Doing what you are good at increases satisfaction with work but does not reduce exhaustion

The more individuals use their skills at work, the more positive they feel about their work each day. This is especially true for individuals who are motivated internally, for example, by self-development. However, according to the same study, using skills at work does not help to reduce feelings of exhaustion. Doing what you are good at thus can make you happier at work. However, using your skills does not necessarily mean that work feels less demanding.

Work and Stress

The anger of receiving an email from your boss after work hours

The increase in communication technologies makes it easier to schedule work more flexibly  – but also makes a separation of work and nonwork more difficult. Receiving an email from one's boss after working hours can trigger anger that leads to work-nonwork conflict, according to a US study. Anger reactions were particularly pronounced when the email had a negative affective tone and required a lot of time to read and complete the requested task. On the other hand, emails with a positive tone increased happiness after work hours. Supervisors should thus be careful how they frame emails sent after work hours and use off-hours communication as a way to express praise and appreciation rather than raising challenging demands.

Academy of Management Journal

Finding your calling is not enough - Having the chance to enact it daily is important

Working in a profession that corresponds to your calling does not automatically mean that you will have the chance to enact your calling on a daily basis, according to a study among church ministers in the UK. Even for priests, the degree to which they could enact their callings during a normal work day varied considerably and was related to their experienced well-being. Finding one's calling is thus not enough for your happiness - creating daily opportunities to enact it in your job is important, as this study suggests.

Journal of Organizational Behavior