Stay the Course — Your Life’s Big Picture
5 tips for staying the course when your job gets boring
The daily grit and grind are relentless.
These are the days of runaway unemployment or underemployment.
Only a lucky few are gainfully engaged in their dream jobs or professions.
And should you be among the favored few with promising or fulfilling vocations, sooner than later, your job may become boring or less rewarding. Or both.
Sooner than later, that job that once made you feel on top of the world may become another 8 am to 4 pm drudgery.
For every rewarding business, entrepreneurship, or job that plays out successfully or scales upward, these two basic scenarios always play out — the seen and the unseen.
The Seen: The greener grass on the other side of the fence.
The Unseen: The relentless labor, sacrifice, and commitment of the gardener on the other side.
Recently, I commissioned a tailor (We call them “fashion designers” where I live.) to sew and deliver my new cotton wax-print jacket. Our agreed-upon delivery day was two weeks away.
On the expected date, the guy was nowhere to be seen. Three extra weeks later, he finally showed up. Where has he been all these days? Unknown to me, he was out on a quest for greener pastures — a salaried job.
Why did he leave his more promising self-employment for the seemingly greener pastures of uncertain salaried employment? Why did this expert-to-be leave his highly demanded service to squirrel for the seemingly greener gas of an underpaying and possibly more demanding job?
A Forbes article reported that over 90% of entrepreneurs fail and detailed what the remaining 10% who succeeded did to scale up.
The first challenge for aspiring entrepreneurs who take the apprenticeship path is to complete their training. According to FE Week in the United Kingdom, “the overall achievement rate for all apprenticeships increased slightly from 57.5 percent in 2019/20 to 57.7 percent in 2020/21.”
Why do some young people leave more promising vocations for jobs with no future guarantees? Why do some of them often give up midway?
What mindsets do they need to stay in their courses until the seeds of diligent training start bearing fruits?
1. Look at the big picture — your future.
Bigger-picture thinking means you reflect on how your present actions and choices may likely affect your future chances of success.
So, don’t forget what you were trying to achieve when you started.
Losing sight of the goal you had in mind is a common pitfall that many entrepreneurs fall into. If you aim to achieve economic independence and to ultimately control your destiny, you must not lose your focus.
Without focus, it is easy to become discouraged and distracted,
2. Play for the long run. Enjoy the process too.
The road to career, entrepreneurship, or business success is never straightforward. There will always be many challenges and obstacles.
Social media endlessly inundates us all with stories of instant success. We all know the truth, but many still swallow the bait.
The successful icons we all admire also passed through their own peak and valley in their turns. Therefore, you must purpose to stay the course despite the challenges.
The peak isn’t the point, climbing the mountain is. If you don’t like climbing mountains, I promise, the peak has nothing more to offer you.
~ @JTaylorForeman on Twitter
3. Re-set and challenge yourself.
When the going gets tough, the urge to opt out on yourself gets very high. Do not quit on yourself. Instead, reset yourself.
How do you re-set yourself for long-run success?
For a start, rediscover and clarify the reason for your why. As the saying goes, “Where there is a will, there will always be a way.” This still goes back to the aforementioned big goal — the drive and motivation behind what you are trying to achieve.
Resetting yourself also involves writing down and following through on both your long and short-term goals.
A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.
~ Greg Reid
The day-to-day tasks leading to your goals may be boring or intimidating. You must persevere and persist. Every little consistent step you take leads you ever closer to your target.
As Tim Denning succinctly puts it in a recent article, what most of us lack is not skill or ability. Everywhere you look, you’ll see that consistency is in short supply. You will be stacking the odds favorably toward your favor if you can discipline yourself to be more consistent.
In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins — not through strength but by perseverance.
~H. Jackson Brown Jr,
If you do not start and persist now, in the next one, two, or five years from now, you will still be in the same place. You certainly don’t want to do that.
Would you rather make progress or make regrets?
4. Why go it alone? Team up and arrive early.
The desire to be a celebrated trail-blazing lone-ranger may be doing you more harm than good. At some other times, the route to your success is best assured if you enlist the help of other people.
Getting others involved in your quest for success may well be what you need to gain new insights and perspectives that eventually speed you on to your goal.
Others might have achieved what you are trying to do today. Why not learn and grow through their experiences instead of trying to reinvent the wheel?
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
~African Proverb
5. Beware of the quicksands of immediate gratification.
In Greek mythology, the sirens were creatures half bird and half human who lured sailors to destruction through their alluring songs. While sailing near the shores of the sirens, Odysseus saved his crew’s lives by blocking their ears from hearing those irresistibly tempting songs.
Like the sirens of the Odyssey, the internet and social media constantly ensnare us with the temptation of instant gratifications.
Instant or immediate gratification is the tendency to forgo a future benefit in order to gain a less rewarding but more immediate benefit.
If you are to press on to your desired goal, discipline yourself to always resist the urge for instant gratification.
If the grass on the other side of the fence appears greener than yours, it may well be that the other gardener tends and waters his grass better than you do.
Start greening your grass.
Takeaways
Be it in a career, business, or entrepreneurship, the temptation to drop out for the next shining opportunity is always present and ever appealing.
These tips will keep you on course.
The big picture is “the future you”. Always keep that in view.
Play for the long run and enjoy the process while doing so.
Take time to re-set and rechallenge yourself. Go further.
Team up with others. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
Resist and overcome the urge for immediate gratification.
Thank you for reading my story.
Originally published on Medium.