There's one part of your job you love. Maybe it's the workshop you run twice a year, the mentoring conversations, the moment you get to design something from scratch. And there's a lot of everything else. Lately the everything-else has crept up, and the part that lights you up has shrunk to a sliver.
Changing jobs isn't the only option. Sometimes you can change the job you have.
What job crafting is
In a 2001 paper in the Academy of Management Review, organizational psychologists Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton introduced the idea of job crafting: the changes people make, on their own initiative, to the tasks and relationships of their work and to how they think about it. They described three kinds:
- Task crafting: changing what you do or how you do it. Taking on more of the work that energizes you, or approaching routine tasks differently.
- Relational crafting: changing who you work with and how. Seeking out colleagues who inspire you, mentoring, building new connections.
- Cognitive crafting: changing how you see your work. Connecting everyday tasks to a purpose you care about.
Wrzesniewski and Dutton argued that these changes can shift what your work means to you and how you see yourself at work. Later researchers have built on the idea and developed ways to measure it.
You may have more say in the shape of your job than you think.
Small crafts that make a difference
Start with what's already within your reach:
- Volunteer for the work you'd choose. If you love teaching, offer to run the next onboarding session. If you love writing, offer to draft the team update.
- Rebalance your week. Protect a recurring block for the kind of work you do best.
- Seek out one energizing colleague. Ask someone whose work you admire for coffee.
- Connect the routine to the meaningful. The report you dread may be what lets your team keep a project you believe in.
- Bring your other interests in. If your side project has taught you a skill, look for a place it could help at work.
Do it in the open when it matters
Some crafting is invisible, like how you think about a task. Bigger changes, like taking on new responsibilities, usually go better when you talk with your manager about them. Framing it around what the team gains ("I'd like to lead the next client workshop; I think I could make it more useful") helps.
Where an accountability partner helps
An accountability partner can help you notice which parts of your week give you energy and which drain it, and choose one small craft to try. A few weeks later, they can ask what changed. It's also easier to rehearse a conversation with your manager with someone who knows your goals.
This week
List the tasks you did last week and mark each with a plus (energizing) or a minus (draining). Choose one small change, a task, a relationship or a way of seeing it, that would add one more plus next week, and make it.