One of the things that I regularly do is to sit and ask myself – what are my aspirations.
From a work perspective the aspirations seems to fall into two camps:
- Achieve more, do more interesting things.
- Do something completely different.
I’m not going to get into what those thoughts actually lead to in this post, but I am asking myself ‘how do I get here?’ What is it that makes me want to re-evaluate my current status. So every time I’ve found myself in this position recently I have tried to assess what are the factors that got me here.
- Monday mornings – it’s generally a Monday morning thing. I have found this amazing, because I wouldn’t have ever said that my mood is different on different days. I tend to be a fairly level headed person but clearly Monday’s make a difference. So if you are wanting to get me to do something new Monday may be a good day.
- Frustration – that is another personal study ‘what makes me frustrated?’ The answer is strongly related to my level of ‘trappedness’ at work. I rarely feel trapped at home because I have a great family. I regularly feel dumped on/used/abused at work. I am clearly in a position where my current skills are too valuable to let me leave a particular project or task, but I do not regard projects that use my current skills as interesting. I am definitely not someone who enjoys redoing the same thing over and over.
What is clear is that I rarely feel this way because I feel I am slipping behind, or at the other end of the spectrum because I see something that would be great to do. Sometimes these things do happen, but rarely.
Graham Chastney 
