Struggling at work often happens because your natural habits are clashing with your daily tasks, rather than a lack of ability or effort on your part.
Key takeaways
- Recognising that you are struggling is the first step toward aligning your career with your natural work personality.
- Most workplace friction comes from a mismatch between your inherent strengths and the specific demands of your role.
- Understanding the eight core work actions helps you identify exactly where the disconnect lies in your current position.
- Small, personality-adaptive shifts in how you approach tasks can significantly reduce daily stress and burnout.
- You aren't broken or 'too much'; you simply haven't been given the tools to decode how your brain prefers to work.
We’ve all been there – staring at a screen, feeling that heavy knot in the stomach, wondering why everyone else seems to have it figured out while you’re just treading water. You might have been told you’re 'too sensitive', 'too blunt', or 'too stuck in the clouds'. When you’re struggling, those labels start to feel like permanent flaws rather than the unique traits they actually are.
At Compono, we’ve spent over a decade researching why some people soar while others feel like they’re constantly pushing a boulder uphill. What we’ve found is that struggling isn’t usually about a lack of skill. It’s about a lack of alignment. Modern work often asks us to be everything to everyone, but your brain is actually wired to excel in specific ways. When you try to force a square peg into a round hole, the peg doesn't just fail to fit – it gets damaged.
If you've spent your career being told to 'tone it down' or 'speak up more', you're likely struggling with a fragmented professional identity. This constant feedback loop creates a sense of shame. You start to believe that your natural way of being is an obstacle to your success. In reality, the very things people call 'too much' are often your greatest competitive advantages when placed in the right context.
Consider the person who is told they are too detail-oriented. In a fast-paced sales environment, that trait might lead to them struggling to keep up with high-volume calls. However, in a compliance or auditing role, that same trait makes them a superstar. At Hey Compono, we help you stop fighting your nature and start using it to your advantage by identifying your specific work personality.
When you stop trying to 'fix' yourself and start trying to 'understand' yourself, the weight begins to lift. You realise that your struggle isn't a character flaw. It's simply data telling you that your current environment or task list isn't speaking your language. By decoding that language, you can move from surviving to thriving.
To stop struggling, you need to look at the eight key work activities that define high-performing teams: Evaluating, Coordinating, Campaigning, Pioneering, Advising, Helping, and Doing. Most of us have a natural home in one or two of these areas. If your job requires you to spend 80% of your time in an area that drains your battery, of course you're going to feel exhausted.
For example, if you are naturally 'The Helper', you find energy in supporting others and building harmony. If your role suddenly requires you to be 'The Evaluator' – making cold, logical, and sometimes blunt decisions – you will start struggling with the emotional weight of the job. It’s not that you can’t do the work; it’s that the cost of doing it is significantly higher for you than it would be for someone else.
The Hey Compono app uses a personality-adaptive approach to show you exactly where these friction points live. By mapping your natural preferences against your actual work requirements, you can see the gaps clearly. This isn't about making excuses; it's about making a plan. Once you know why a specific task feels like pulling teeth, you can find strategies to manage it or collaborate with someone whose strengths fill your gaps.
Every strength has a shadow side. When you're struggling, you're often seeing the 'overdone' version of your best traits. A 'Campaigner' who is full of enthusiasm might become scattered and overwhelmed when under pressure. An 'Auditor' who is meticulous might get stuck in 'analysis paralysis' when forced to make a snap decision. These aren't failures – they are simply what happens when a personality type is pushed to its limit.
Recognising these patterns is the key to self-regulation. Instead of beating yourself up for being 'scattered', you can recognise that your inner Campaigner needs a bit of structure to feel safe again. By understanding these tendencies, you can communicate your needs to your team more effectively. You can say, 'I need twenty minutes to process this data before I can give you a solid answer,' rather than just feeling like you're failing to keep up.
This level of self-awareness transforms the workplace from a theatre of judgment into a laboratory of growth. When everyone understands their own work personality, the focus shifts from 'who is doing it wrong' to 'how can we do this better together'. Using the tools available at Hey Compono, you can start to build a vocabulary for these experiences that doesn't involve shame or perfectionism.
The path out of struggling isn't found in a productivity hack or a new planner. It’s found in radical self-honesty. It requires you to look at your work and ask: 'Which parts of this are actually me, and which parts am I pretending to be?' The more you have to pretend, the more you will struggle. Authenticity isn't just a buzzword; it's a physiological requirement for long-term career sustainability.
Start by identifying one task this week that made you feel completely drained. Ask yourself which of the eight work actions it fell under. Then, look for a task that made time fly by. What was the difference? Usually, the tasks we love are the ones where we get to use our dominant work personality. The goal isn't to never do the hard stuff again – it's to balance the 'draining' work with enough 'charging' work to keep your battery in the green.
Hey Compono provides the framework to make these adjustments. Whether you're a 'Doer' who needs clear objectives or a 'Pioneer' who needs the freedom to innovate, there is a place where you fit. You don't have to change who you are to stop struggling; you just have to change the way you work with yourself.
Key insights
- Struggling is often a sign of misalignment between your natural work personality and your current job demands.
- The labels of being 'too much' of something are usually just strengths used in the wrong context or without proper support.
- High-performing teams require a balance of eight core work actions, and nobody is naturally gifted at all of them.
- Self-awareness is the most effective tool for reducing workplace stress and preventing long-term burnout.
- Productivity follows personality; when you work in a way that suits your brain, efficiency happens naturally.
If you're tired of feeling like you're failing, it's time to get a clear picture of how you actually work best. You don't need to fix yourself – you just need to understand yourself.
Hard work doesn't always equal progress if you're working against your natural personality. If your tasks require 'Auditor' precision but you're a 'Pioneer' at heart, you'll use twice as much energy to get the same result as someone naturally wired for detail.
While your core traits remain relatively stable, you can learn to flex into different work actions. However, 'flexing' always takes more energy than staying in your natural 'flow' state. Understanding your baseline helps you manage that energy expenditure.
The best way is to frame it through the lens of work personality. Instead of saying 'I can't do this,' try saying 'I've realised that my strengths lie in Campaigning and I'm currently spending most of my time in Data Auditing, which is slowing down my overall output. How can we balance this?'
Not necessarily. Often, it's just a sign that your current role's specific mix of tasks is off-balance. Small adjustments to your daily routine or how you collaborate with teammates can often fix the struggle without needing a total career pivot.
Hey Compono identifies your unique work personality and provides actionable, personality-adaptive tips. It helps you understand your blind spots and gives you a roadmap to align your daily actions with your natural strengths.