Whatchu talkin’ ‘bout Willis?
Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time in any industry has probably experienced ups and downs in their level of enthusiasm to wake up and do it all over again the next day. A tale as old as time; You begin with a full heart and the best of intentions. Every day is an exciting new adventure full of opportunity… until one day you notice that spark you had is just a little duller.
And slowly, like a crab in a pot, you get used to the way things have become. You chock it up to having a bad day. Maybe you didn’t have enough sleep the night before. Maybe you aren’t eating right or getting enough water or exercise. Don’t get me wrong, these things can absolutely impact your quality of life, however they are also easily accessible answers and may mask the changes that could truly help your situation long term. Understanding your needs is an important part of taking steps to improve your situation and outlook.
What’s love got to do with it?
You might have read through the paragraphs above, and, like me, have thought to yourself “that sounds a little like a failing relationship”. And you would be very correct! Before my partner and I tied the knot, we read a bunch of those classically eye-roll worthy relationship books. While I was reading a few of them, I thought to myself, applied generically, these strategies can help with any number of relationship types.
Relationships are not strictly romantic. You can have relationships with friends, family, neighbors, yourself, and yes, even your job. At the end of the day, relationships are a negotiation and upholding of terms and agreements for all parties involved. So if you are going to spend almost a third of your working years … well, working, why not ensure that you are getting the most out of it?
This way of thinking had me taking the first step, which was understanding what I as an engineer needed to still care about my craft. What was it that made me feel fulfilled and kept me coming back for more? Sure, it’s not always going to be a honeymoon with your place of work, and maybe your workplace isn’t even what can provide you what you need in the end. However, if you can find what it is you need to settle into a mutually respectful relationship with the stuff that got you into tech in the first place, you’re in a better position to control your burnout and make non-impulsive decisions for yourself and your future. (AKA maybe you won’t rage quit this week)
What are these love languages exactly?
I want to preface this by saying that I made this list myself and you should feel free to explore your own nuances of what lights your technology fire. You also may find that you are a combination of languages. After a lot of noodling, these are the five I came up with:
Problem solving
The desire to fix, improve or find a solution to a challenge. If one of your love languages is problem solving, you may find that if you are in a role that is performing more procedural maintenance work, you are not finding the fulfillment you need. If you get bored or easily distracted and feel a sense of senior-itis in these duties, you may be missing the challenge that comes from being given a problem statement and needing to dig in and investigate things yourself.
Learning
A lot of people in STEM occupations will tell you that they love learning. Academic growth is an important part of keeping up with the rapidly changing ecosystem of IoT and beyond. If you get the feeling that your role or your company’s product has been stagnating (even if this may not be true across the board), you might benefit from some furthering education opportunities.
Innovation
This love language overlaps both with problem solving and learning in a way. However, I distinguish innovation here specifically because it implies the act of improving upon something and not just solving a problem or learning a new skill. There are entire roles for people whose responsibility it is to come up with new ideas to improve upon products. There is autonomy and a different type of independence that comes with the responsibility of innovating which may appeal to your personal needs.
Ownership & Recognition
Let’s face it, even the most humble of engineers will likely appreciate a thank you every now and then. Ownership and recognition dives into a different area of love language for us in that it directly involves the feedback of others. Praise and recognition for our efforts is a valuable feedback loop that motivates us and boosts our confidence. There is a line between being an attention seeker or a braggart and looking for reasonable feedback. However, it is not so fine of a line that most of us won’t recognize when we are crossing from one side to another, so I believe that it is reasonable for us to seek out that kind of feedback. If you found yourself in the classic “group project” conundrum where you were carrying the lion’s share of the load for a task, and you were not recognized for that going above and beyond, you may feel slighted or even feel like there isn’t a point to going above and beyond if no one is going to recognize it. If you have experienced this kind of scenario before, recognition for your efforts may be lacking.
Collaboration
Finally, for those of us on the more social spectrum, workplace collaboration may play a large role in contributing back to our occupational emotional bank. The camaraderie that you feel from being in the trenches with someone on a tough task and finally coming to a conclusion can bring a major social high! Not everyone is equipped to work in a silo and if you find yourself working solo a majority of the time, feeling isolated or even excited to be involved in a mundane meeting, you may be lacking in the collaboration realm. If you find that you have fond memories of working in groups and your role now does not offer those kinds of opportunities, consider that this may be an aspect you are missing in your working life.
What can I do?
When dealing with matters of mental health and happiness, it’s always a personal journey. The categories listed above are those that I’ve found most commonly come up in instances of workplace dissatisfaction. It might take some introspection and experimentation to find what it is you need to find a place of balance. Here are a few things that I or others I know have done in the past.
- When I found that I was lacking interest in my work and felt like I was not growing as an engineer, I took it upon myself to do some fun side projects to get me back into the swing of things. There was a great Udemy course that had a collection of small capstone style projects to get my creative juices flowing again. Once a week I spend time on a small isolated project, such as building my own version of the retro game Pong. This made me realize I was lacking the opportunity to problem solve as much as I needed.
- I have the fortune to have a great working relationship with my staff manager. They are receptive to feedback and take what I say into consideration. In the past, I’ve recommended opportunities for us to create positive feedback loops for staff to increase workplace recognition. We have now institutionalized this in both a public and private format at my job.
- Peers of mine have found great opportunities to both gain recognition and collaborate more in our field when they engage with the open source community around our tools. Local meetup groups, online forums, and conferences are great opportunities to make connections and contribute back to the communities in an educational format.
- Finding ways that you can make your expertise useful in your out of work life can also bring back some of the joy in the craft. I am a big gardener, and one of my passion projects is finding a way to automate some of the more time consuming or forgettable tasks around that. I’ve played around with creating small tools and apps that help to do things like notify me of weather concerns that might require that I change the garden conditions for certain plants or keep track of a watering and fertilization schedule based on plant type.
When you are able to better understand your needs, you are better able to communicate them to those around you and advocate for them when you have to in order to set yourself up for success and prevent burnout, resentment and ultimately giving up on what could be an incredibly fulfilling career. So I leave you with this, before you rage quit, take some time to make sure it’s really the career you want to change or something less obvious.