🌊 How to navigate a monotonous Job?

Be like water my friend.
Bruce Lee

How great it would be if everyone have a meaningful job, something that we truly like, with a good enough pay, and doing things that solve real world problems, or at least problems of our interest.

Most of us will have undoubtedly boring, simple, or pointless jobs. The professionals that end up doing what they studied for are scarce, and ultimately if they get a job on their area of interest, it would be a job with a lower pay, doing the boring things that their more senior peers don't want to do, or things that only benefit a few people.

This post is an analysis of some options to consider if we are not where we want to be, the options are:

1. Adapt.
2. Have a side project.
3. Merge your purpose with your job.
4. Change jobs.

Let's check them!

Adapt

A boring job that pay the bills is a great job, since it is not as sexy, there would be fewer people studying to work on the same thing, you'll have less competence, and if it's easy, you'll excel doing some simple things, there are not many cons of that job.

Society needs this monotony to work as it works today, most boring jobs are necessary and the fact that you are doing them means that you are contributing to something bigger than yourself.

You may not be living to your fully potential, you may not be working on something that interest you, and you may not be happy in the long run when you look back and that job was the only thing that you did for the past 10 years.

But these kind of jobs could be what you need to support a family, yourself, to have more free time, and to gain the financial security for the other things that matter the most to you.

Flowing and adapting to a boring job requires a lot of resilience and discipline, and ultimately, when you become too good at something, either you start again in something that you don't know how to do, or you adapt to the predictability of the job where you gained such mastery.

To be happy and fulfill you just have to be grateful with what you have and what you've done, probably you'll still remember your job, if you are mindful at it.

Have a side project

It will be hard, it will require additional time, and it could lead to nowhere, but doing something that you enjoy will give you a feeling that otherwise would be difficult to get, and that's enough.

If the side project is focused on a skill that you want to improve, if it could give you additional money in the future, or if you are helping someone while doing so, it is a great plus.

You may be wondering if this could make your days easier or calmer in the future, don't think so. It is possible that you end up working a lot more, making your life unbalanced, sacrificing your free time, and being exhaust at nights, you can sort this out by being organized and having good habits, but it will be hard still.

The good thing is that even if you are working more and unbalancing your life, you'll look back and have something to remember, lessons, failures, hard nights, dummy projects and bad decisions, but something to remember anyways.

Focusing on a side project where you do few things you like or want may be great to remember your days more and build something in the long run, you can use your vacations to work on it deeply.

Merge your purpose with your job

If you decided to have a side project, or improve your skills outside of work, you could be a bit sparse hoping to get out of the office so you could work on your purpose, this is a good signal, you are enjoying it, but most of the day you are still working.

One awesome alternative is to look for ways to apply your recently acquired knowledge, or skills of the project you were doing into your current job. For example, if your project is about looking for duplicate images in your Phone photos, you could end up using a Dhash or something related to drop similar images, that knowledge could be useful for a project at work.

Another example could be that your project is about writing a blog, writing skills are really useful to interact with colleages, make documentation for your repos, or presenting new ideas to customers.

By merging both, you make your job more exciting bit by bit, however, if the two things are totally unrelated, your boss is close minded, or your team doesn't endorse your new contributions, you can try the last option.

Change jobs

I put this one as the last option, since the process of changing companies or teams, and starting all over again could be challenging, but if you feel that the current place where you are isn't aligned with your long-term goals, you tried to adapt but still there are plenty of things that you want to improve in your team, or you see that there are much better opportunities somewhere else, this would be a nice option to consider.

It has a great luck factor on it that you can diminish if you know:

• The projects that you're going to be working on.
• Your teammates attitude and enjoyment of the day-to-day work.
• The growth roadmap.
• The necessary skillset.

With that info you can be sure of what to expect at the new team/company that you choose, and if that is your own company as a result of a successful side project, those questions could be great to answer to create a great company culture.

Since this is the harder and more risky choice, you'll never be sure of what to expect, but if you arrive to a monotonous job again, you can read this article one more time 😅.

A good signal is that after making the choice you feel a lot better everyday, and you are eager to learn new things at the new place, this is awesome and I hope that this happens to you.

Cross tips

Talk about it

You can talk about the monotony of your job with someone, usually other people have monotonous jobs too, so you could support each other, give advice, or simply express how you feel.

Writing about it could be great too!

Create good habits

Good habits will give you the energy to tackle a side project or your main work, that's a fact.

A small exercise routine everyday, active pauses, reading, sleeping for at least 8 hours, eating less sugar and going outside are good habits that could improve how we feel during the day.

Also, having an hour to start working, and an hour to stop working is essential to maintain a good pace.

There are other good habits and tips that can be found in the Atomic Habits Book.

Navigate with someone else

Navigating a monotonous project could seem like being in calm waters, but in reality there is a lot of turbulence, specially in our minds.

It is easier to lost focus, to feel unproductive, and to stop working altogether due to a lack of motivation, so you'll look like a kid in a small pool, but your mind would be like the cover image of the post!

One way to calm down is: anything that you choose to do from the above list, do it with someone else.

If you want to adapt to the current project, if you want to have a side project, if you want to merge your purpose with your job, or if you want to change jobs, do that while sharing the decisions or the results with someone else.

A fellow navigator could be helpful to work asynchronously, to make difficult decisions, to help with parts of the project that you don't know how to do yet, so if you can, don't do it alone.

Even if you don't talk about work at all, simply doing plans with friends or hanging out with coworkers will do the trick, you may still have the same problems, but sharing experiences makes the trip a lot easier.

Don't forget to have fun! ⛵🌟