Are you bored with your job? Do you keep beating yourself up for not liking what you do, even though it's lucrative? Is it possible you could jeopardize your employment if the situation gets out of hand?

Have heart. You may simply be in the downward spiral of a “doom loop.” Let me explain.

Dory Hollander, author of The Doom Loop System, is a psychologist specializing in career management issues. Her clients tend to be “bright, motivated people who are discontented with their careers.”. She's found an easy, elegant way to demonstrate to her clients why they are not happy with their careers when she uses the Doom Loop matrix created by Charles Jett in 1978 at the Harvard Business School. Here's how this works.

Picture four quadrants (take a blank piece of paper and draw a big axis with a vertical and horizontal line crossing each other in the middle). Start in the bottom left quadrant, called Quadrant I. This represents a job at the time most people start it. At this employment entry point, the person may like what he or she is doing, but has not spent enough time to be good at it. Competencies and skills for the job are just developing. This can be a period of rapid growth, it's the beginning of their learning curve.

After some time, we move up to the top left quadrant, Quadrant II. This represents the “sweet spot” on the job, when the person is good at it and enjoys it. How long this period lasts depends on the person, the job and the learning curve. You can picture an arrow, representing the learning curve starting in Quadrant I and moving up through Quadrant II.

The descent begins

All is well, until …We move into Quadrant III which is the top right quadrant. When the learning curve arrow passes over the line from Quadrant II to Quadrant III, the person enters territory where he or she no longer likes the work even though the employee still may be good at it. Here our individual has topped out on the learning curve and the job has become routine. Boredom and frustration have set in. “Unchanging job content, paired with decreased challenge, will guarantee nearly anyone's eventual arrival in Quadrant III,” Hollander writes.

Bad as this may seem, the process doesn't end here. We move on to the fourth and final Quadrant IV. The learning curve arrow that started upward in Quadrant I now points downward into Quadrant IV, hence the name Doom Loop. Here the person loses interest in the job and probably doesn't keep pace with changes in the field, new technologies and competitors' advances. There's little or no motivation and performance plateaus. In this quadrant, the person doesn't like the job nor is good at it any more.

According to Hollander, almost all of us experience the Doom Loop in one job or another. It matters not how high or low we end up on the corporate ladder. We stay in a situation long beyond when we are fulfilled. If economic conditions are poor, we keep ourselves in place, thankful to have a job! Bad move, leading to a potential job disappearance because of poor performance.
The Doom Loop offers a simple yet elegant way to explain how we outgrow the content of our work. We may love our working conditions, the people with whom we work, the various perks to which we've grown accustomed. But it may get harder and harder to get out of bed in the morning.

This situation can be exacerbated when the corporate environment changes - when top management changes and corporate politics get out of hand. Not only do you not like the job itself but the surrounding environment gets difficult as well.

Get proactive

What can you do about this? Well, get proactive of course!

Plot your own course through the Doom Loop and no matter where you are, get proactive. Recognize there is a process ahead of you and make your plans accordingly. Perhaps it's a matter of exploring other opportunities in your current organization or elsewhere; maybe it's time to consider an entrepreneurial venture. We human beings were designed to stretch and grow: Discontent simply may be a signal to find new challenges.

Now you have a name for the syndrome you may be experiencing. You can acknowledge what's happening and move on.

As an example, Bob was in this very situation. He simply had outgrown his job and there appeared to be nowhere else to go within his company. We explored ways to be successful with new responsibilities in his company, but none materialized.

So he started looking elsewhere. This was challenging because his company offered many cushy perks and incentives to stay put. But he recognized he needed to grow and stretch and demonstrate to himself he was capable of tapping his potential.

Even though he was at the director level, within four months and a good measure of networking, he landed a job in an allied industry in an entrepreneurial organization. Because Bob was willing to leave his comfort zone and his job before he had reached Quadrant IV and the downward spiral of the Doom Loop, he has found a satisfying, challenging and career-enhancing new situation.

He also increased his salary by more than 30 percent. Even though the Doom Loop process was initiated more than 30 years ago, its application to career satisfaction is relevant today.

About the Author: Melanie Keveles is an active Member Coach of The Coach Connection (TCC) and has successfully coached many TCC clients to great successes. You ca reach Melanie by calling TCC at our toll free number of 800-887-7214 or direct at 239-415-1777