Do You Actually Like Your Job? Try The 15-5 Method To Find Out

Performance review season at work can be tricky: On the one hand, it’s a good time to remind your boss of all the things you accomplished this year and what you want to tackle in the new one.

But it can also feel like a slog trying to summarize your year’s experience of work, what you liked and what you didn’t like, all in one sitting.

If you’re looking for a better way to keep track of how you actually feel about your job and the work you do, leadership expert Shonna Waters recommends using the 15-5 trick that she practices as a vice president at BetterUp, the career coaching platform.

Every Friday, she sets aside 15 minutes to rate how she feels about the work she did that week on a scale of 1 to 5. A 1 rating means you’re not energized by the work you did that week, and 5 means you feel like an all-star in what you were able to accomplish and the impact it had on your team, your company or your customers.

The rating shouldn’t necessarily be about your productivity, Waters says, but rather whether you feel good about the work you put out there.

After choosing a number, take a few minutes to write out why you feel that way. Also document whether anything happened at work or in your personal life that might have impacted your weekly rating.

“It’s a good way to take a look at things from a data perspective,” Waters says, “to look back at, say, the last two months and see: What did my chart look like? What was going on?”

Taking a look at your ratings in aggregate, you might notice patterns over time about how your work experience or personal life impacts your feelings about work. For example, maybe you can see that you have lower-score weeks when things are particularly chaotic in your home life, like if you had to manage child-care during the summer. Looking ahead, think: Could adjusting your work hours ease some of the time constraints you have at home?

Or, maybe you have some stellar weeks when you’re working with colleagues on a big group project. You may find that those opportunities for teamwork aren’t a big enough part of your job, so you can bring that up to your manager to make it a part of your day-to-day.

Waters adds the 15-5 practice “gives you a chance to pause and reflect on a regular basis, not just the outcomes of your work, but what the learning process is like.”







SOURCE: CNBC
IMAGE SOURCE: PIXABAY