2 - Crafting your role as a virtual student
Do you ever feel like you are constantly being told what to do…. what to study, when to go to class, what’s important for you to learn, what job is going to be the best for you?
Here is a chance to take control over your own experience: through the art of something called “Job Crafting”.
Job crafting refers to the process of customizing aspects of the work you do to find ways to get more engaged in the work you are doing. This concept was creating by researchers at the University of Michigan (Wrzesniewski & Dutton 2001, Berg, Dutton, & Wrzesniewski, 2008)*. The idea is that there are ways you can shape your work - without seeking permission for a job change or official change in process - that can help you find joy and excitement in the work you are doing.
Consider the following examples. A data entry specialist creates a new method for coding the data she enters that uses colors to identify different types of data that come to her. She finds the process more appealing because it is more interesting to deal in colors than in numbers. A mid-level manager who is seeking to be promoted reaches out to other managers in the same role as him in other facilities. They meet once a week to share their struggles and successes, building friendships and a network for support when they run into challenging work. An entry level consultant whose job can feel monotonous thinks about how her tasks are helping senior level consultants make their clients’ work experience better. She knows that doing her job means that downstream, other people are able to engage in more meaningful work.
In each of these examples, the person described is not asking for a different job or more money - rather they are finding ways to shape their work experience so that they can find more value in the work they are doing.
Job crafting research has found there are three primary ways to job craft:
Task Crafting - Task crafting refers to testing out different ways to accomplish your tasks. Maybe it’s creating a new coding system, organizing your work differently, using a different system for checking things off your do-to list, etc. The idea behind task crafting is that you play around with the tasks themselves to see if there are ways of completing them that you find more engaging.
Relationship Crafting - Relationship crafting refers to building new and different social connections that help you find ways of engaging with your work. Maybe it’s reaching out to someone else who does a job like yours to swap best practices. Maybe it’s connecting with someone who is in a completely different job or industry to take your mind off your work for a bit and think outside the box.
Cognitive Crafting - Cognitive crafting is about considering the purpose of your work. How do to tasks you do on a daily basis connect to your individual purpose? The purpose of the organization? Cognitive crafting involves thinking about the “why” behind your work.
Now it’s your turn to think about how to “job craft” your role as a virtual student. Consider the following exercise:
Write down all of the aspects of being a virtual student. When you are learning online, what steps do you take? What do professors ask of you? What sort of examples of online learning have you experienced? This step will help you define your current state.
Once you have outlined the role of a virtual student, sort those elements into things that you find interesting, those you don’t really have strong feelings about, and those you often put off because you don’t like them.
Starting with the elements of the role you don’t like, brainstorm how you might “craft” those elements to make them more interesting. Maybe you partner with a friend to study for a test. Maybe you draw out the notes you take while you read instead of simply highlighting. Don’t hold back - be creative!
Finally, start to implement some of these ideas. Test them out. They may work for you and they may not. For those that work, how can you permanently re-craft them in your role as a virtual student? For those that don’t work, how might you change the experiment to try something different that might stick?
How are you crafting your role as a virtual student? Which elements of job crafting are helping you most to find ways to engage? What challenges are you facing?
In the next post, we will dive a bit deeper into the science of motivation to understand how and why we are motivated by certain tasks!
*Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of management review, 26(2), 179-201.
*Berg, J. M., Dutton, J. E., & Wrzesniewski, A. (2008). What is job crafting and why does it matter. Retrieved form the website of Positive Organizational Scholarship on April, 15, 2011.