The Boredom Problem

Sep 08, 2020

Frederic Desnard, a 44-year old man sued his employer unsuccessfully for €360,000 back in 2016. Desnard complained that from 2010 to 2014 he was given little to no work, or given menial tasks that were not part of his job description. He claimed that his employers actions made his life so tedious that it left him “destroyed” and battling “serious depression”.

I’m sure a lot of you felt this way at some point or another in your career.

I know I have. So let’s talk about it.

Boredom vs Burnout

The workplace opposite of someone being bored by their work is someone else who has been burned out by it. While the former is about not finding meaningful work at the office, the latter is about stretching yourself thin working, irrespective of whether you find it meaningful or not.

For the longest time, someone who is perceived to have had a burnout used to be looked at a lot more favourably by his peers and employers than someone who is bored at work. Burnout in some cultures is even considered as a sign of a hard-working employee, while a bored employee is almost universally shamed or stigmatised.

This has to do with the fact that everyone prefers to have disorders that are socially considered. Someone who says, 'I have so much to do, my God, the job is banging up at work', is much more respected than someone who says he's bored, has no responsibilities, and that's what gets him done. Everyone says: 'I want to trade with you, that's great!
- Wolfgang Merkle Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung, 2010

A person who confesses to his employer or peers that he is bored at work will have problems keeping his job or getting promoted. People do not come out with this problem for the same reasons and this feeds into a vicious cycle.

Hence, we see articles, studies or blog posts from prominent publications talking about workplace burnout while boredom or boreout is barely discussed.

Effects of Boredom

While clearly different, boredom and burnout do share some common symptoms. Boredom symptoms are both psychological like insomnia, depression, lack of arousal etc and physical symptoms like susceptibility to infection, fatigue, shingles, voice tremors, stomach upset, headache, dizziness etc.

People with workplace boredom are also more likely to be affected by cardiovascular related events than others with a stimulating job. Workplace boredom can also lead people to seek stimulation elsewhere like drugs, alcohol, gambling etc.

Also, it is not just the individual who is affected by boredom, companies pay a heavy price too in terms of compromised output, bad workplace morale, high levels of attrition etc.

All said and done, boredom at the workplace is bad for the employee and the employer.

How to know if you’re bored?

While for a lot of us, this might seem obvious. We often misdiagnose boredom with some of its symptoms and hence do not deal with it effectively.

I found this post about questions you can ask yourself to know if you are bored. If you get a “yes” on four or more of these questions, then you are probably suffering from boredom.

Do you handle personal tasks at work?
Are you stretching timeframes even if the task can be done faster?
Are you under-challenged by the work assigned to you?
Do you disturb your colleagues with non-work related communication during office hours?
Do you pretend to be busy?
Do you feel apathetic or tired at the end of the day even if the workload was manageable?
Are you unhappy with your output?
Do you think the work you do is meaningless?
Are you scared to jump jobs due to the fear of taking a pay cut?

Types of Boredom & Diagnosis

You should diagnose the type of boredom to address it effectively and maybe even remedy it. That said, there are 5 types of boredom:

Indifference: You are calm, relaxed but you feel withdrawn from work related tasks.
Calibrating: You feel slightly unpleasant emotionally while being receptive to distractions.
Searching: You get negative feelings coupled with restlessness and are often actively searching for distraction to get out of your bored state.
Apathetic: You feel unpleasant, helpless and have no feelings about your work.
Reactant: You feel intense negative emotions about your job, high levels of motivation to avoid people responsible for it, restlessness, aggression and constant search for “more viable” alternatives.

According to Thomas Goetz, the lead researcher of the boredom study and a professor at the University of Konstanz in Germany - you can characterise these 5 types over 2 dimensions and rating them on a scale of 1 - 5.

Emotional scale --> Positive (1) ---- Negative (5)
Degree of arousal --> Calm (1) ---- Fidgety (5)

For example, if you are feeling positive emotions associated with your boredom give a score of 1 or 2 and if you are fidgety about your reactions to boredom give yourself a score of 5 or 4.

Here is the quote on how to characterise the types of boredom based on your answers:

“You can assess your individual boredom by writing down the two numbers. Simply speaking: 2/1 reflects indifferent boredom; 3/2, calibrating boredom; 3/3, searching boredom; 4/4, reactant boredom; and 4/1, apathetic boredom.” (Other combinations of scores fall in between these 5 boredom types)
-Thomas Goetz

Now that you know the type of boredom you’ve got, it becomes easier to deal with it.

Reducing boredom at the workplace (the right way)

There are a lot of ways to look at this problem, but a simpler approach would be to view it from the perspective of employers and employees. While there are things that employers can do to make things better, the onus is often on the employee to take definitive action.

Employers:

Start by identifying redundant tasks that can be automated or semi-automated and automate it. If there is a good product that can do the job, do not hire people for it.
Identify and distribute tasks that will challenge the employee’s ability and skill set. Then attach these tasks to either a monetary or growth based incentive.
Align your company goals directly with the employee’s contribution and let them know by sharing open dashboards, regular all-hands etc.
Do not micro-manage, give your employees space to figure things out for themselves and trust them. If the problem still persists, either retrain or let them go.
Have a sense of the work force’s morale, this can be done through anonymous surveys or an open honest discussion with your employees.
Do not forget to call-out good work, if enough people get the recognition then others will want it and likely follow.

Employees:

Talk to a professional and get a diagnosis if possible.
Figure out things that you can do within your current role that are not redundant and see if that excites you.
Try to avoid private work/conversations for a week or so and see if that makes you feel more invested in your work.
Consider building skills to pick up more stimulating work within the organisation.
Identify factors stopping you from doing good work and communicate it to management. A good management will be thankful for your initiative.
Take a short holiday for a week or two and later assess if you are still feeling bored at the office.
Talk to your management about changing the scope of your work to include more active, stimulating work even if it is from another department.

If none of the above mentioned strategies work or are viable, then chances are that you can’t work at that job any longer. A smart choice would be to choose your health and mental state over being stuck in a career that does nothing more than just pay bills.

However, do not be hasty and put your papers down immediately. Like most things, thinking about this strategically will help cushion any contingencies that arise out out of leaving your job and it will also enable you to make the most of outside opportunities.

Quitting? What now?

So let’s think of this in 3 stages:

Stage 1: You have decided to quit.

Identify domains you want to work on and start talking to people in that domain about what that life might be like. You can use LinkedIn to find and reach out to these people.
Build the basic skill set required and try out a few sample projects. You might be surprised by whether or not you like doing that line of work. The last thing you need is to be stuck in another job with the same experience.
Update your resume & seek professional help if you have 3 or more years of work experience. Professional resume creators can make a significant difference to your application’s success rate.
Apply to companies that you believe are easy to get into. Once you have a couple of offers then apply to companies that are high risk-high reward. This way you’ll have less pressure trying to crack the interview since you know that in the worst case scenario, you still have those other offers. Plus, you get the interviewing experience.

Stage 2: Putting down your papers.

Be precise with your reporting manager and tell them about your intentions and motivations for quitting. Leave on good terms & do not burn bridges.
If there is a counter-offer, think about all the times you spent feeling miserable at this job and assess if the offer is really worth it. Plus, you have already landed a role that you actually like so take that into consideration as well.
Get recommendations on LinkedIn from management and since you are leaving on good terms, a lot of them will be happy to give you one. You can also suggest that they focus their recommendations on skills that might help you in your new job.

Stage 3: Starting at a new job.

Give yourself time and space to learn and do not be overwhelmed. Use the initial period to prioritise learning about the process in the company/team over the basic skills needed to do the job.
Do not take up too many initiatives at the start. The worst thing you can do at a new job is overwhelm yourself and under-perform on core deliverables. Take up initiatives only after you have settled into the job and you are comfortable to add additional workload.
Talk to management regularly to understand future direction and opportunities. The management usually has insight into what the company might be doing a few quarters from now and possible requirements for it. By being in the loop you will get a head start.
Take breaks and re-evaluate your work regularly. It is important that you keep things fresh and relevant so that you do not repeat your past mis-steps.
Enjoy the grind. If work feels enjoyable, the payoff is usually worth it.

So that is it. I hope you found this useful. I thought this was an important topic to touch upon given the current work life situation.

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Thanks for reading and keep it rational.

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