THE STRETCHED TOO THIN
If you've ever felt the exquisite torture of having to choose between two things you love—a job opportunity in a new city and your relationship right here at home—or the low-level irritation of having to choose between two things that you don't love but need to get done—getting dinner on the table and finishing that report due tomorrow—then you can relate to this chapter. The feeling of being stretched too thin is so ubiquitous at work, I recommend this chapter for everyone who is feeling burned out, overworked, and exhausted by the pile of work on their desk that never seems to shrink.
The journey of the Stretched Too Thin career goer begins by answering two big questions: Am I taking on too many roles at work, like running a team while volunteering for a new committee? Am I switching between tasks so often that I never finish what I start? As I learned in my research for this chapter, some people are stretched too thin because they take on roles they aren't compensated for. In some workplaces, it's just the norm to do so (everyone is doing it); in others, people do it because they think it will increase their visibility at work and help them get ahead. Helping you learn which roles are worth it and which aren't is a major goal of this chapter, along with building strategies to protect your boundaries. To help the serial task switchers, I provide easy-to-use strategies for curbing the habit of starting one thing and changing quickly to another. To prevent a future life of being a Stretched Too Thin career goer, this chapter teaches you how to be an anthropologist of the workplace; you will learn how small things, like having an open floor plan, or working next to compared to twenty feet away from a coworker, can increase the likelihood that you'll wind up back here.
The strategies I cover in this chapter aren't just for people who are thinking of leaving a job; they are for everyone who struggles with the daily juggle. Think of it as a bonus add-on to the chapter that you most strongly resonate with.
THE RUNNER-UP
It doesn't matter how advanced you are in your career, the experience of missing that promotion or raise stings. No one enjoys coming in second (or third or fourth). We didn't like it when we played sports on the playground as kids, and we don't like it now. The Runner-Up knows who they are and where they want to go, but they struggle with a big piece of the puzzle: What have I been doing wrong? If you're anything like the Runners-Up I surveyed, you're not getting straightforward answers to this question; only 7 percent of people I studied were explicitly told why they failed to land a promotion or raise.
This chapter teaches you how to play detective to get the information you need. You will learn how to figure out how much status you have at work, and whether structural changes, like "jolts" to the workplace (big changes that shake things up), are to blame for your position. You will also learn norms around what roles and job duties people expect you to fill, even if they don't come out and say so. An important question the Runner-Up will need to answer is whether they need to take a step back before taking a step forward, filling in gaps in experience and job titles. Moving forward, this chapter teaches you how to test whether an organization has a culture of asking for and receiving clear feedback. Working for a company that can explain their feedback process is a must for the Runner-Up job seeker, down to what the daily or weekly structure of that feedback will be.
THE UNDERAPPRECIATED STAR
Have you ever felt like you put more into a relationship than you get out of it? That the hard work you do—planning date nights, running household errands, and making a real effort to stay attractive for your partner—is going unnoticed or underappreciated? Finding yourself underappreciated by a romantic partner can feel demoralizing, and the same is true at work. The Underappreciated Star feels a tension between what they give to their organization and what that organization gives back. Because they are arguably quite good at their jobs (an assumption that Underappreciated Stars should test), most are getting rewarded at work, but not in the ways they want. Hard work is often rewarded with more hard work, and raises are promises waived until some hypothetical future. The first goal of the Underappreciated Star is to learn their value in the marketplace by learning who their real competition is. Strategic networking will help with this process, which involves moving beyond local comparisons between yourself and your coworkers, to global comparisons between yourself and the people in your profession. Once you're ready to put yourself out there, you will need to find answers to questions like Do most companies really care about hiring stars, or is good enough just fine? There's a lot of evidence that some companies hire for "good enough" and aren't looking for stars, and that might be a barrier you will need to work around. This chapter builds on the tactics of the prior four, expanding on exercises you learned previously to help you find a job that will check off all your appreciation boxes.
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***** TABLE OF CONTENTS *****
OPENING
1. The Crisis of Identity
2. The Drifted Apart
3. The Stretched Too Thin
4. The Runner-Up
5. The Underappreciated Star
Final Thoughts