Job satisfaction / perfectionism

[Samwise1]

Hi all,
a time ago I created a prayer-thread for my current job, and hopefully a new one. I thank all those who are praying for us!

But I don’t want to cloud the Prayer-section with the advice I’m asking right now.

Currently I am working in informatics in a pretty small family-owned company (150 employees).
My original field of work is logistics but I have some affinity with IT (mostly because I was a key-user for the systems we used).
I am not at all experienced in programming and generally notice I have a different thinking approach than a programmer would have.

This makes me feel unsatisfied everyday, also distracted often and unable to maintain the focus I should have to program quicker.
My boss and coach tell me it’s okay that I am slower as I am new in this job. I don’t get a lot of feedback, or checkups - I only hear feedback after I crossed a certain line. I am used to ‘spar’ with my colleagues about situations and can use a lot of the things said to improve my own work. In this field (and maybe specific for the rural area the company is in), people don’t talk a lot about how they feel about work, about you, etc.
Also, thinking in projects and deadlines suits me less than just taking on the work in front of you (where no matter how much work it is, it just needs to be solved).

What the ‘spiritual’ issue is:
My anxiety disorder kicks in, always saying: “They are just saying this to please you, but behind your back they are talking about telling you it’s better to leave.” Because of the lack of feedback, I start guessing.
This makes me distracted, afraid to ask help and therefore even slower…

Though my applications keep flowing, I have an interview planned and I get more feeling that I can have a job soon (also due to improvements in general employment around here), still I feel I need to leave here with a good feeling and also learn how to prevent the feeling I have now, of clouding my experience on a new job.

Strangely enough, I started praying for this with several different devotions, I talk about this feeling with my coach and boss, but still I come home everyday feeling bad. And that’s seriously. I know I shouldn’t complain giving the state of other people around here, but I feel my spirit is down/lazy and not able to shine through Jesus’ goodness.

I really would appreciate some experiences and practical suggestions. Maybe I need to change my thinking, maybe it’s just proof I need to change quickly to protect my spiritual health, maybe I need to do things differently…

 

[tawny]

Continued prayers for your intentions.

 

[Samwise1]

Thank you. I think I just need to start realizing that this company / this profession is not for me, focus on just doing my things and finding a new job.

But then again, my perfectionism is bothering me: I still want to be the best, still want to think of everything before I call for help… On this project I crossed 6x the alotted time. Which I already addressed to my boss, which my colleagues already partly accounted for (wrong estimation, several additional factors that just came up during development). But still I don’t hear, “it’s okay” or “Sam, please work harder” or “I’ll take over from here because the project seems too difficult for you”. No, I just sit here guessing and worrying…

 

[spunjalebi]

It sounds like you need more verbal affirmation from your superiors. It would be good to receive constructive criticism and positive feedback. If I were you, I’d communicate that to your supervisor(s), and let them know it gives you an idea if you are on track.

 

[Samwise1]

Your prayers please while I go into another round of applications and interviews.
I felt pretty good and built up some confidence. But I know I could do so much better, and that I could feel so much better.

The general way of working here is this:
I get an assignment via a coach or boss, from a customer. I have been said that I need to check more with these superiors if I’m on track, so I refer to them a lot. They tell me how to do it, I finish and then another person (either customer or another superior) tells to ME that it should have been otherwise - without adding “But if your coach told you otherwise, I’ll tell him because he made the mistake of telling you”).
Or one colleague would tell me “Don’t spend too much time on it”, but when delivering I need to explain every bit I did, taking me more hours than he asked me to use.
My boss planned his holiday, wants me to deliver something before he goes, my coach tells me I need to wait for approval before I can start preparing, and then my boss takes until one day before his holiday that they want to change the general idea. If I would start before, I work for nothing - and no one needs to account for these lost hours except me.

All in all, a bad preparation by my superiors results in me feeling I am to blame (or changing last minute planning to implement their desires).

This is not incidental. This happens almost with EVERY project I deliver.

I’m quite prideful so draw my satisfaction from the satisfaction of other people. But it seems it’s never possible to satisfy - because my superiors just don’t seem to agree on the general idea until I did all the work… The one that asked me to do it the original way, never sticks up for me or affirms me. It’s just the person who is not satisfied that tells me that I made a wrong decision.
It’s frustrating. More colleagues every expressed frustration about the general way of working in this company so I don’t feel alone.

Please pray for my general satisfaction, confidence and that I may find a way to address this. Any suggestions are welcome also.
More over, please pray for more applications and interviews, including one interview that I’ll have in a few hours.

 

[Xantippe]

Hi all,
a time ago I created a prayer-thread for my current job, and hopefully a new one. I thank all those who are praying for us!

But I don’t want to cloud the Prayer-section with the advice I’m asking right now.

Currently I am working in informatics in a pretty small family-owned company (150 employees).
My original field of work is logistics but I have some affinity with IT (mostly because I was a key-user for the systems we used).
I am not at all experienced in programming and generally notice I have a different thinking approach than a programmer would have.

This makes me feel unsatisfied everyday, also distracted often and unable to maintain the focus I should have to program quicker.
My boss and coach tell me it’s okay that I am slower as I am new in this job. I don’t get a lot of feedback, or checkups - I only hear feedback after I crossed a certain line. I am used to ‘spar’ with my colleagues about situations and can use a lot of the things said to improve my own work. In this field (and maybe specific for the rural area the company is in), people don’t talk a lot about how they feel about work, about you, etc.
Also, thinking in projects and deadlines suits me less than just taking on the work in front of you (where no matter how much work it is, it just needs to be solved).

What the ‘spiritual’ issue is:
My anxiety disorder kicks in, always saying: “They are just saying this to please you, but behind your back they are talking about telling you it’s better to leave.” Because of the lack of feedback, I start guessing.
This makes me distracted, afraid to ask help and therefore even slower…

Though my applications keep flowing, I have an interview planned and I get more feeling that I can have a job soon (also due to improvements in general employment around here), still I feel I need to leave here with a good feeling and also learn how to prevent the feeling I have now, of clouding my experience on a new job.

Strangely enough, I started praying for this with several different devotions, I talk about this feeling with my coach and boss, but still I come home everyday feeling bad. And that’s seriously. I know I shouldn’t complain giving the state of other people around here, but I feel my spirit is down/lazy and not able to shine through Jesus’ goodness.

I really would appreciate some experiences and practical suggestions. Maybe I need to change my thinking, maybe it’s just proof I need to change quickly to protect my spiritual health, maybe I need to do things differently…

I think you are probably right on the money with your self-evaluation about projects and deadlines being a bad fit for you and doing better with a job where you just deal with stuff as it comes along.

I think you should try to work into a job that’s more suitable for you, but in the meantime, try to take positive feedback at face value.

Also, it’s not surprising that the set-up that your place of work has where you primarily get to hear negative feedback is crushing your self-esteem. I think that would be true for most people. In marriage counseling, they say that we need 5 positive interactions to cancel out 1 negative interaction–so no wonder you are going into emotional “debt” at work.

I can’t speak to the how-to-get-out-of-this, but I think you are correct that your situation isn’t a good fit for you.

Best wishes!

 

[Samwise1]

Thank you for at least one positive interaction for this day

It helped a lot, and your analysis is probably right.

 

[Samwise1]

Keep getting depressed / anxious…
Everyday something happens that drops my motivation.
Been assigned a project for certain amount of hours, and after delivering there are so many comments that I need to spend double hours. I need to report if I exceed time, but this is a logical consequence of all the “I’d rather have the image there”. Of course, maybe that’s nice on the users perspective. But that’s not how I designed it. Why nobody here can just say “Ah, I like it also like you made it, you can keep it like that.” Or “Ah, I guess you crossed the hours but if you can change this it’s okay if you cross them.”

Company says it’s family-oriented with attention for work and private life, but I am NEVER asked how I am, while I try to ask all my colleagues about themselves also - Just to be nice, not to do too much chitchat.

I just don’t have the time to get on top of things. Due to private things, but also due to lack of motivation. One cause of the latter is the fact that it’s anyway never good enough, and that I can try to finish things on time but that this will mean that another project will be shoved into my agenda. So instead of “Ah nice you finished well within time” it’s “You need to finish this project in time as well”

It’s not doing my confidence very well, and the feeling that my agenda will just always be filled doesn’t help to apply for other jobs - who knows they’ll just say "Ah you need to finish this first, you can’t go home yet (while it actually is for an interview).

Prayers welcome, as well as some uplifting words!

 

[Xantippe]

Keep getting depressed / anxious…
Everyday something happens that drops my motivation.
Been assigned a project for certain amount of hours, and after delivering there are so many comments that I need to spend double hours. I need to report if I exceed time, but this is a logical consequence of all the “I’d rather have the image there”. Of course, maybe that’s nice on the users perspective. But that’s not how I designed it. Why nobody here can just say “Ah, I like it also like you made it, you can keep it like that.” Or “Ah, I guess you crossed the hours but if you can change this it’s okay if you cross them.”

Company says it’s family-oriented with attention for work and private life, but I am NEVER asked how I am, while I try to ask all my colleagues about themselves also - Just to be nice, not to do too much chitchat.

I just don’t have the time to get on top of things. Due to private things, but also due to lack of motivation. One cause of the latter is the fact that it’s anyway never good enough, and that I can try to finish things on time but that this will mean that another project will be shoved into my agenda. So instead of “Ah nice you finished well within time” it’s “You need to finish this project in time as well”

It’s not doing my confidence very well, and the feeling that my agenda will just always be filled doesn’t help to apply for other jobs - who knows they’ll just say "Ah you need to finish this first, you can’t go home yet (while it actually is for an interview).

Prayers welcome, as well as some uplifting words!

I think you need to leave this place as soon as you can, because it’s obviously not a good fit for you.

But in the meantime, can you start explaining (briefly!) what their new requests are going to cost in time. “Sure thing! I’ll get right on that. I should be able to do the new stuff for you and meet the deadline if I put in double hours.” Make sure they understand what they are asking of you in terms of time.

Do you remember the big Obamacare website debacle a few years back? There was a lot of discussion about how non-tech political people simply didn’t understand how enormously time-consuming the process of putting together a website with that many moving parts would be. (And the last I heard a couple years ago, the Obamacare people had bailed on a lot of the function to get it up faster.) I think something similar is probably happening with your workplace.

 

[Xantippe]

Also, if the job thing looks like it may take a while, maybe start working with a therapist temporarily to get you through? And/or talk to your doctor about depression symptoms?

 

[Samwise1]

Well, this is a bit my issue: Deadlines are so tense. I need to plan myself, but everytime I say I don’t have time people just tell me I should have time. Due to lack of motivation, I work slower so finish later.
So: Job interviews and doctor visits take time off my agenda, and I feel more and more difficult to explain why I come to work in a business suit (Because I have an interview right after work) and to plan around my schedule.

I was thinking about telling that I’m applying for different jobs, but am afraid to do so.

Could I, though, address my own lack of motivation to my superiors? Like: I want to be better, but sometimes just can’t because I feel distracted and not encouraged? That would leave the choice for allowing for doctor visit, more lenience in planning to find better opportunities, or giving me more positive stimulation (be it in a different department perhaps).

One thing is that last year I have been feeling drained of being a parish board member. I resigned this month, and hope this will cause me to be more relaxed during working days.
Also, relationshipwise things are getting a lot better and we are in safer waters for our marriage.

 

[Xantippe]

Well, this is a bit my issue: Deadlines are so tense. I need to plan myself, but everytime I say I don’t have time people just tell me I should have time. Due to lack of motivation, I work slower so finish later.
So: Job interviews and doctor visits take time off my agenda, and I feel more and more difficult to explain why I come to work in a business suit (Because I have an interview right after work) and to plan around my schedule.

I was thinking about telling that I’m applying for different jobs, but am afraid to do so.

Could I, though, address my own lack of motivation to my superiors? Like: I want to be better, but sometimes just can’t because I feel distracted and not encouraged? That would leave the choice for allowing for doctor visit, more lenience in planning to find better opportunities, or giving me more positive stimulation (be it in a different department perhaps).

One thing is that last year I have been feeling drained of being a parish board member. I resigned this month, and hope this will cause me to be more relaxed during working days.
Also, relationshipwise things are getting a lot better and we are in safer waters for our marriage.

Oh, very good about the stuff in your last paragraph.

I think I wouldn’t use the phrase “lack of motivation” to anybody that was employing me, but asking for a transfer is perfectly kosher. “Better fit” might be the right term to use. I think you might want to mention that you’re more of a people person than you realized, and that you would benefit from more opportunities to work with other people and get feedback. So, talk about your strengths to them while trying to escape from this particular bear trap.

It sounds like it’s just a very lonely experience for you to be grinding away at these purely technical jobs with so little positive human interaction. That’s totally normal–I think a lot of people would feel the same way.

(I’ve been talking to my husband about work for me for when our youngest is in school and one of the options is doing some copyediting at home for a non-native English speaker relative who has a lot of that kind of work to offer. I think that’s not a bad idea for me from time to time, but I told my husband that one thing that would be missing from that option would be the opportunity to have more in-person adult interaction. I’ve thought of myself as an introvert for years, and I am, but it turns out that even introverts have social needs.)

Good luck!

 

[1ke]

What the ‘spiritual’ issue is:
My anxiety disorder kicks in, always saying: “They are just saying this to please you, but behind your back they are talking about telling you it’s better to leave.” Because of the lack of feedback, I start guessing.
This makes me distracted, afraid to ask help and therefore even slower…

This is more of a mental health issue than a “spiritual” issue. You need to talk to your therapist and if you are receiving medication for your anxiety talk about whether it needs to be adjusted. Or if you aren’t taking any, perhaps you need to.

 

[chevalier]

Chances are the job isn’t a good fit for you due to:

– being low on feedback in general
– being low on (offering) motivation
but also and perhaps more importantly:
– not being one where it’s possible to meet expectations, by design

Some corporations really operate on that premise of constant improvement meaning not only you should never rest on the laurels but also you’re never good enough. (E.g. you’re never just fast, you only have too long deadlines given to you by your manager.)

Perhaps it’s only your impression to some extent, as your superiors won’t confirm that for you, but then there’s rarely smoke without a fire.

I would talk to a counsellor before making any life-changing decisions such as quitting your job.

Has your manager been supportive?

 

[Samwise1]

Some things:
Right now, it’s all getting too much for me, I feel overwhelmed and don’t see light at the end of the tunnel.

Me being a people person is a great affirmation. Yes, right now I have been called bad in communication but I guess that’s because of that I am told exactly how I should talk. In my past jobs, I adopted some strategies, including coping with my own weaknesses, which allowed me to enlist the cooperation and understanding of even the most aggressive truck driver. I see now that I should not be afraid of my own skills.

I don’t visit a therapist as I’m afraid that going into the medical system will make me even more self conscious and insecure. I have determined that lack of sleep is a big root cause.

But I have talked with priests, my wife and an experienced friend and all agree on what has been said here: Try to move on to a better place.

Keep me in your prayers please.

 

[Xantippe]

Some things:
Right now, it’s all getting too much for me, I feel overwhelmed and don’t see light at the end of the tunnel.

Me being a people person is a great affirmation. Yes, right now I have been called bad in communication but I guess that’s because of that I am told exactly how I should talk. In my past jobs, I adopted some strategies, including coping with my own weaknesses, which allowed me to enlist the cooperation and understanding of even the most aggressive truck driver. I see now that I should not be afraid of my own skills.

I don’t visit a therapist as I’m afraid that going into the medical system will make me even more self conscious and insecure. I have determined that lack of sleep is a big root cause.

But I have talked with priests, my wife and an experienced friend and all agree on what has been said here: Try to move on to a better place.

Keep me in your prayers please.

Best wishes!

The Christmas season can be really hard, as the expectations are so high. Just get through to early January and see how you feel.

Some fresh air, sunlight, and a little exercise might help a little, too. There may be a seasonal aspect to your low spirits.

 

[Samwise1]

Wow, just had a confrontation with my coach. They ask me to ask questions whenever I can’t continue. So I asked assistance, and was open to anything that would help me get a better

I thought I made clear I was pretty ‘lost’ in the project, then my coach demanded that I answered the question he asked in the way he wanted too (instead of listening to the progress I made on a different solution-path and going from there). I took some seconds to think about what he meant - since I didn’t explore that path yet-, than he kind of yelled that I have to go figure it out myself… All the time I’m having a sad look on my face, and they just don’t figure that I could use some uplifting instead of this kind of feedback…

Finally, added to an incident earlier this week, I feel confirmed that I need to leave this place. Several colleagues also told me they feel the same ‘directedness’ in other departments (which means that internal transfer will not help) and feel frustrated, and are also looking for other opportunities.

Please pray as my coach will return soon and I want to see if we can get along with the project. And pray for more insight in better opportunities. Thanks a lot.

 

[Samwise1]

Just came from a job interview, which was successful! I will be invited for a second one. It seems I’m the only one being considered because it’s a specific task combining different fields from my experience. Finally this company recognizes my broad resume-history as a pro instead of a con!

Generally at my current job things are going a bit better, also after a nice holiday and building my confidence through prayer, pilgrimage and communicating with my wife.

Please keep your prayers up that I don’t expect too much, stay humble and realistic to what I can do and want to do. And of course that this new job turns out to be what I expected!

 

[Xantippe]

Very good!

Just came from a job interview, which was successful! I will be invited for a second one. It seems I’m the only one being considered because it’s a specific task combining different fields from my experience. Finally this company recognizes my broad resume-history as a pro instead of a con!

Generally at my current job things are going a bit better, also after a nice holiday and building my confidence through prayer, pilgrimage and communicating with my wife.

Please keep your prayers up that I don’t expect too much, stay humble and realistic to what I can do and want to do. And of course that this new job turns out to be what I expected!

 

[Xantippe]

Wow, just had a confrontation with my coach. They ask me to ask questions whenever I can’t continue. So I asked assistance, and was open to anything that would help me get a better

I thought I made clear I was pretty ‘lost’ in the project, then my coach demanded that I answered the question he asked in the way he wanted too (instead of listening to the progress I made on a different solution-path and going from there). I took some seconds to think about what he meant - since I didn’t explore that path yet-, than he kind of yelled that I have to go figure it out myself… All the time I’m having a sad look on my face, and they just don’t figure that I could use some uplifting instead of this kind of feedback…

Finally, added to an incident earlier this week, I feel confirmed that I need to leave this place. Several colleagues also told me they feel the same ‘directedness’ in other departments (which means that internal transfer will not help) and feel frustrated, and are also looking for other opportunities.

Please pray as my coach will return soon and I want to see if we can get along with the project. And pray for more insight in better opportunities. Thanks a lot.

Your coach is probably used to seeing people with sad expressions on their faces…