8 Reasons you Hate your Job: Stress, Burnout and your Myers Briggs Personality Type
Do you make decent money, get your work done, and feel at a loss to pinpoint anything really wrong with your job-but still dread going to work each day? If it's not as simple as a tyrant boss, meager wages, or long days in the salt mine, how can you explain your stress and frustration with your job?
Simple. Your job may just be a terrible misfit for your personality type. When looking at job satisfaction, the common factors we've been taught to value in our career-salary, benefits, stability-become relatively unimportant compared to the fundamental fit between our personality type and our work. Doing work that satisfies your basic needs and desires can be inspiring and motivating! Unfortunately, doing work that runs contrary to your basic personality preferences can cause stress, dissatisfaction, and burnout.
To help you evaluate whether your personality type may be a poor fit for your job, I've collected some common complaints I hear from dissatisfied professionals in my career consulting practice. In order to understand my clients' needs, desires, and motivations, I work with the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, the world's most common personality assessment. This is a system based on four basic personality scales, or preferences, which describe how you make decisions, approach the world, and process information.
The first personality scale, Extroversion/Introversion, describes where you focus your attention and get your energy. Extroverts are externally focused, and get energy from interacting with others. Introverts are internally focused, and get their energy from solitary thought, quiet activity, and reflection. A poor match in this area may cause you to feel drained after a day at work, and often results in complaints like:
I'm stuck alone in my office, and feel isolated and unstimulated.
Extroverts are energized, stimulated, and motivated by other people. They like working on teams, meeting with others, and bouncing ideas off their colleagues. They tend to enjoy giving presentations, expressing their ideas, and interacting with lots of other people during the day. Extroverts who must spend long periods working alone tend to feel bored and unmotivated. Because Extroverts tend to do their best work with other people, independent projects can be frustrating and dull for them, and they may get stymied if they're not allowed to collaborate.
I'm constantly put on the spot to speak, and I can't get a moment's peace.
Introverts, on the other hand, are most focused and productive when they have a quiet workplace where they can isolate themselves from others to concentrate. Introverts tend to prefer working on a project independently rather than on a team, and usually dislike having to present information to others, especially if they're not given adequate time to prepare. Introverts usually feel drained by their work when it requires lots of interaction with many people during the day, constant meetings, or working in a noisy or busy environment.
The second scale, Sensing/Intuition, describes how you gather and process information. Sensors tend to be concrete, detail-oriented, and firmly rooted in reality. Intuitives tend to be abstract and oriented to connections, possibilities, and meaning. Your preference on this scale determines to a great extent what kind of work you will enjoy, and what sort of work will drive you crazy: