5 Ways to Make Work Less Boring

When was the last time you left work feeling like you were going home a bigger, better person than the one who arrived at your desk that morning? Yesterday? Last week? Last month? Last year? Last job?

According to a recent study by Udemy, 43% of people are bored at work. The top cause: a lack of perceived growth.

Why are people bored at work?

Let’s face it, when work stops being challenging, we tend to get bored. It isn’t just because we feel entitled to be challenged, it is neurological.

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that is at the heart of our brain’s reward and pleasure centers. It is what drives our motivation. When we accomplish something, our brain rewards us with a bit of dopamine.

When we do something over and over again in the same exact way, it becomes rote. We may still be making an impact, but our brain is giving us less reward each time until the reward cycle is broken and we are...bored.

Serotonin is the other neurochemical at play here. If we don’t feel like our work matters, it makes us feel a lack of significance which in turn leads to low serotonin levels. These lower levels of serotonin are linked to depression and these factors create a negative flywheel where we become less and less fulfilled and, eventually, check out and become...bored.

Here is what I have learned about overcoming boredom:

So, how do you ensure you are getting your daily neurochemical fix? Here are five ways that I have seen work, and seen research back up:

One: Master Your Craft

A couple Saturday’s ago, the highlight of my day was actually an interaction with the cashier at Trader Joe’s. She had gone well beyond being proficient at her job; she was truly masterful. The way she juggled all of her required tasks while maintaining a connection with me was so impressive. When I asked her how to best bag groceries, she demonstrated the knowledge of a packaging designer.

Whether it is giving the keynote at a 5,000 person conference or bagging groceries, most people give up growing when they reach a basic level of competence or perhaps proficiency. How can you challenge yourself to get better at what you do everyday? Increase your speed. Increase your presence. Increase the joy you bring to other people. Decrease your errors.

Look around you at other people doing the same job. Who has a level of expertise or even mastery that you can learn from?

To be competent at something doesn’t mean you are ready for the next thing. It means you are 20% of the way to mastery.

Two: Teach Your Craft

OK, so you think you have mastered your craft? Try teaching the craft to someone else. Not just to help them achieve basic competence, but to actually become a master themselves.

For most of us, teaching what we do to someone else is hard. It requires us to breakdown what we do into a series of building blocks. This has a nice secondary benefit of helping us appreciate what we have learned rather than taking it for granted.

The bigger challenge, however, is having empathy and realizing they might need the blocks to be different for them and being able to help them create their blocks, not recreate yours.

Three: Mix It Up

When you change the order in which you put your legs in your pants each morning, it registers in your brain as a new challenge. It takes you out of autopilot. It has been recommended as a way to increase everything from creativity to motivation. Try it tomorrow.

Most of us don’t put on pants as part of our job (as we are usually doing it prior to work), but there are many routines we have at work that we usually take for granted. These routines can be anything from the order in which you do things to how you physically do things.

Make a log of every routine you have today and then pick one to change tomorrow. Your list will likely be at least 10 items long. Change one per week and you will then have three months free of boredom.

Four: See Your Impact

Our research on Purpose at work has uncovered that people define significance for themselves differently. We have psychological drivers that cause us to define what impact we value.

Roughly one third of people only feel really significant if they are able to see the direct impact of their work on individual people. Another third of people gain the greatest sense of significance when they help a team or community succeed. The final third need to feel connected to something greater than any one person or organization - they want to be part of broader changes in the market and society.

At first, the impulse is to think about what job best fits your desired elevation of impact? This is helpful eventually, but it is better to start with where you are. Map your current work to the type of impact that matters to you. You are likely taking the impact of your job for granted. Once you connect the dots, you can begin to appreciate your job more and look for ways to amplify it.

Five: Be Visionary

None of the above strategies will work for long if you don’t have a sense of hope and a goal for what you want to be doing in a couple of years. Once we know what the next incremental step is in our careers, we can begin to build the skills necessary to make the move.

Most people think that once they have competence in one job, they are ready to move on to the next adventure. The reality is that you need to master your current job AND have competence in the job you want before you can likely make the switch.

This might mean completing extra work or training. It might mean volunteering at a nonprofit where you can practice the new skills before they are marketable. Don’t show you are capable of doing the new job, show that you are doing it already.

The Purpose Assessment

Imperative is the first assessment to get at the core of who you are and what you are capable of becoming. Get a free trial and see how Imperative can inspire and develop your teams based on their unique purpose drivers.

Sign up for a free trial here.