Zen Productivity Blog

So many people are unhappy because of their job. Either their job makes their entire life miserable, or they’re just unhappy while they’re at work. They may find their job to be boring, work with people they don’t get along with, feel underpaid or underappreciated; they may feel that they aren’t given enough responsibility, or don’t find their line of work to be meaningful to them.

Any of these things can make someone unhappy at their job, and if you spend half of your awake hours either at work or commuting, this unhappiness can easily carry over to your personal life. However, this doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. As a matter of fact, I think that people should strive for workplace happiness, and not give up in this pursuit. There are some people who are able to just ‘leave work at work’ and not carry any of their workplace stress with them when they leave. However, I think that since it’s possible to achieve happiness at work, we should aim for that.

I think that the key is in how you approach work. It’s different for each person, and different things motivate each person.

Here’s a list of things that have irked me in the past and they still bother me sometimes when it happens

• Someone who isn’t my boss trying to delegate their work to me (i.e. colleagues who are at the same level as me, but think that they’re entitled to have me ‘help them’ because they’re ‘busy’)
• Getting blamed for something which isn’t my fault. I led a meeting with clients once, and my boss’ boss didn’t think it went well. I personally thought that it could’ve gone better, but the results were the same. What bothered me is that although I led the meeting, my boss should be partially responsible for work that I do. He didn’t assume any responsibility.
• Creation of unnecessary work. I’ve worked with some people who had the authority to mandate firedrills that clearly would achieve nothing and just create more work for the rest of us.
• Lack of common courtesy
• When someone asks me to do something, when it would take the same amount of time for them to do it themselves as it does to explain what needs to be done. I currently work with someone who does that, and it pisses me off to no end.
• People who are reactionary and don’t think things through before acting on them. I’ve come to accept that this is more or less the norm.