6 Strategies to Bring the Zing Back to Your 9-5 Routine – and Bolster Your Role at the Office   

If you aren’t feeling enthusiastic or thoroughly immersed in your work, you aren’t alone. Research by Gallup has shown that only 31.5 percent of the U.S. workforce feels fully engaged at work. The data for millennial workers is even less encouraging: only 28.8 percent feel a sense of workplace engagement. While work isn’t suppose to feel like play every single moment of your 9-5, it should be rewarding and stimulating a good chunk of the time to keep you feeling happy and on a forward-moving career path.

If this isn’t currently the case for you, here are six strategies to rekindle your joy and bring the fun – and sense of achievement — back into your work:

Boost Your Business Persona 

1. Are you leveraging your actual strengths at work?

You may be a pro with spreadsheets or the go-to person for market research, but if these activities leave you feeling uninspired, that may be a sign that your work isn’t in alignment with your strengths.

So, what are strengths? Strengths are ways of being that when tapped into provide us with a renewable energy source. Wetfeet.com, the ultra-helpful career site, also defines career strengths as “personal attributes that you may have been born with and cultivated over the course of many years and life experiences.”

Some quick ways to identify your strengths are:

• • • When you lose track of time – what kind of work are you doing?
    • What types of activities do you find energizing  — and more importantly, why do they “light you up” the way they do?

If you would like to dig even deeper into figuring out your strengths, you can take a free, on-line survey from the VIA Institute on Character. More than 2.6 million people from over ninety countries have taken this scientifically-validated questionnaire. In less than twenty minutes, this will likely give you a deeper understanding of what makes you tick on a professional level.

For example, if you are presently working in a solitary accounting role, but discover that love of learning, teamwork and creativity are among your top character strengths, it wouldn’t be surprising that you are feeling joyless during your workday.  Realizing this, you can start to explore other possibilities.

Also, think imaginatively about how you can incorporate your strengths at work. If you love doing research, offer that up to your colleagues who struggle with data. If creativity is one of your core strengths, is there a design project you could dedicate yourself to for a few hours a week? Could you offer your expertise in social media or speech-writing to your colleagues?

2. Develop a growth mindset

Studies have shown that one of the quickest ways to renew a sense of enthusiasm about work is through fostering a sense of mastery: the feeling that you have learned and cultivated a certain skill, to a high level, that makes you stand out.  In her ground-breaking work, Mindset, psychologist Carol Dweck has shown that mastery comes from deliberate and sustained effort. Embracing the growth mindset that leads to this strong sense of expertise, however, means that you need to be willing to try and fail, and use that experience to help you learn.

So:

• • • Can you ask to take on additional responsibilities that may help you expand your skillset, while also playing to your strengths?
    • Could you offer to speak at a departmental or divisional meeting that would get out of your comfort zone, while giving you much-needed visibility within your organization?
    • Is this the time to talk to your boss about a new work assignment, job-shadowing (on- the-job career development) or a formal stretch role? 

3.  Take your paid time off

According to one survey, U.S. employees take only half of their allotted paid time off. Even more surprising is the fact that a staggering 15 percent of employees surveyed took no time off at all during the year.

The reasons given for these findings ranged from fear of getting behind to wanting to out-perform colleagues. However, taking time off from work can be the best thing for a healthy career, with benefits including improved problem-solving and lower rates of stress.

So thinking about your career as a marathon, rather than a sprint, will allow you to keep work-life balance in perspective, and understand how a healthy grasp of that can work to your advantage professionally. 

Strengthen Your Spirit 

4. Develop a gratitude practice  

Interesting research from the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley supports conventional (if somewhat counter-intuitive!) wisdom: being grateful for what you already have may actually be the first step to getting more of what you want. So think about it: what is good or even great about your work right now?  You may have an environment that has flex-hours. Perhaps you have a colleague whom you consider to be a good friend and sounding-board. You may simply love the building/area/office-space in which you work, or realize that your company has unusually good benefits.

Whatever it is, focusing on what is already working will help you appreciate positive aspects of your environment that you may not have noticed. Taking a few minutes at the end of your day to reflect on some of the high points at work can have a profound influence on your levels of joy, and energize you for the next day, leading to a snowball effect on your performance at the office. 

5. Build meaningful breaks into your workday

Nothing quite takes the fun out of the day like long, repetitive stretches of work with no breaks. A system for planned regular, hiatuses during the day, on the other hand, encourages energy, creativity, focus, and health. Some ideas:

• • • Try a 15-minute walk outdoors at lunchtime
    • Connect with a colleague over coffee
    • Take part in your departmental potluck and get to know your office-mates better
    • Sit quietly in your cubicle for a few minutes
    • During your lunch break, take a half-hour yoga class close to your office, or zone out (blissfully!) at a local art gallery in the area
    • Once a week, without fail, circle a day on your calendar when you treat yourself to the pricey-but-scrumptious baguette + soup combo at your favorite deli; brown-bag it on a couple of other days if needed re: your budget.

The point is to incorporate treats and “spirit breaks” into your workday on a regular basis, so that you can maintain a good level of engagement and mental energy.

6. Ask for help

Lastly, if with all of this, you are still struggling with a profound case of the professional blahs, it is important to remember that you don’t have to have all the answers, or suffer in a vacuum. If the relationship allows, share your feelings of disengagement with a colleague or boss; while not all workplaces are the right place for deep honesty, some are. Managers who serve as leaders and mentors need to know how to fulfill their employees, and they can’t do that unless the latter feels comfortable asking for help and guidance.

However, if there’s no safe place for this level of candor at work, trusted colleagues, coaches, and even a circle of professional friends can sometimes fill that void. Are there support organizations for your profession in your area? If not, is it time to start one? The point is, don’t go it alone. Let someone else take a role in listening and supporting you, while guiding you along a path to re-engaging with work.

Incorporate any of these six strategies – focusing on both your professional and personal sides —  into your weekly routine, and you will be back on the fast-track to sustaining a sense of purpose and joy at the workplace.