Job Crafting: Love the One You're With

[updated on 3/17/26]

And if you can’t be with the one you love, honey, Love the one you’re with.

Do you feel unsatisfied, unmotivated, or just plain stuck at work? Changing jobs might help, but it can take time to find the right fit and get an offer, and it's not always possible or desirable to leave your current job. Sometimes it's just more realistic to stay put due to the job market, financial constraints, and family obligations. So before you start looking elsewhere, consider whether it might be possible to make your job more fulfilling.

I often chuckle at this lyric from the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song, but I have to admit, it’s practical advice. Why not start with what you already have?

Luckily, it’s easier to make changes to your job than it is to change another person! How? Through the process of job crafting. I first heard of this concept several years ago, and have been playing around with it myself, especially when going through that inevitable phase when I dread work. Here are some questions you can ask yourself.

How do you currently spend your time at work?

Start by assessing your current situation. What are the tasks that you do, and how much time do you spend? If you’re a visual thinker, this article by organizational behavior and psychology professors Amy Wrezsniewski, Justin M. Berg, and Jane E. Dutton, describes how to diagram your job with boxes representing each of the tasks that comprise your job, where the size of the box indicates the amount of time you spend on it.

Alternatively, list out the tasks in a list, ranking them by the amount of time you spend on each. Notice what gets most of your attention, energy, and time. What skills do those tasks require? What do you like and dislike about them? Which tasks are motivating, and which ones are draining or exhausting?

The next step is to connect back to your talents and passions.

What are your strengths?

Ashley Stahl, author of You Turn: Get Unstuck, Discover Your Direction, and Design Your Dream Career, summarizes 10 core skill sets as follows: 

1. Innovation - the entrepreneur or creative visionary

2. Building - bringing mechanical or conceptual ideas to life

3. Words - using language through writing, speaking, or editing

4. Motion - using your body

5. Service - the helper or supporter

6. Coordination - details, bringing things together

7. Analysis - research, going deep

8. Numbers - number crunching

9. Technology - fixing, creating, or making sense of technologies

10. Beauty - art, aesthetics

Think of these as your innate talents and your energy. These skillsets can be expressed in different ways depending on the person. Stahl says that most people identify with three of these, and the primary skill set is what matters most.

If you are not working in your core skill set, you may feel exhausted. It helps to notice where your energy is, your zone of genius. If you’re not sure, ask people close to you two questions: when have they seen you at your best and how does the room change when you walk in? Then identify the skill sets you are using during those times. Sometimes we don’t realize our own strengths because we are so used to them that we take them for granted.

If you want to dive deeper into understanding your strengths, CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder) offers 34 different themes. I’ve taken the StrengthsFinder assessment a few times and my top five themes (Empathy, Activator, Restorative, Achiever, Harmony) still resonate several years later.

What motivates you?

Stahl talks about 10 different motivators

1. Meaning - spiritual purpose/mission

2. Optimal health - physical wellness

3. Time - freedom or flexibility, control of your time

4. Impact - changing the world, making a difference

5. Visibility - prestige or recognition

6. Accomplishment - completion, checking off the boxes

7. Training - learning as you do

8. Ease - comfort, or avoidance of stress

9. Spending - making, saving, or keeping money

10. Self-expression - bringing emotion or ideas to life

These motivators can help to inspire you and boost your confidence. All of these are relevant for me, though my top motivators vary with my current circumstances.

Along with your strengths and motivators, knowing your Core Values can help to identify your passion. Now comes the fun part of job crafting.

How can you incorporate more of your strengths and motivators?

What changes would increase your engagement at work? This is when you start to redefine your job, adding your own personal touches. How could you reallocate your time, energy, and attention to incorporate more of your motives, strengths, and passions? Professor Wrzesniewski and colleagues cite three core aspects of work that you can alter:

• Tasks: taking on more or fewer tasks, expanding or reducing your scope, changing how the tasks are performed.

• Relationships: the nature or extent of your interactions with others.

• Perception/Cognitive:  reframing certain aspects of your job or your job as a whole.

For example, if there is a task that you find tedious, try looking at it through the lens of purpose or impact to find something personally meaningful to you.

With these in mind, make a plan to reconfigure your list of projects so you can incorporate your goals. I’ve been inspired by this story of a university hospital cleaning crew who found more meaning in their work through job crafting ever since I first heard it several years ago.

One member worked on a floor that cared for patients in comas, and she regularly took down and swapped the pictures in the patients' rooms to change up their environment, in case it might contribute in some way to their recovery. While this wasn't part of her job, she said it was part of who she was. The video also discusses how organizations can support job crafting for its employees.

During a time when I wasn’t finding a lot of meaning in the projects I was working on, I leaned more heavily into mentoring and other pursuits that filled the gaps for me.

It can also help to look outward, considering other people:

• Map the impact: How does the time you spend on various activities at work benefit the people you serve? Who can, does, or will eventually benefit from your efforts? Go as far as listing actual names if possible to make it more concrete, and if needed, get to know more about them. This reminds me of a practice in user experience (UX) design, where you specify the key user profiles for your product and outline their critical user journeys.

• Build organizational support: Your job crafting efforts are more likely to succeed if you have support from others. Focus on an organizational or individual strength that will create value for others. Build trust with others, like your supervisor or manager, by getting your tasks done and ensuring the changes you want to make will advance business priorities.

• Choose your champions: Direct your effort toward the people who are most likely to be open to your ideas.

With job crafting, you’ll soon be able to sing a new version of the old song:

And if you can’t get the job you love, honey, craft the one you got.

If this sounds like something you'd like to try, here's a Quick Job Crafting Checklist:

Job Crafting Quick-Start Checklist

Phase 1: Know Yourself

• List your top 5 current tasks and time spent on each

• Identify which tasks energize you vs. drain you

• Identify your top 3 core skill sets (from the 10 listed)

• Identify your top 3-5 motivators

• Note your core values

Phase 2: Connect to Your Work

• List people who benefit from your work

• Map one task to its impact on a real person

• Identify gaps between your current role and your strengths/motivators

• Brainstorm how you could reframe a draining task

Phase 3: Redesign Your Role

• Tasks: What could you take on, reduce, or do differently?

• Relationships: Who could you mentor? Collaborate with differently?

• Perception: What story could you tell yourself about your work?

Phase 4: Make It Happen

• Identify 1-2 concrete changes to propose

• Plan how your changes align with business priorities

• Identify your supporter(s)—who's most likely to say yes?

• Schedule a conversation with your manager

Read more:

• Managing Yourself: Turn the Job You Have into the Job You Want

• What Job Crafting Looks Like