Working in a job that makes you unhappy can be very difficult. This could eventually impact your health, family, and even professional career. That’s why you may get to a point where you really need to decide if quitting a job you’re unhappy with is your best option.
While you might want to make a quick decision to quit your job you’re unhappy with, you should take a step back to first determine the reasons you’re unhappy. Then you need to weigh the pros and cons of your current situation. Lastly, take action on the final decision of what is best for you.
To help you, we will break down everything that goes into the decision making process of evaluating whether it makes sense to quit your job.
Should You Quit Your Job if You Are Unhappy
Many people may be unhappy with their jobs. However, if it’s Sunday and you’re dreading the thought of even going back to work or your work starts impacting your family life, then you definitely need to decide if your job is worth it.
Determine the Reasons Your Unhappy
The first thing to do is to determine the reasons why you are unhappy in your job. Some of the common reasons you might be unhappy may include:
Too Much Workload
If you are working too many hours every week, it takes away time from your personal life. You might not be able to spend time on your own interests and hang out with friends or family. It also might lead to missing big events in your life such as birthdays, graduation, or weddings.
Stress at Work
Sometimes if you are under constant deadlines and have to work on never ending projects, it can get old really fast. Especially if you don’t have support from your company’s leadership to fix the problem. Many jobs can be stressful to begin with and adding more to the flame never helps.
Location of the Job
Whether you live too far away from your family or live in a high cost area, location could have a big impact on a person’s happiness. If you are forced to work more hours to keep up with the cost of where you live, it definitely can be challenging.
Hanging Around Negative People
It can be draining hanging out with negative people. They can impact your attitude and really stagnante your growth in your career. Negativity may cause you to become unhappy. For more information, check out this article on some good reasons why to avoid negative people.
Poor Working Environment
When you are in a situation where you don’t have good leadership or a collaborative working environment, it can quickly impact the synergy at your workplace. It can almost make you feel like you’re in a toxic environment which is never a good thing. This can lead to a drop in your productivity and general unhappiness with your job.
Weigh the Pros and Cons
Once you figure out why you are unhappy, then you need to start weighing in the Pros and Cons of your current job. While you might be unhappy with several things at your job, maybe there are some positives as well. One thing that helps when it comes to tough decision making is to take the emotion out of it.
Some things for you to consider:
Promotion or Other Job Opportunities in Your Company
Even if your current job is not that great, do you have an opportunity to quickly get a promotion or a different job in your company? Sometimes changing managers can make a huge difference without needing to actually quit your job.
For example, if you don’t like being micro-managed and you are working under a micromanager, it can make you miserable because you might not be able to drive tasks the way you think it should be done.
Making a switch to a manager that can maximize your abilities might make you much happier even if it’s a similar type of job. If you are in a situation where if you finish a major project and you might be able to score a better position with a different manager it may be a pro to stay a little longer.
Company Leadership
If you are part of a growing company, it’s possible that the culture could change quickly. Especially if the teams start expanding fast. It might be worthwhile to look into the direction your company is taking.
In a situation where you have a good boss but are having a hard time with the workload, it might be in the plan that a growing company might start hiring more people to help you in your situation. If you think you can get help within a reasonable period, it might be something to consider.
Compensation
Evaluate your compensation at your current job against other types of jobs you’re interested in. If you are making below market value and are unhappy, then that would be a great reason to start looking for another job!
However, if you are paid above market value, you may want to take a deeper dive into your situation. For example, let’s say you have a job that pays 100k per year and you switch to a job that pays 50k. That means you are trading 1 year of work for 2 additional years. Would you be ok with that?
Type of Work
Sometimes you might not be in the right job. For example, if you enjoy managing people and tasks but you are working on hardcore application development, you may be better off as a project manager.
If your job is not what you want to do, determine if your company can get you the opportunity to gain or use skills that would make you happy. Otherwise, it becomes a much easier decision if you truly know the type of work you’re doing is not what you want.
Take Action
The last step is to take charge of your career and decide what is best for you. Anytime you’re making a decision to quit your job, it obviously can have a huge impact on your life. However, at the end of the day you have to make sure you are happy and take care of yourself.
The best thing to do is plan for your exit strategy and not make any crazy decisions. Here are some suggestions:
- Look at your financial situation and determine if you have enough in your emergency funds
- Start getting your resume and Linkedin up-to-date to keep your options open
- Put yourself in a position where other opportunities might come your way
- Improve your skill-set on the type of work you enjoy
- Put together a plan on what type of job you want to be in the next several year (2, 5, etc)
- Research companies that you might want to work for
- Ask friends and family to help you with your job search
In most situations, unless you are financially set, you want to make sure you have a job lined up before quitting. Otherwise that might bring more stress to your life.
Once you have decided that getting a new job is the option for you, then you can start the job searching process. We have made it easy with this article to help you decide which job boards make the most sense for you.
Will Quitting Your Job Make You Happier
Whenever you look to quit your job, one thing you should think about is that the grass may not be greener on the other side. Your new job might be great in the first several months but then ultimately it could end up being worse than your previous job.
The new job may have the same types of personalities and/or same type of work. Or your new boss might not be a good fit and you pretty much have to start over.
It’s also possible that the new job might be everything you’re looking for. Great teammates, good office environment and excellent growth opportunities. You may think to yourself why you didn’t quit your job earlier!
As mentioned in the previous section you should really determine what is best for you and your career and drive to that. If your dream job is to be a developer but you are working as a data entry analyst, figure out how to pick up new skill-sets to get you to where you want to go.
Conclusion
Hopefully the information on this blog helped you think about some of the things that go into the decision making of quitting your job. Everyone should have a plan and take charge of their careers.
Again, make sure that you quit for all the right reasons to give you the best opportunity to become happy in your next adventure!