Office blues? Four ways to fulfillment.

It's the seasonal equivalent of the Monday-morning blues. The arrival of Labor Day next week signals for many not only the end of summer but also the return to a more button-down, faster-paced season of work.

This could be the perfect time to shake up that routine. Nearly everyone says they want their job to be more fulfilling. Here are four ways to find fulfillment, no matter what position you hold:

Graphics designer Kathleen Orazio lives in Seattle but found herself missing the client interaction of her old job in Phoenix. "I wasn't happy, but I hadn't put my head around exactly why," she says in a phone interview. She considered quitting, but concluded that she had learned so much about her firm that it would be a shame to start over. So she took matters into her own hands, starting by listing the pros and cons of her job.

For several weeks Ms. Orazio refined and prioritized her ideas for redesigning her position, using the "WIIFT" factor as her guide: What's in it for them? How would her proposal also benefit her co-workers and the company?

By the time she sat down with her boss, she could show that it would streamline operations if she handled design projects directly with clients and salespeople, rather than having the production manager as a middleman.

"I was a little nervous, because I didn't want it to seem like I thought other people weren't doing their jobs well," she says. "To my surprise, the production manager was extremely relieved, because he didn't want to handle some of that stuff anyway."

Within a few weeks, the owner of the company not only approved Orazio's plan but also offered her a new job title and a raise. More important, she says, "I'm feeling the challenge I need professionally and creatively."

WIIFT is the brainchild of Sharon Jordan-Evans, a workplace consultant and coauthor of "Love It, Don't Leave It: 26 Ways to Get What You Want at Work." "Often people wait for a boss to offer up some new challenge ... or they wait for the economy to get better so they can search for a new job. They're giving everybody else on the planet the power over their own job fulfillment," she says. "You've got to take ownership [and] identify what's wrong or what's missing."

Think of the amount of time you spend planning your vacation and give at least that much to reflecting on what would make your work more satisfying, Ms. Jordan-Evans says. "It may mean tweaking something just a tiny bit."

If redesigning your job is too much, you might make small changes in your daily routine. Perhaps it's taking a few minutes each day to help co-workers, or pausing to give gratitude. Or create "workplace altars" - the inspirational quotes or books, symbolic objects, or even plants and fountains that people place in their workspaces to remind them of a deeper purpose - advises Pat McHenry Sullivan, who devotes a chapter to them in her book "Work with Meaning, Work with Joy: Bringing Your Spirit to Any Job."

Make the best of whatever is in your "sphere of control," adds Tom Terez, a consultant in Columbus, Ohio. When people wring their hands about aspects of the workplace over which they have no influence, "it's easy to get marooned out there, and it's easy for people stuck there to pull you into that zone," he says.

About 17 percent of American workers are so disengaged that they actively undermine what their co-workers are trying to accomplish, says the Gallup Organization. Another 54 percent have "checked out" - they're putting in time, but not much energy. The remaining 29 percent are engaged and passionate about their work.

Page: 1 | 2