You’ve been at your job for about a year, or maybe a little under a month, and things aren’t clicking anymore. The work you do is clunking into place like a square peg in a circular hole.
You and your coworkers have perhaps begun the process of how every single workplace culture dissolves: the nagging and grumbling about so-and-so and this manager or boss.
Perhaps it’s justified, and maybe it’s not; but we’re here to help. Here’s several reasons why you may want to consider the next step in your career, or a change of scenery.
Feeling like you’re complacent, realizing there’s nothing else to learn, no more progress to make. You’ve perhaps become completely fulfilled at this job; and for you the challenge and problems to solve are no longer there.
Feeling like you’re not going anywhere, your work quality going down, and perhaps subconsciously waiting for someone to notice. You’ve lost the inspiration to keep working at this job for whatever reason, and it may be time for an intervention.
Mistakes and careless decisions are happening more and more often in the workplace. You can’t stop making mistakes because perhaps you’ve lost interest in your work, or you simply don’t care anymore.
When you start complaining about difficulties in the workplace at home, and to yourself off the job. When work life balance is being thrown off, there usually is a toxic issue that needs to be addressed at work, and if it can’t be changed… Then maybe it’s time to consider other job possibilities.
When lots of coworkers are leaving at once, for similar or maybe even RELATED reasons. The writings on the wall. Always consider your surroundings, but this might be a more obvious one. You should definitely ask your ex-coworkers what made them change, and if they all, again, have similar or related reasons that you yourself are dealing with… Then maybe it’s time for a change.
Procrastination is happening more often than doing the work ahead of time. You start getting sloppy, and you’ve lost the initial enthusiasm that you had being at that job. Your priorities have switched, and suddenly your work comes right up on the deadlines. Perhaps reexamine your past enthusiasm, and rethink the vision.
You start dreading going to work. Usually everyone experiences something like this at some point, but if that dread continues over a long period of time, and begins to invade your homelife… You may need to consider changing jobs.
You may be overqualified and in need of a new challenge. This is like the first suggestion, where you may have hit your limit with how much you can progress, or you came in with a degree or qualification that may have suited you better and promoted you more elsewhere.
There’s no way to make yourself heard at your job, and the role you’re in doesn’t allow you to be heard. When work drowns you out, and you get pushed to the side on the job, perhaps you just need to talk with your boss about expectations and reevaluate your role. But if things don’t change, even after multiple chats with boss and HR, it could be time to take your talents to someone who could actually use them to the best of your ability.
You actually have to JUSTIFY your job, because maybe others have noticed what IT’S doing to YOU. When you talk to others about what you do, you have to literally justify what you’re doing because your close friends and family don’t think the work is good for you. Or, like a few suggestions ago, you were complaining about something going on in the workplace, but you have to justify it. Perhaps your company is trouble and you KNOW IT, but you still have to justify it.
If all these things are happening, you should definitely leave your work. Think about what it’s done to you! You can’t help but go home sad, feeling left out, and unheard. Somehow, all you can say about your job is that it SUCKS, and you even have to justify why you’re there to your closest friends and families.
The work is too monotonous, you carelessly are making mistakes, and everything is suddenly tedious instead of interesting.
There doesn’t seem to be any meaning in the work you do, and it feels like only a matter of time before that saved resignation file you’ve been working on in your spare time ends up as a draft. The writing may be on the proverbial wall for this soul-sucking job, and perhaps you can make the now-informed decision to move on.