You Are Bored at Work?

Do you ever get bored with your job?  Here are some warning signs and some things you can do to avoid the boredom.  

In my career, bad things have happened when I got bored.  I tried entertaining myself in unhealthy, unproductive ways not in line with the organization's values.  Sometimes when I entertained myself to fight the boredom, not everyone else shared in the fun.    

The trouble is that I did not own the boredom.  I blamed the boring people around me.  I blamed the organization for being boring.  I believed my job was boring.  The food in the vending machine was boring.  Once when I was considering making a big change in my career and leaving a company I had been with for years my wife said to me, “You had better do it or you are going to get bored and drive us all crazy.”   It was then I began to realize she was right.  I learned to recognize the signs.  And over time, I learned how to fend off the black dog of boredom before it could sleep beneath my porch.  

The warning signs 

* Creative avoidance. Doing a task that is much more fun than the task that needs to get done.  It’s like washing the car when you know the garage needs to be cleaned out.  It is messing with that automated spreadsheet you’ve been working on rather than getting the schedules out to the shop floor. 

* Sloppy work.  Not dotting the I’s or crossing the T’s on a project.  Doing it just to get it done.

* Losing the passion to improve or not learning new things.  Doing the same things day in and day out the same way each day without questioning the way it is done.  Not looking for possible ways to improve.      

* Not staying on task, the “Squirrel syndrome".  Yes, it has a name now thanks to Dug in the movie Up.  Easily distracted by shiney things rather than doing the immediate and essential task at hand.  The internet is great for chasing squirrels.  Heck, YouTube gives you a list of videos to watch next before the one you are watching is finished.  How many cute cat videos can one watch in a day?  (The answer is 47.)  When I was a plant manager the plant itself could be the distraction.  I would wander around out on the shop floor looking for anything that caught my attention rather than writing performance reviews.    

* The day seems forever long.

* My boss annoyed me.  Any little request the boss had just annoyed the crap out of me.     

* I annoy the boss.  See above. 

* Annoyed by my customers, internal and external.  You can read "boss" in there if you want, it was the same effect.  Any request seemed to be an extraordinary request when I am bored with the job.  Particularly when it was something I have done a hundred times.   

 With age comes wisdom, hopefully.  I have accepted that boredom is nature’s way of telling you to move on.  Here is what you can do to “move on.”   

What to do about it  

* Accept New Tasks:

Take on something new that would push your skill set level and force you to learn new things.  Get a new set of problems to solve.   

* Change employers:

Exercise your credentials; aka, find a new employer, a new job, a new set of problems.  As the owner of a staffing agency, this is where I come in.  I see bored people every day. 

* Change jobs within the organization if you have the latitude:  

Take on a new role with all the new stuff to learn and challenges to overcome.  For example, I jumped from an HR positon into production management.  Yeah, that was a steep learning curve.  A drowning man never complains about being bored.    

* Change jobs in your field: 

Is there another level to think about.  For example, if you are an HR benefits person could you switch to personnel department?  

* Change the system:  

Are you in a position to improve the system?  Can you affect the change?  Of course, change for the sake of change is not good.  However, change for the benefit of all and added benefit of breaking the boredom cycle is good. 

* Read, read, read:

I have always found that reading and engaging the gray matter helps me look at old things in new ways.  When you are looking at something you have looked at a hundred times but you shine the light on it from a different angle, it becomes new and interesting again.  Peter Senge’s book, The Fifth Discipline did this for me.  After reading it, I began seeing all the complexity of the hidden systems in the factory.  It got me reexamining my way of thinking about problems. It was as if I suddenly had a new job.  I could not look at anything the same again.  Reading generates new ideas and gives you the energy to overcome the boredom and try new things.

Ultimately you have to own your own boredom.  You must learn to recognize the warning signs and actively develop skills to fight the Black Dog.  Then you can turn it into a strength.