- 1). Review your job description and the processes you use to complete your tasks and responsibilities. Determine whether there are alternative ways to approach your responsibilities that would raise your motivation level. For instance, assume you're responsible for producing monthly employee turnover results in presentations to your human resources colleagues and the company's upper management team. Improve your motivation by developing a presentation that has more than the basic elements -- introduce metrics based on industry standards, specialized measurements for departments and labor market trends that affect your company's turnover. Reinventing your tasks will make your work more challenging, which can lift your motivation.
- 2). Examine your job description from the standpoint of certain duties you consider tedious, or duties that don't challenge you enough. Review your performance evaluations to determine if there are goals you and your supervisor identified during past appraisal meetings that you haven't started working on. Modify your current duties to help you reach those goals.
- 3). Talk to your supervisor about your unhappiness. Frame your discussion around what you can do to improve your outlook, not what you want your employer to do for you. Take ownership of your unhappiness, and look at your current responsibilities to improve your motivation. Your problem may be more related to boredom instead of unhappiness or dissatisfaction. Discussing this issue with your supervisors may reveal opportunities within the department, such as cross-training to acquire functional knowledge in other department areas, or job shadowing that may encourage you to seek opportunities for advancement or lateral moves within the company.
- 4). List the aspects of your job that you're unhappy with. Determine whether any of the items on your list are connected to work-life balance or personal matters you're allowing to spill over into your professional life. Seek assistance from your employer's employee assistance program, if available. Examine ways to improve your work-life balance. The inability to achieve work-life balance can make it seem like your job responsibilities are overwhelming, which may cause or contribute to your unhappiness.
- 5). Request time off. In CNN.com's Travel section, correspondent A. Pawlowski cited a Reuters poll that found only 57 percent of American workers use their accrued vacation. Reuters itself posted in its August 2011 article, "Overworked Americans Don't Take All Their Vacation Time," that 36 percent of workers don't take their vacations. Nevertheless, the purpose of vacation time is to put aside work so your body and mind have time to rejuvenate and renew. Returning to work after a vacation may improve your outlook and your happiness about your job.
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