Overcoming Sunday night dread: Leveling up your work life.

[apoclater]

You could say I've hit the NF nirvana. I'm 23, and I've gotten to the point where my eating habits, fitness habits, wanderlust for travel, relationships with the people I love and my spiritual place are exactly where I want them to be. 8 months ago when I graduated I had three months before I started my dream job--it was a rotational leadership program doing IT Project Management. For the three months before I started my job, every day I would jump out of bed with enthusiasm and waste no time in starting the day.

Fast forward three months. It's Sunday night and all I feel is a deep, foreboding sense of dread in the pit of my stomach. I'm googling everything from "work anxiety" to "sunday night dread" to therapy clinics where I live. Yes, I have slowly started to accept that I hate my work. I'm a 9 to 5 corporate slave (well, actually 830 to 6, generally). Specifically, as I said before I'm doing IT Project Management for a very large firm, so my typical day revolves around leading status calls, solving problems by talking to people I barely understand (because of their accent or because of their technical lingo), and reporting bad news to my rather rude boss. The dreaded Sunday night feeling is at it's worst right now, because I'm working on a project riddled with issues and baggage.

The pit in my stomach has gone from sunday night to every night, to the point where I toss and turn when I try to sleep.

The good news is this: I'm 5 months from finishing this "rotation" and I switch jobs. So it's a new opportunity to take the mistakes I've made this rotation and learn from them for the next one. The bad news is this: Well, I still have 5 more months on this project, and the constant stress is making my sick.

Does NF have any advice? I am not sure the immediate answer is "Quit and find something else". I would like to try and turn this job around for the time being, and at least finish out this program (it is 2 years total). But it gets hard when you're reading forums and all people really have for advice on this topic is "you have to quit, it really won't get better, trust me I went through it for ten years". TEN YEARS? That scares me. I have looked into different jobs, but at 23 when you don't have any real skills (I have a non-technical business IT degree combined with a supply chain business degree), it's a little scary, especially when the jobs you've looked at don't seem to be any better. I've thought about starting my own business with a roommate who feels similar to me, but we keep getting stuck as again, we both don't have any real skill or expertise in anything.

Any advice for the young corporate slave would be most appreciated. I just don't want to feel this dread the rest of my life, every Sunday night and weekday night, but I also want to be a contributing member of society and do something with myself.

[Lachy]

Is the issue the work you're doing, the industry? Or is it the company? If you don't like Project Management and the requirements of that job, then you need to change fields. Or maybe this is a stepping stone to another role that you really want? Then you may need to tough it out.

I work as a developer, my old company used to give be hell, but that was the company, not the work. At my new job, I have more responsiblity, more issues, more work, but the organization is just so much better to work with that the challenges aren't a problem for me to dread, but to conquer. Also, the prosepct of advancement is here, so I'm working towards that, I'm driven.

Will the things you dread change over time, and with rotations? Or will they be constant?

[thepharmteam]

I know your pain because I've been in that situation too. For me, it led to my asking myself some hard questions. Was it just the job I hated, or was it the field I was in as well? I knew I hated the job (it had the whole terrible package--non-supporting, gossipy coworkers, many of whom were just plain mean, crappy, menial work, terrible pay, and incompetent management), but it brought me to the realization that I was losing the love for my field as well. I was burning out. A difficult realization given the time and money I had invested in it.

I did the same thing you did though. Sunday nights were awful. I would lie awake at night dreading the next day, almost wishing something would happen to me in the night just so I could miss work. I would get panic attacks thinking about going to work and lost a lot of weight because I was too anxious to eat. Sure, I needed to lose weight, but it wasn't done in a healthy way and I ended up gaining it back and then some once my situation improved.

Since you say you are a recent grad, maybe it is a case of toughing it out until something better comes along. Don't be afraid to take a leap of faith if you feel that is the right thing to do. On a practical level, if your job really is causing you a great deal of mental stress, do not hesitate to seek help. Your health (mental and physical) is more important than any job. We are all here for you! You can count on us Nerds for support.

[BadWolf]

I took a job I knew I wouldn't like because it was good money and at the end of the Training Week I quit. I was experiencing that dread every minute of the day. The thought of going back had me in tears and hyperventilating.

You definitely need to ask yourself questions about this, like "is this going to get better?", "can I get through 5 more months after 3 have been bad?", etc... I guess it all depends on your goals, and yes, it is hard as hell to be young and without experience, but you deserve a non-destructive workplace. Don't rule out job searching while working for this place. Always have an eye open for something better.

[Cosmo]

What do you need to make your job better?

Like you mention not knowing the lingo - would some training on the technical areas help?

Your boss is rude - can you get anyone to have a word with him?

I am an IT project manager, and I also have regular sunday night dread. My current boss is a volatile, half-crazed man with "creative" tendencies and while I understand the lingo, I don't understand why this company work this way. It's shit. But, I've been doing this a long time and I have worked for worse shitheads and some strategies to deal with it are:

- REPEAT TO SELF, REGULARLY > if this doesn't get sorted out, will someone die? No. Good. Take 5 minutes and make a decently thought out plan

- Status calls. As long as you write everything down in the RISK log (status log with all actions on it) and you send it to everyone mentioned, you don't need to understand it.

-If someone else does not do something on time or indeed properly, IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT. Your role is a facilitator, you don't do the work, you make decisions about timing and budgets. Someone else's ineptitude or slackness just results in an update to the plan, it doesn't mean you're not doing your job properly. (This was the hardest thing to learn)

- Be utterly dispassionate about the project, it's not your personal project, it's just a job to be done. Whether it goes well or not, is not a reflection on your status as a human being. You're still awesome if it's late. See point above about not being the people who do the actual work. As long as your plan made sense at the beginning and everyone else agreed to it at the beginning, you are not the point of failure.

er. I'm going to cycle home now, but keep your pecker up and don't let the bastards run you down.

[apoclater]

Man, NF is an awesome community. Thanks for all the responses everyone, they are very helpful.

Cosmo, if there are any other tips you have for young (first-time) project managers, they would be very helpful to hear.

Good to know I have some support.

[Cosmo]

There's loads of good books out there but I'm afraid I don't have the concentration for them. Do you do software or hardware stuff?

If you're on software, read some blogs - Joel on Software is very good. The 99% Percent is also quite good for general motivation stuff.

I think that it's very difficult at the beginning because you haven't been doing it long enough to know where to set your boundaries. It's also very difficult because everyone involved in the project - from the stakeholders to the team - all have different opinions on what they expect from you and you have to manage everyone's egos. In fact, I think that managing egos is quite often the biggest part of the project. But because you have all these expectations of you, then you have to be strong in what kind of project manager you want to be and what kind of image you portray.

I am fairly relaxed and tend towards the calm. I don't see the point in getting angry or upset about work and consider that nothing that we do is life-saving or life-threatening so I would rather absorb bad news, re-plan and do it all without panicking. But sometimes, you do have to tell other people that they are not doing their jobs properly and that you are disappointed in them.

And I know it always feels like you are going to your boss with bad news but really, just do it as a status list - X = late, Y = ontime, Z = late due to someone not doing their job. Etc. It will feel less personal that way.

[ZenGwen]

If and when you do move on to a job hunt, I'd recommend making judicious use of Glassdoor. It's a site where employees anonymously review the experience of working at companies - are the benefits good enough, are crazy hours expected, do management actually care about the lower employees, how's morale, etc. It also give information about typical interviews at the companies. Can't recommend it highly enough. Because yes, the experience of working at a place is way more important than the salary, I think.

In the meantime, hugs.