3 Ways To Increase Your Job Satisfaction

1. Change The Way You Work

Although it’s probably safe to say that most of the time you would prefer to be doing something else, there are likely at least some aspects of your job that you do find enjoyable.

To increase your overall job satisfaction, you can emphasize the tasks you do enjoy by spending more of your time and energy on them.

For instance, a professor might feel most fulfilled when interacting with students. So in order to increase her job satisfaction, the professor might decide to limit the time she spends contributing to university committees and spend more time working with students instead.

Another way to make work more meaningful is to take on an additional task that you find fulfilling. Even if this increases your workload, it can still be beneficial if it helps you feel happier about heading to work every day.

Finally, if you can’t emphasize or add tasks, it might be possible to re-engineer existing ones by introducing an element that inspires you.

2. Change Your Workplace Relationships

Another way to create your own happiness in the workplace is to craft your interactions with others in ways that foster meaningfulness.

Research on employee interactions indicates that even short-term connections, especially when they are high quality, can be reinvigorating. So taking the time to build up relationships, with colleagues, customers or overseers, can be another way to increase job satisfaction.

For example, you could spend time mentoring a less experienced co-worker, or get to know some of your colleagues on a more personal level. Even just making a point of chatting with customers and getting to know the regulars can help you derive more meaning from your work.

3. Re frame The Way You Think About Work

The way you view your job and the tasks you perform on a daily basis also affects your engagement and satisfaction in the workplace.

Crafting your perceptions about work, or “cognitive job crafting” as the researchers refer to it, isn't as physical as building relationships or performing specific tasks, so it can be more difficult to do, but the goal is to help you to find more meaning in your job as a whole.

“The more you look for the benefits of what you’re doing, the more it feeds you psychologically,” explained Dutton.

For example, although zookeepers spend much of their time cleaning out enclosures and feeding animals, they tend to view their work as a way of ensuring that the animals receive proper care, rather than as a series of menial tasks, which helps them find meaning in it.