How Learning New Skills Can Lead to Better Enjoyment at Work
Last updated August 7, 2021
If you’ve lost interest in your work you’re not alone, many find the spark that first attracted them to a job role fades over time. Identifying that something isn’t right is the first step to making changes that will put you back in control of your happiness. Often it is not the job itself that’s causing our lack of enjoyment, but the way we are showing up to work.
To begin making positive changes we need to improve on one common, but often underdeveloped skill, the ability to learn.
Improving your ability to learn will improve your thought processes and behaviour, making you more productive and less stressed. Learning a new hobby, for example, can bring satisfaction and fulfilment outside of your job, ultimately leading to greater enjoyment at work.
Enjoyment at work
In April 2020, around 50% of employees said they felt unhappy about their work life balance, and a third felt isolated or had other worries about work.
The European Commission also found that the implications of the pandemic, including rising COVID cases, prolonged lockdowns and the economic downturn, had a negative effect on personal well-being. Life dissatisfaction and increased anxiety were common amongst women and those with job uncertainty.
If the pandemic has made your life less enjoyable, it’s important to do something about the way you feel. Don’t wait for the pandemic to be over, you need to take control of your life right now!
And when you do, you’ll find that enjoyment returns to other aspects of your life too, work included.
Teach yourself how to learn
If you want to create a habit or learn a new skill, it won’t happen overnight. Habits and skills are developed over time and occur as part of a learning curve.
Learning curves are part of a long-established workplace philosophy. In industry, studies of learning curves have shown that with practice, people can learn to perform a task more quickly and effectively. However, a learning curve takes time to journey along. Some days you might feel you’re charging ahead, and others may feel like there’s been a regression. What’s important is that you keep your end goal in mind. Leadership training can be useful in helping with this.
Be realistic and know that learning a new skill takes time and dedication. The most successful executives and entrepreneurs out there took time to establish themselves, going through many learning curves along the way. Take Bill Gates as an example. He dropped out of college and embarked upon a project with a poor business plan. The project failed. Did Bill give up? Of course not. He used the lessons from his failures to go on to found the biggest tech company on the planet.
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