At some point in your working life, you may find yourself no longer excited about getting up early to report to work. You consider new projects and assignments as cumbersome, and you’re not as eager to do your best as you did before. You wonder, is it time to quit your job or is it just a phase? Are your reasons enough to justify leaving?
Indeed, quitting a job can be as challenging as it was finding it.
Human resource data platform Peakon examined their database, which included information from over 36,000 employees who quit their job. Peakon found that a majority of workers start showing and feeling signs of dissatisfaction and demotivation about nine months before handing in their resignation. Within those nine months, an unhappy employee’s productivity and engagement slowly (but surely) wane until they decide to leave.
It’s possible that for a while now, you’ve been trying to get back your motivation and focus on the benefits of staying in your job. Still, something tells you it’s time to walk away. If you want to know if you should once and for all, reflect on these four indicators:
1. You’re unhappy almost every day doing your work
There’s no psychology or brain science needed here. If you feel like dragging yourself to work most of the days and every task leave you feeling bored, stressed, and unmotivated, then you’ve probably only been trying to survive each workday.
There are different reasons why your work makes you feel unhappy—it could be the monotonous and not challenging nature of your position, the office politics, the low compensation, the ridiculous workload or the attitude of your boss—it can even be a combination of most or all of these. Whatever the reason is behind your prolonged unhappiness, one thing is certain: it isn’t healthy.
2. You don’t see a path for professional growth
One of the reasons why unhappy employees stay in their jobs is their paycheck. True enough, it can be difficult to decide to leave a job when the pay and benefits are good. However, there is more to building a professional career than getting a hefty monthly salary. After all, if you’re paid well yet you still feel unhappy, then maybe it isn’t just about the money, right?
If you’ve been stuck in the same position for years and you don’t see a clear path for professional growth, it’s high time you looked for an opportunity that will fuel your passion and allow you to bring out your best.
3. You’ve been bringing negative energy from work to your home
It’s bad enough that you’re hounded by negative vibes when you’re at the office and you know it’s getting worse when you start to bring the negativity from work to your home. If your work makes you feel so stressed to the point that you come home still feeling bad about the things that transpired in the office, take it as a sign that it’s time to search for a job that will allow you to leave your desk in peace. No job is worth sacrificing your peace of mind and compromising personal relationships for.
4. You hate going to work
Even happy employees have those days when they don’t feel like working, particularly after a vacation or long weekend. However, wanting to have an extra day off and never wanting to go to work are two very different things.
If you resonate with these four signs, then there’s no doubt about it—the time has come for you to move on and find a new job.
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Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
