Two of the most dreaded words in the English language!

I’m bored….

surprisingly it was not the kids saying it

it was me!

A few years ago, I was driving home at it hit me – I am bored at home but more worryingly I’m bored at work.

I looked online and realised I was not the only one.

Are you bored at work?

According to Boredom at work | The Psychologist (bps.org.uk) contrary to popular wisdom, boredom is not the result of having nothing to do. There is hardly a situation where a person’s options are SO limited that he or she literally can do nothing. Rather, boredom stems from a situation where none of the possible things that a person can realistically do actually appeal to them.

Sound familiar?

Boredom is thought by some to be a distinct emotional state in which the level of stimulation is perceived as unsatisfactorily low. The lack of external stimulation leads to increased neural arousal in search of variety – failure to satisfy this leads to the experience of boredom. 

Like all emotions, boredom is likely to have a function. Its main purpose is most probably to alert us that all is not well and something must be done. Bizarrely perhaps, boredom is thus seen as a motivating force that makes us engage in challenge-seeking behaviour: boredom can be energising! Indeed, Sir Bob Geldof, who galvanised the entire country and beyond into action against African poverty, admits that he is continually motivated by a need for stimulation: ‘I’m afraid of boredom because I get into all this emptiness’.

As an evolutionary tool, boredom was probably invaluable. It allowed us to stop attending to a things which proved neither dangerous nor reinforcing. We could then turn our attention to other, more worthy stimuli.

What can be done?

The world of work is changing. Long gone are the dangerous (but to some more exciting) days when workers really were at the coalface.

Now we have endless meetings, seemingly unending bureaucracy, and work in highly controlled environments. Controlled environments are often recommended and encouraged (for example call centres). You could argue that the over-use of meetings in many organisations needs to be re-examined. Meetings should either be run more efficiently (i.e. be tightly chaired, highly focused and above all, brief), or more ideally cancelled or replaced where possible with other procedures such as e-mail discussions or video-conference calls. Indeed if we could intersperse our work tasks with more interesting work, that would be a great start. This could include breaking down form-filling and report writing into smaller chunks. Even playing music in the background would really help. These are all individual strategies that workplaces could and should allow to go some way to coping.

Its all about control

It mostly comes down to control. Wouldn’t it be great to have working conditions for job roles re-examined? This could allow job rotation schemes and less controlling environments. This would enable people to be free to organise their own work schedule and take breaks when they want.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

However, it is always worth remembering that we do actually have control.

Yes I shall state it again: we do have control. Sometimes we just don’t realise it.

We may not be aware of it, or how to use it to our best advantage. Either for our work selves or our home selves.

Come and talk to me at The Professionals Coach. Let me show you just how much control you really have!