily hustle.
What can you do in a day that fuels you with enough energy and enough drive that you look forward to the next sunrise and a steaming cup of coffee?
What keeps you in the now while still keeping you in check with your vision?
My personal experience is that at work, at the end of the day, if I didn’t complete at least one task that I intended to, then I get that something missing sort of sense. That unease drags on until the day comes when at least one sizeable chunk of work comes to completion, matching reasonable expectations. It could be anything — sealed requirements followed by fruitful discussions with the client, a task progressing in the right direction, a successful production release, a completed article that I intended to read or write, or listening to a podcast. The kind of satisfaction it brings is what makes me look forward to the next day. So the key here is satisfaction.
Work satisfaction is the driving factor for any professional to move from one day to the other and look forward to the next set of challenges that tomorrow would bring.
Just like there is no right formula for success, there isn’t a correct formula for satisfaction. However, if taken consciously and repeated until turned into a routine, there are simple steps that can lead you to bring in that work satisfaction — your driving force.
- Daily goal settings
First thing in the morning, when you start your day, open your notes in a medium of your choice — a physical notebook or a word document, or a fancy app. List out at least five things you would like to tackle in a day. Be careful and mindful here. This list should comprise small individual tangible tasks either tied directly to your daily work or a small but significant part of a bigger goal and will ultimately take you one step closer to where you want to be.
A simple example: End of the quarter, you want to earn a certificate in your area of expertise. Then put a line item in your daily goal that you would pick up a fraction of homework required to fulfill that goal. If you are a developer, write down a piece of code you would finish writing.
Once you have clearly defined daily goals — it doesn’t take more than a few minutes — you are all set. You have a focused list of action items for the day.
Though it would be more beneficial to prioritize based on importance and urgency, the lesser important and lower priority tasks could sometimes be used to charge your brain that we will learn next.
2. Start your day by learning something new.
Starting your day with learning something new would bring in much-needed stimulation for the day. It could be an article, or a podcast, or adding into your tech vocabulary. I am sure these goals don’t seem like a task making up to the top of your goal list, but it’s extremely beneficial because we wake up with only so much energy and focus each day. We need to be careful how we use it. Each glance at a social media apps comes at a cost. It’s sneakily stealing away your daily dose of focus and energy.
Use the first few hours of your work wisely.
Scientific research suggests that earlier in the day, your brain is well-rested and washed out. Once you sleep, your neurons too shut off, and blood leaves your brain. Then cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) gushes in and cleanses your brain — like a washing machine. Scientists at Boston University had discovered this in their study.
No wonder we have more energy, positivity, and enthusiasm in the morning after a good sleep, and with that, we see the world through a lens of possibilities and hope. This ‘Brain Washing’ must make it easier to learn new things quickly in the morning. It takes less time to hash out one of the five daily goals.
3. Celebrate small wins and savor compliments.
Each goal completed should be followed by a short break and a little victory dance of celebration. Your brain, like any other machine, needs a break and time to savor the tiny moments of joy.
A well-rested army performs better than an exhausted one. The army of neurons and synapses in your brain needs to rest and refuel to muster for the next hustle.
If someone complimented you, don’t play it down. Instead, marvel at it. I was recently reading a post from Harvard Business Review. It said that whenever someone compliments us, we tend to downplay and say: oh, it’s nothing. As I was reading, it sparked like a tiny fire-cracker in my brain that how often was I doing the same. I am not cleverly sliding in a point that I often receive compliments rather suggesting that we all do, and often we downplay. The point is to receive praise with grace since we have earned it.
You must let yourself savor the fruits of your hard work and dedication. You deserve to feel that sense of joy when someone identifies your commitments then acknowledges and compliments you. It’s time you pat yourself on the back instead of shying away from the praise. Your body would generate more Dopamine — a neurotransmitter produced by the human body and responsible for learning, motivation, mood, attention, and many other vital bodily functions — than it does when you peek at social media comments and likes.
After all, unlike a social media appreciation for a picture, praise from a peer is usually a reward for years of good work. Sometimes, it’s worth more than a salary hike or a promotion.
4. Before the work hours end (and they must), surf through your daily goals.
First, there has to be a defined time when work hours end and personal hours begin. Those of you in IT, spending most of your time in front of a laptop, must have experienced this wave of unending work due to COVID-induced work from home culture. It is extremely counterproductive and damaging to both mental and physical health. We have to end this wave and draw a hard line between work life and personal life. My mentor Robin Sharma — the author of The 5 AM Club, stresses on this one point that we are no longer living in a factory work culture, where doing more meaning more outcome.
So before the end of working hours, analyze and spend a few minutes reflecting on your daily goals. Strikeout the ones completed. Tell yourself that you did a great job and the work for today is complete. Sometimes, you would find yourself struggling with challenging goals that would keep you working for long hours. On those demanding days, keep up with work. Because those, too, would bring in satisfaction.
The goals not achieved roll up the top of the list that you would create tomorrow. Reflecting on your daily goals gives you a fair idea of goals accomplished today and needing attention tomorrow. Do a bit of a data science exercise with your daily goals and see how well you did and if you need to do something different to get to roll down the list quickly.
Then, once you close your laptop, really close it. You have a picture of your day in your mind, and you are prepared for the new dawn. It’s a thing about satisfaction. Once you have it, you are no longer restless. You have your complete focus on something other than work.
5. Discipline — Follow through and repeat until it becomes a habit.
Procrastination is more comfortable than following all the way through and maintaining grit. But it is only through the road of discipline, hard work, and dedication we can savor the fruits of success.
Discipline is vital for any successful entrepreneur. This exercise would increase your productivity and grow accountability by helping you complete your promised work on time if planned correctly.
Research indicates that it takes an average of sixty-six days to establish a new habit.
So don’t give up, when in the beginning, you don’t see value in your latest take-on. It’s a process that takes time.
If you set daily goals that are a fraction of your long term goals — monthly, quarterly, or yearly — this simple goal setting exercise would keep you on track with your long term goals and your far-fetched dreams. After a while, you would find it helping you get to those seemingly unachievable tasks and reach the unattainable goals.
Daily goal setting activity is a key to a successful working day and brings in the satisfaction that is the driving force for you to float from one day to the other flawlessly.
Recently I was watching My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman. Immersed in Melinda Gates discussing her book The Moment Of Lift and her humanitarian work in countries worldwide. Awe and admiration in my eyes. Somewhere during the discussion, she mentioned one essential point that her mother had told her. It sounded something like this–plan your calendar well, or someone else will. And I thought, how insightful and simple advice from a mother to a daughter. When you have not planned your day, you must have observed your time evaporating in the tasks someone else put into your calendar. Those days are long and tiresome because you weren’t the one planning; you did not jot down your list of goals.
This seemingly simple exercise doesn’t take more than a few minutes of your time, but it’s tremendously rewarding. It comes at a rescue when your career is rising, and you find yourself juggling many tasks in a day — wearing different caps.
While following this process, you need to remember that we are all human beings with our strengths and weaknesses. And, not all days are the same. Somedays, you would be a stellar performer and would have championed your daily goals. On other days, you might have hardly got to one goal. However, if you keep at this exercise, you would get a grip on the process. Eventually, the Daily Goal Setting process will turn into one of your strengths and a system of support that you could count on.
After all, perseverance and resilience are the keys to habit installation.
We need to be conscious of the notion of time. While we have not seen tomorrow, and yesterday has already gone, all we have is today. If you plan your today well, both your past and future have shaped as you have envisioned for yourself.
