How I hate all of this. The job, the boss, programming, the development environment, the tasks, the system they are written in, the subordinates with their whining, the goals, email, the internet, social networks where everyone is remarkably successful, the showy love for the company, the slogans, meetings, hallways, restrooms, faces, expressions, dress code, planning. I hate everything that happens at work.
I've burnt out. A long time ago. Even before really starting my job, about a year after college, I already hated everything around me in this damn office. I came to work just to hate. They tolerated me because I showed impressive growth in my first year. They treated me like a baby. They tried to motivate me, understand me, stimulate me, teach me, guide me. And I hated it more and more.
Finally, they couldn't take it anymore and tried to scare me. Yes, I'm not doing a damn thing on the current project. Because the project manager, your favorite, messed up my work for a month, bent to the client, and set me up. Yes, I sit all day, choosing the next song to play on Winamp. You called me in and said you would fire me if you saw this again. Ha.
You'll see, and not just once. Simply because I hate you. And I despise you. You idiots. You just come in and do what youâre told. You've been doing this for so many years. You have no changes, neither in position, nor in income, nor in skills. You are just attributes of the system you find yourselves in. Like tables, chairs, walls, water coolers, and mops. You are so pathetic and pointless that you canât even realize it.
I can work harder and better than you. Iâve already proven that. But Iâm not going to carry the entire company on my shoulders. Why me? Why not you? I'm fine with my Winamp. I need nothing else to hate you. I will sit and hate you all day, not forgetting to take a lunch break.
When you got used to my hatred, I quit. You acted like chairs â stopped paying attention to me. Whatâs the point of hating you then? I'll go to another company and burn out there.
For several years, it was a rollercoaster. Hate was replaced by indifference. Apathy was followed by outright sabotage. Sometimes, there was frantic activity, especially if a strict boss was around. Gritting my teeth, filled with disdain for the world, I delivered results. And again, I hated it, fell into depression, openly laughed, or trolled anyone I could reach.
I tried to be as toxic as possible, spreading my hatred to as many people around me as I could reach. Everyone should know how much I hate this job. Everyone should sympathize with me, support me, help me. But they shouldnât hate the job; that's my privilege. I hate you too, my supporters.
This lasted roughly from 2006 to 2012. A dark time. I remember it like a nightmare. Strangely, I was never fired during that periodâI always left voluntarily. I never encountered a more despicable bastard than Ivan Belokamencev from 2006-2012.
Then came a strange phase. Everything changed. Or rather, everything changed. But I didnât even notice it. Seven years flew by unnoticed. During those seven years, I never experienced burnout for more than half a day. But I never pondered why that was.
I wondered why it was different for others. I keep seeing topics about burnout more frequently. Recently, while scrolling through a list of presentations for an upcoming conference where Iâm scheduled to speak, I stumbled upon Maxim Dorofeyevâhe was also set to talk about professional burnout. Articles on this subject keep coming up.
I look at people and canât understand them. No, they donât hate their jobs like I did. They are just indifferent. Burned out. Nothing interests them. They will do what theyâre told if theyâre asked. If not, they wonât.
Theyâll be given a plan, a deadline, a normâtheyâll meet it. Maybe surpass it a little. Without any interest. Sure, while keeping to the standards. Standards that were also developed without much care. Like machines.
In life, everyone is certainly interesting. You listen to conversations in the kitchen or run into a coworker on social mediaâlife is buzzing. One is a cycling enthusiast. Another has hiked all the Ural mountains. The third is a volunteer. Each has something going on.
At work, 8 hours of life, 9 including lunch, 10 with the commute; they all look like zombies. No spark in their eyes, no fire in their bellies. The manager doesn't care about selling more. The supervisor is indifferent to improving the department's metrics. The programmer isn't motivated to figure out why something isn't working. At least for the sake of professional interest.
Those who have a terrible boss seem to be more alive and active. Even better if it's a real jerk. They constantly push, raise standards, increase quotas, and never allow relaxation. Such employees resemble the characters in a song by Vysotskyâthey look frowning and angry, but they keep going. They too are burned out, but they constantly undergo defibrillation and somehow squeeze something out of them. In the evening, they recharge however they can, grab some coffee in the morning, and off they go.
I became curious about why I don't feel that way. More specifically, why I used to be constantly burned out, but now I hardly ever am.
For the past 7 years, I have been going to work joyfully, every day. During this time, I changed jobs three times. I have had terrible days, weeks, and even months at work, by normal standards. I was subjected to attempts of being sidelined, pushed out, humiliated, fired, overwhelmed with tasks and projects, accused of incompetence, my salary was reduced, my position downgraded, and I was even let go. Yet I still go to work joyfully, every day. Even if someone manages to ruin my mood and I feel burned out, I revive as the Phoenix within a few hours.
Recently, I understood the difference. Two situations helped. First, I am now working a lot with young people, something that hadn't happened in a long time. Second, I wrote a thank-you letter for the first time in my life. To a person from a job I had in 2012, which changed something in me. While writing him compliments, I tried to figure out what actually happened there. And I figured it out.
It's simple: I always have my own goal within the system.
This isn't self-help, self-suggestion, or some kind of esoteric practice; it's a very pragmatic approach.
The first part is to treat any job as an opportunity. Previously, I would come to some company, look around, and evaluate. If I liked it, great, I would work there. If I didnât like it, I would just sit there and burn out. Everything is wrong, everything is off, everyone is an idiot, and they are all doing nonsense.
Right now, I don't assess things in terms of 'like' or 'dislike.' I simply look at what is available and determine what opportunities this system offers and how I can utilize them. When you look for opportunities without making assessments, you find only possibilities, not shortcomings.
It's like, roughly speaking, being stranded on a desert island. You can lie down and complain about your fate until you wither away. Or you can go and at least explore the island. Find water, food, shelter, identify predators, and natural sources of danger, etc. You're already here, so why complain? First, just survive. Then, make yourself comfortable. And then, develop yourself. It definitely won't get worse.
I also use this analogy: work is a project. Before committing to this project, choose, analyze, compare, and evaluate. But once you're in, it's too late to complainâyou need to extract maximum benefit. On typical projects, where everyone participates, that's exactly what we do. It's rare for someone to flee the project team if something doesn't suit them (except in cases where a serious mistake was made during the initial assessment).
A targeted search for opportunities leads to a strange effectâyou begin to find them. Not standard ones, like completing tasks and getting paid for it. That's the facade of the system, the reason you came here to work. But inside, if you take a closer look, there are a whole bunch of opportunities that are not visible from the outside. Moreover, they are completely unclaimed because very few people pay attention to themâeveryone is busy solving tasks and getting paid for it.
For the most part, we work in some kind of business. We were allowed into this business like a goat in a vegetable garden. A person from the street can't just walk into your office, sit in an empty seat, start solving tasks, earn your salary, drink coffee from a cup, and climb the career ladder, right? No, your job is a closed club.
You have been given a membership to this closed club. You can come every day, even on weekends, and work for 8 or even 24 hours a day. Very few people have the opportunity to work at your job. You've been given this opportunity; now all you have to do is take advantage of it. It's roughly like that.
The second and main part of the approach is your own goal. I'll start with an example.
In my communication with programmers and project managers, there was a long gap in understanding. They all said - here, we have these tasks, and there are many of them, and they piled on projects, clients are demanding, it's strict with them, nobody listens to us and doesn't plan to listen.
And in response, I would say - come on, guys, the task is trivial, why are you doing it? Why not focus on this or that instead? It's more interesting, more useful, both for you and for the business. But the guys replied - hey, what are you talking about, loser, how can we work on what we weren't assigned? We execute the tasks and implement the projects that were set in our plan.
When I worked as the IT director at a plant, paradoxically, I initiated more than half of the projects and tasks myself. Not because there were few requirements from clients - there were plenty. It's just more interesting to solve my own projects and tasks. That's why I set my own goals. Even if I knew for sure that soon the client would come running with the same task.
There are two important points here. The first - the early bird catches the worm. To put it simply, whoever initiates the project will lead it. Why would I let a supply manager run a project on supply automation? I can handle it perfectly fine myself. When I'm in charge of a project, it's interesting for me. The supply manager will be a consultant and an executor for some tasks.
The second point - whoever pays for the girl, dances with her. Whoever initiates a project and leads it defines what will be done in that project. The end goal is roughly the same in both cases, but if an expert runs the project, it turns into nonsense - he starts writing specifications, tries to express his thoughts in technical terms, faces resistance from IT (naturally), and ends up with a meaningless mess. But when an IT director runs the project, it turns out much better - he understands the business goals and can translate them into technical language.
At first, this caused serious resistance, but then people saw the results and realized that this was better - after all, they received more than when they asked to 'make me a button here, and a form there.' And for me - it's interesting because the project is mine.
My goal acts as an injection, a genetic modification for work. Any task that I am given, I inject with my goal, and the task becomes "mine." I pursue it with pleasure.
There are millions of examples.
They set a rough plan for me for the month regarding task resolution. And I, if you remember, am a fan of speeding up workâthat's one of my goals. So I make an injection, or as some commentator whimsically put it, a âBelyokamenets biteââand using simple techniques, I smash 250% of the plan. Not because I'll get paid more or receive some gradeâjust because itâs my goal. The consequences donât take long to manifest.
Or the new director tells me that he only wants a quality IT service. I say, "Hey, dude, but I can also do this and that." No, he says, just quality service, and stuff all your "super abilities" where the sun doesnât shine. Okay, I make an injection and create a service with measurable parameters that exceed his expectations by four times. The consequences donât take long to manifest.
The director asks me to display the companyâs performance metrics on the screen. I know he will play with it and get bored in a weekâhe's not that type of person. I make an injection and add one of my long-term goalsâcreating universal tools for broad application. He drops it after a week, but the whole company is hooked. Then I rewrote it from scratch, and now I successfully sell it.
And so it goes with any task. You can always find or add something useful or interesting for yourself. Not to just do it and then search for what "we learned from todayâs session," but to do it in advance, with a clear goal set for yourself. Though, of course, unexpected outputs can arise that were not planned in advance. But thatâs another topic.
For example, this text. While writing it, I pursue several goals at once. Donât try to understand what exactly. Although youâll guess one easilyâthe plus you set will help in achieving the secondary goal of "earning a little money for the text." But thatâs still secondaryâjust look at the ratings of my articles, thereâs a sinusoidal pattern.
I think the meaning is clear â you need to add something of your own, a piece of a goal, to any task, project, or routine duty, aligning vectors to benefit the maximum number of recipients â yourself, the business, the client, colleagues, the boss, etc. This game of vectors is quite engaging in itself and will prevent burnout and boredom.
There is, however, a downside. Having your own goals is so obvious that it stands out. Therefore, I occasionally face difficulties working with bosses and colleagues. They see that I am always engaged in some kind of game, but they donât understand its meaning and assume I have some nasty scheme in mind.
When I am finally asked and they decide to inquire, I honestly explain. But they donât believe me because the explanation sounds too unusual to them. They are used to employees who 'just work,' while here there are methods, theories, goals, and experiments.
They have the impression that I am not working for the business, but rather the business is working for me. And they are right, but only half the time. I work for the business, and, excuse me, the business works for me. Not because I am a villain, but because this is normal and mutually beneficial. Itâs just unusual, which is why it causes rejection.
Everyone wants order, clarity, and templates. So that a person comes in, sits down, puts their head down, and works hard, achieving the company's goals. They substitute, embellishing the company goals and presenting them as the individualâs goals. It's like saying, 'achieve our goals, and you will achieve your own.' But this, alas, is a lie. You can check it against your own experience.
You cannot just rely on the companyâs goals. They are almost always the same â profit, growth inward and outward, markets, products, competition, and most importantly, stability. Including stability in growth.
If you only rely on the companyâs goals, you wonât achieve anything. For yourself, that is. Because these goals are written for the business, thereâs nothing in it for the employee. Well, there is, of course, but only as a last resort. Like, 'letâs tell them that working here is prestigious!' or 'we have interesting tasks,' or 'people quickly become professionals here.' And, of course, tea, cookies, and 'what else do they need, damn it⊠maybe a coffee machine?'
Actually, this is probably why people burnout. They have no personal goal, and othersâ goals, consciously or subconsciously, quickly become tiresome.
Quite a while ago, I realized that this approach should be used when working with subordinates â let them be Phoenixes too. Unfortunately, it requires a lot of observation, thinking, conversing with people, and considering their interests and goals. To start with â getting to know those goals.
Take money, for example. Yes, I know many say that money is not a goal. If your salary in Russia is 500k, then money might not be very interesting to you. But if you earn 30, 50, even 90 thousand rubles, after 2014 you probably feel quite uncomfortable, especially if you have a family. So, money is a great goal. Donât listen to those who earn 500k â a well-fed person does not understand the hungry. The phrase "money cannot be a goal" was invented by employers so that people would be satisfied with cookies.
Talking to employees about money is dangerous. Itâs much easier to be delicately silent and not rock the boat. When they come asking, you can brush it off. When they come demanding, you can concede a little. And so on, you know how it goes.
But I enjoy talking to people about money. Honestly, I havenât seen anyone who would say, "Oh, I donât need money." Well, Iâm lying; I saw one â Artem, hi. Everyone else wanted money but didnât know who to discuss it with.
In fact, in such a case, you just emphasize money, a "money injection" into any task or project. In any company, there is either a clear or vague scheme for increasing income. I wonât dwell on this for long; there are several articles in 'Career Steroids.' But it adds a spark to people's eyes.
A common goal is the increase of competencies. Sometimes itâs well-defined with a specific area indicated. A person wants to learn a technology, framework, subject area, client industry, etc. This is truly great because you can assign them all tasks on the chosen topic, even the most trivial ones â they will enjoy it. Well, without fanaticism, of course, otherwise, you risk taking away the personâs love for the goal and getting a minus in karma.
Many people are interested in career growth â whether professionally or in their career, or even a transition to a different field, such as moving from programmers to managers. No problem â just add a dash of the corresponding goal to any task or project, and a person won't burn out.
And so on. There are also exotic options, like completely leaving the profession, buying a house in the countryside, and moving there with the whole family. Personally, I've seen two such cases. We take the current job and turn it towards the person's goal â they need to save a certain, quite large sum of money and finally escape the city. That's it, the injection is made. Any task is not just a task; it's a log from their country house, or half a pig, or two decent shovels.
Gradually, a community of individualists gathers around. Each has their own goal. Each has a fire in their eyes. Everyone comes to work with joy because they understand why â to achieve their goal. Everyone is ready for experiments, applying new working methods, searching for and utilizing opportunities, developing competencies, even adventures. Because they know why, where every brick from the solved task will fit into the big house they're building.
Well, if misfortune does occur â and it happens, a person may grieve for an hour or two, sometimes even a day, but in the morning, they always come back renewed, like a phoenix. And what can you do about it?
Source: habr.com
