Beating the Boredom Blues at Work
December 27, 2007
By Christianna McCausland
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When Beth Smith took a job managing the post office of a local university, she thought it would be a great way to get management experience. For a while it was. Then her boss left and Smith (not her real name) suddenly found herself with a dud of a new supervisor. The work — overseeing the sorting and delivery of mail — was tedious and the number of complaints was high. Smith was bored out of her mind.
“With hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail coming in each day, it was hard to stay motivated,” Smith, 45, says. When her first boss left, things went downhill: “There was no more mentoring, no training programs. Budgets were tight and it just got to be boring. There wasn’t much stimulation and it was the same thing every day.”
Many people get bored at work. Sometimes it is part of the nature of things — the economy slows or a client is lost to a competitor or seasonal shifts cause a slump — but often boredom is a sign of a more personal problem such as job dissatisfaction or poor communication with superiors. Paige Beyer, a certified coach who specializes in career development, says she often sees clients suffering from work-induced boredom. She views boredom as a symptom of something else, such as job burnout.
“We try to look at the source of [the client’s] boredom,” she says. “You might ask yourself: ‘Is this something that’s temporary? Did I get satisfaction from this job before?’ You need to look back and see when there was a time that this job was right for you and see what was different then.”
If the boredom appears to be a symptom of burnout, Beyer might advise the client to take time off, or to find an interest outside of work to help re-establish a work-life balance. If you can’t remember a time when you ever liked your job, however, the job is probably not for you.
For Smith, the escape from boredom was fitness. She started using her lunch hour to go to the gym to break up the monotony of the day. She also cut back on overtime and got involved with campus groups, worked on her master’s degree and perfected her resumé. Eventually she quit work to open a graphic design and printing business with her husband, a job she loves.
Smith advises others to take control of their work life and to never use boredom as an excuse to slack off at work, which only creates a vicious cycle.
“You need to take responsibility for enhancing your life instead of blaming other people,” Smith says.
According to Renee Canali, owner of Cultivating Change, a coaching practice in Rockville, it is important to distinguish between boredom and job dissatisfaction. “I define boredom as not having enough to do, not being interested in particular tasks, being underemployed or not challenged because your talents are not being used fully,” she says. This kind of boredom can be cured.
Canali acknowledges that entry-level jobs are generally unfulfilling. She recommends mixing up the routine as much as possible: File from Z to A or walk around while you’re on the phone.
Boredom can be an opportunity for self-discovery, Paige Beyer says. Use downtime to reflect on your own talents, to look at other opportunities within the company and to talk to other people about the work they do. Be curious. Then speak with your boss.
“You can begin to have that dialogue that asks not only, ‘What’s available to me?’ but also to express what you’d really like to do, so you can help that person along and not sit there and wait for someone to fix your career problems for you,” she says. Beth Smith recommends reaching out to the many resources available to the work-weary: “Do something like yoga that helps you find out who you are; use the support system of friends, training programs, headhunters.”
Often, boredom is the result of a downturn in work. Sheila Bindar, a 32-year-old project architect, found herself working at a firm that did not have enough clients. Rather than wait for the work to come to her, Bindar (not her real name) spoke to her boss, who agreed to let her take on pro bono work in the company’s name. She also filled her time reorganizing the company’s resource library and improving her portfolio — which helped her eventually land a more satisfying job.
The experience of being bored helped her choose her next job wisely. She found a position as an architect in the public sector, where work is consistent. “It made me more aware of the signs of healthy firms that have a lot of work and that actively chase work and that produce good results to keep clients coming back,” she says.
Being bored is not a death sentence for your career. It can lead to positive change. Your boss is not clairvoyant, Canali emphasizes — he or she simply may not know of your untapped talents, so speak up. If you do and your boss is unresponsive, or if you continue to feel dissatisfied and become less conscientious — if you start showing up late, for example — then it may be time to hit the want ads.
