Don’t Spend the Rest of Your Work Life in Misery: Invest Time in Get-Out-of-Bad-Boss-Land Strategizing

You want to get ahead in your job, with your career, but how can you do that when you’re under the thumb of a Bad Boss? You complain about it, your worry about it, you kvetch about it, in short you do everything but do something about it! Mostly because you can’t think of anything you can do about it.

I hear you, I really do, but that’s usually because you’re investing in short term thinking. So you don’t put in the time to do the research that would guide you to a long term strategy.

According to the most recent American Time Use Survey, the average working American spends one-third (eight hours) of his/her time in a week day doing work-related activities. Only sleeping (an average of 8.74 hours per day) takes up more time than working. Another 2.8 hours per day we spend watching TV.

University of Texas economist Daniel Hamermesh said in the Wall Street Journal, "In sum, time people might have used productively is instead being squandered." You see, that’s because most of us are looking at the situation right in front of us, rather than considering what might come down the road.

You’re tired, you come back from an irritating day with your Bad Boss, and you don’t want to spend the next hour or so mapping out a “get out of Bad Boss land” strategy, you turn on the tube, or play video games, or whatever else you can think of to make yourself feel better.

 And that’s great, that’s terrific. But don’t be like the average senior in high school, who according to a UCLA study, spends only 1.5 hours a year on career planning. And other studies show that Americans invest more time in researching a car purchase than their home loan. That most brides spend two hours a week planning for a wedding usually for more than a year, while the wedding itself usually only lasts two to three hours.

Take some time, maybe on a Saturday afternoon, or that rare evening when you’re not totally fried, and give some thought to how you might leverage your strengths to get out of your Bad Boss department, or who you might find to mentor you out of there.

Invest some time in mapping out possible strategic moves for your success, long and short term. Your career is worth it!