BEING INTERESTED IN YOUR JOB[MENTAL HEALTH]4

Interest is the stuff that engages your energy with a task. So it was no surprise to look at the numbers and see that it’s strongly associated with both energy and engagement. The more interested you are in what you do, the more engagement you’ll experience . \in fact the numbers reveal that people who are most interested in their jobs are literally 110 percent more engaged in what they’re doing than the least interested and engage groups.

If you are not interested in what you do, the hours really drag. A day seems like a week and a week like nightmare .

So what makes you really interested in your job, other than believing that you’re doing something worthwhile?

According to psychologist Amy Wrzesniewski, work divides into three categories:

1- What she calls jobs?

2- Careers

3-Calling

A job you do for the money -it’s simply the means to an end because you find a purpose elsewhere.

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Maybe you volunteer , something which is well known for increasing happiness, are caring for the others, or pursuing educational aims instead. You are not attached to the job yo do and will stop if any aspect of it becomes inconvenient or wrong for you.

A career you do for money and status , so when these run out you’ll start to look for a new job. A career only has a certain level of interest attached to it, which is why the material benefits associated with it matter so much.

It partly explains why so many people who were in finance are now looking at radically different career options-the money ran out. And they want to try to find their calling.

A calling involves intense interest in the work for its own sake. When you have a calling, you’ll see what you do as fulfilling in and of itself . Because it has meaning and gives you a sense of purpose. So even if the money or status cease, you’ll continue with the work. The time you put in is immaterial because it doesn’t feel like work.

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That’s why some people choose to work such long hours: because they truly find that there’s no more fun than work.

Whether you see yourself as having a job , a career , or a calling doesn’t depend on seniority or the kind of work you do. According to Wrzesniewski, about one third of the people in each and every job will be working at their calling . In fact her original; study was done with 28 hospital cleaners who fell into all three categories . But there’s no doubt about it: if you see what you doo as a calling , you’ll be working additional tasks into your job because that increases your interest in it. That is, you will be crafting and customizing your role.

Job crafting implies that there are tasks and relationships which can be expanded , reduced or changed , or done differently to make your job more interesting and meaningful to you .

The first step is to ensure that those tasks and relationships fit your needs and preferences over a period of time.

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The second step is to reframe what you do to perceive it differently , so you can see the job as a whole rather than as a set of separate tasks.

There’s the famous story of John Kennedy bumping into the janitor at NASA and asking him what he did. And the man replied ,”Helping to put a man on the moon.” That is how you see a job as a part of a whole endeavour.

Of course , some of jobs are much easier to craft than others, especially if you’re in a management role. But all jobs can be crafting by taking on additional tasks, building close relationships, and thinking about your work differently. Doing this actively not only creates strong intrinsic interest in your job but also adds to your overall commitment because you get what’s interesting for you.

If you take job crafting to the next stage you’ll arrive at something a level deeper than interest. You’ll get to vital engagement.