There are many reasons why we fall out of love with our jobs: a bad boss who has no boundaries when it comes to contacting you out of office hours; being asked to return to the office (and commute) five days a week; a colleague who chews especially loudly while eating lunch at their desk.
But if boredom tops your list and its consequence is that you’re feeling apathetic towards your job and you don’t really care about it anymore, you could be suffering from rust-out.
The underwhelmed cousin of burnout, rust-out occurs when you’re feeling so unmotivated by the work you’ve been tasked to do, you simply cannot bring yourself to do it.
And while burnout usually alludes to an overly packed schedule and never-ending to-do list, rust-out occurs when the opposite is happening—it typically points to bad time management or team structuring that isn’t helping you achieve your professional, goals or giving you the impetus to go after them yourself.
So what can you do to alleviate the symptoms of rust-out if you think you’ve fallen into its trap?
The first thing to do is ask to speak to your manager so you can start the process of addressing the key issues that are making it more difficult for you to do your job, and formulate a plan to rectify this.
Being transparent about how you’re feeling isn’t an admission of failure so a good manager should take your concerns on board and work with you to improve things.
Next, avail of any learning and development opportunities your organisation offers or ask if there is budget to do external training. Upskilling and exploring new ways of doing things will help reinvigorate your passion for your chosen field, and will also help you prioritise what you want to work on in the future.
Honing your skills is also a good exit strategy if leaving your current job for a new one is on the cards. Even a short online course will make your CV more robust and up-to-date.
And if you are ready to embark on a new challenge and start your search The London Economic Job Board is the best place to start. It features thousands of jobs in companies that offer exciting career prospects, like the three below.
Klarna is passionate about hiring people who are passionate about using their talents to generate success. It is currently growing its analytics team and hiring a Consumer Credit Risk Senior Analyst to work across the payment methods (PM) domain which provides the core payment products Klarna is built upon. In this role you will drive analytical projects on credit risk underwriting policy using SQL and data manipulation to gain analytical insight in identifying opportunities for growth or to minimise losses. You will also build and maintain credit risk monitoring of underwriting policies and analyse moving trends across products and consumer segments to ensure risk appetite is met. View more details here.
Monzo is on a mission to build a bank for everyone and is focused on solving problems rather than selling products. It is looking for an experienced Anti-Money Laundering Investigator who loves fighting financial crime and learning new skills. Monzo tackles financial crime through specialised pillars, with each focusing on specific business area risks including business banking, money laundering, fraud, bribery and corruption, politically exposed persons and sanctions, and tax evasion. As such, you will focus on tasks related to your pillar and investigate alerts raised by transaction monitoring systems, analyse customer accounts to identify risk or suspicious activity, and record your decisions in a clear and concise rationale. See the full job description here.
As a Barclays Market Risk Analytics Data Lead, you will be part of the global team responsible for developing systems used by the firm to calculate and report VaR (value at risk), and provide aggregated risk reporting, stress testing and regulatory capital numbers. Your work will focus on understanding the existing data architecture and lay out the target state, using different technology solutions to deliver on complex technology development projects. You will partner with project managers across the team to deliver reliable software solutions and work with business analysts and technology counterparts to translate and accurately understand business requirements. You can access more information here.
