Are you not feeling fulfilled at your job anymore? Getting tired of doing the same thing repeatedly? Sometimes, all you need is a way to add more stimulation to your work. How can you make your job more challenging?
Ways to challenge yourself at work include undertaking more training, learning and mastering new skills. Also, talking to your superiors about more responsibilities that you can take on. This might include setting higher performance goals and participating in professional development opportunities.
Read on to find out all about creating new challenges in your work.
5 ways to make your job more challenging
It’s normal to go through periods of time at work where you feel as if you aren’t being challenged enough. For some, this can lead to thoughts of wanting to quit and find a new role. But this isn’t the only solution. There are ways to find more challenges to keep yourself engaged in a role that you do like but need more from. Check out the top five tips for making your job more challenging below.
Ask for more responsibility at work
Responsibilities at work can add some more pressure and tasks to get done. Asking for more responsibility at work is one way to have new challenges. You can privately talk to your boss, approach with a respectful attitude, and ask about other responsibilities you could possibly take on. Your boss will always want you to do well in your work and if you have proven your skills, they will be happy to assign you more responsibility.
You should be prepared to describe your skills and expertise in your current position to your boss. This might leave room for you to suggest ideas for new tasks that you could take on. Ask your employer what their take on your proposal is. Together, you can discuss ways to add more responsibilities to your role and therefore challenge yourself more at work.
Be competitive
Humans are competitive creatures, gaining excitement and motivation from the competition. A way to introduce more challenges at work is to drive a bit of healthy competition. This encourages yourself and your coworkers to strive to be the best employees possible. You could be competitive as individuals and in teams. This is a great method especially in the construction industry as general and skilled labourers work as teams to deliver exceptional builds. You can stake a bit of healthy competition on goals such as building the perfect frame for a house. Assign a supervisor as a judge and there you have a competition to spark challenge in the workplace. This is also an opportunity for you to show off your skills and gain recommendations for other contractors looking to hire labourers.
Participate in professional development opportunities
Participate in training programs that expand your knowledge in specialized areas of your industry. One of the best things you can do to constantly challenge yourself is to continue to learn throughout your entire career. There is always more to learn and grow new skills always presents a challenge. This could be a new technology that could change the way your industry works. It could be a new way of thinking. All these professional development opportunities that you undertake have the potential to add more challenges to your career. This is in a good way too. Plus, it increases your value as an employee and puts you higher on the list for potential promotions.
Connect with like-minded colleagues
The people you are surrounded by at work can directly influence your efficiency, goals, and growth in the workplace. You want to surround yourself with people who want to continue to achieve and accomplish goals at work. This way you are encouraged to find challenges at work while supporting each other. This breeds a healthy work environment with coworkers that can help thinks of ways to bring new challenges to work. A healthy workplace sparks creativity and big thinking through collaboration. Surrounding yourself with coworkers who have similar attitudes to work as you will help keep the workplace inspired and benefit both the company and workers.
If you’re surrounded by people who complain a lot and don’t want to seek new challenges, this will influence your thinking. It can make it extremely hard to push yourself to be challenged at work. This is something that only employers can really fix, but if you talk to your managers about workplace morale, a lot can change. This can spark new challenges and encouragement within the work environment.
Set performance goals in your work
Realizing that you’ve outshined your past achievements is such a great feeling. But remaining in that instance you’re also limiting your potential. You should be constantly revising your goals at work and expanding your targets. This way you are constantly working to achieve a new goal. Any goal is a personal challenge, which is why it’s important to always have one! Goals at work are the perfect way to constantly be challenging yourself to reach a new level.
Small ways to challenge yourself at work
Sometimes you might not want to take on loads of new responsibilities at work, but there are smaller ways to challenge yourself in your work. One great first challenge to give yourself is to start your work a little earlier each day and hit the ground running. Sometimes it can take us a bit to get stuck into our work for the day. You could set yourself challenges to get a certain amount of work done in your first hour of the working day.
You could take on some extra training that doesn’t go for a long period of time. There might be an opportunity for training that lasts for one day. This could be your next challenge at work – mastering the training session and the skills taught.
You can make your job more challenging without putting a whole lot of extra pressure on yourself. One great thing to do is to talk with recruiters for your workplace, or when applying for work.
For example, say you are looking for general labourer work and you approach a labour hire company. You can discuss with the recruitment team about your goals for your career and the challenges you want in the workplace. This helps the team match you up with contractors seeking people with your same goals.
Why should you be challenged at work?
Looking for new ways to challenge yourself at your job can restart and boost your enthusiasm. With a change in your daily routine, something amazing could happen. Like your boss noticing your eagerness to finish your duties, which then leads to a well-deserved promotion. How awesome would that be? The positive energy you portray may even create bigger opportunities for growth.
When you are completing the same tasks every day, you can become bored in your work very easily. Then imagine doing these same tasks for years. It doesn’t sound very enticing. This is why it’s important to seek new challenges in your work. They can involve learning new skills and undertaking different tasks in your workplace. All these things provide exciting stimuli to your brain and encourage you to look forward to work. The more you enjoy your work, the better quality of work you will produce, and the happier you and your boss will be.
How to handle challenges at your work
You may be seeking ways to make your job more challenging, but have you thought about how to master those challenges? Here are some useful tips:
Pace yourself at work
A new challenge at work such as added responsibility may seem daunting in the beginning. This is normal, which is why you shouldn’t let yourself become overwhelmed. The best thing you can do is pace yourself in your work. A new challenge doesn’t have to be as daunting as it seems. Approach it one step at a time and let it fuel your drive in your role.
Create a plan to accomplish challenges at work
If you’ve added new performance targets to your job, set a realistic timeframe at which you’d like to achieve them. If a smaller target took you 6 months, don’t be too excited to achieve a bigger target in 6 weeks. You’ll be burnout! Sit down and create a realistic plan to tackle your new challenges. The idea is to set smart goals where you don’t end up feeling defeated by not being able to accomplish more sooner than expected.
Learn from your mistakes
With anything in life, you are bound to make mistakes, and working towards goals in the workplace is no different. Along the way to achieving more challenging tasks, you are likely to encounter obstacles and have a few missteps. Don’t dwell on these errors. Instead, learn from them. Shift your focus to discover what you can take away from every step of the journey. This helps you to understand what you can do better next time.
Making your job more challenging is fun and fulfilling but while doing this it’s important to ensure you’re not overwhelming yourself. Be sure to maintain a good work-life balance and look after yourself while working towards challenging yourself at work.
If you are looking for labour work, check out our job board for construction jobs in Canberra. If you’re an employer looking to hire skilled and general labourers in Canberra, get in touch with our Canberra Labour Hire team! Did you enjoy this article? Check out some of our other blogs, such as ‘can I refuse more work without a raise?’
