From struggling to thriving at work: measure your energy and learning, then one small move for each

Two meanings of “thriving”, and the one this guide uses

Gallup uses the words thriving, struggling and suffering for how people rate their whole life on a ladder from 0 to 10: thriving means rating your life now at 7 or more and in five years at 8 or more; suffering means both at 4 or less; everyone else is struggling. In its State of the Global Workplace 2026 report, based on 2025 interviews with 141,444 employed people (global data read on 22 October 2026), 34% of employees worldwide were thriving, 56% struggling and 9% suffering.

Thriving at work, the subject of this guide, is narrower: how your job feels, not your whole life. Porath, Spreitzer, Gibson and Garnett defined it in the Journal of Organizational Behavior as “the psychological state in which individuals experience both a sense of vitality and learning”, and measured it with five vitality and five learning statements, each rated by how much you agree with it. In their studies, thriving related to career development initiative, burnout and job performance, beyond job satisfaction and commitment.

A four-question self-check

This is our own short check, written for this guide and inspired by the two halves of thriving; it is not the validated scale. Rate each statement from 1 (not at all true this month) to 7 (completely true). Add questions 1 and 2 for your vitality score, 3 and 4 for your learning score, each between 2 and 14.

• 1. Most workdays, I finish with some energy left for my evening.
• 2. I look forward to at least one part of my workweek.
• 3. This month, I did something at work I could not do a year ago.
• 4. I know what I am trying to get better at in my job.

What the research links to thriving

A 2019 meta-analysis by Kleine, Rudolph and Zacher pooled 73 independent samples and 21,739 employees. Thriving went with proactive personality (r = .58), work engagement (.64), supportive coworkers (.42), supportive leadership (.44) and perceived organizational support (.63), and on the outcome side with lower burnout (−.53) and better task performance (.35). These are correlations: they show what travels together, not what causes what, and the authors found that thriving adds only a small amount of prediction beyond positive mood and engagement.

Spreitzer’s model names three things people do that feed thriving: task focus, exploration and heedful relating, meaning attentive care in how you work with others. A 2021 meta-analysis by Liu and colleagues, of 67 samples and 28,097 people, reviewed the antecedents of thriving built on this model. The three behaviours are where small moves fit, because they are partly in your hands.

One small move for each half

Pick one move, not five, and keep it for a month. Each one below maps to a behaviour in Spreitzer’s model; none has been tested alone in a trial, so treat them as experiments and judge them by your own scores.

• Vitality, through task focus: block one 60-minute stretch a week for the task that matters most, notifications off.
• Vitality, through recovery: one evening a week with no work messages, decided in advance.
• Learning, through exploration: one new thing each week, a tool, a skill or a question to someone in another team.
• Learning and vitality, through heedful relating: ask one colleague a week for a specific piece of feedback, and help one colleague with something small.

Fulfilment beyond pay

Thriving is not the same as meaning, but the two meet. In a meta-analysis of 44 articles and 23,144 people, Blake Allan and colleagues found that meaningful work had large correlations, r = .70 or more, with work engagement, commitment and job satisfaction, and moderate to large ones (r = .44 to −.49) with life satisfaction, life meaning, general health and withdrawal intentions. Pay matters for security, and the guide How to ask for a raise without changing jobs covers it; the question here is what your job gives you besides the payslip.

One concrete way to make a job more meaningful is to reshape its tasks, relationships and the way you see it, called job crafting; the guide Write your ideal job description shows how to start in your current role.

Bring it into the nightly ritual

The ritual can help with the half that is low, if the scene is a working moment rather than a title. In Dream Architect, the Work & purpose area has 4 pre-written scenes among the app’s 84 in 21 life areas (counted in the app’s content on 22 October 2026); one is closing the laptop on the last file of a project, in a quiet office. For learning, use “Write my own moment”: “I explain the new tool to a colleague, and I notice I no longer need my notes.”

After a month, retake the four questions. A move that raised a score is worth keeping; one that did not can be swapped. Visualizing work and career moments that feel real gives more scenes of this kind.

When small moves are not enough

If both scores stay low for months despite your moves, the problem may be the job, the manager or the workload rather than your habits, and that calls for a bigger decision: a talk about your role, an internal move, or a change. If exhaustion lasts or affects your sleep and health, talk to a doctor or your occupational health service. This guide makes no promise about your career or your health.

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