You are sitting at your desk. You have been staring at the task at hand for the last five minutes and you know you need to just power through and get it done, but the next item on your list is worse than the first. The monotony is causing a battle between your physical body and your mind on what you're going to do. Do you go for that third snack to eat in the last hour, or do you take out the phone and start the social media binge that your mind wants to do to avoid the task at hand? Do you find the boredom you are experiencing in your job frustrating you? Do you have less and less vacation because you can't sit through another day of monotonous work, or are the deadlines so far away there's no motivation to power through? These may be signs you are experiencing burnout.
The Link Between Boredom, Stress, and Burnout
Once boredom has set in, you begin to find yourself in a situation you do not want to be in, or your brain may not have the additional capacity to deal with what you are working on. So, stress enters in, and your body's stress response wants to kick in to regulate it, but there isn't any real danger, and your body doesn't have an outlet for the stress to deescalate. Other ideas enter the picture to provide the release your body needs to step away from the stress response.
In the workplace this can involve multiple outlets. You find you're hungry, so you get a snack and a soda. You grab your phone and start looking at news headlines or seeing the latest video or meme on whatever social you're into. Or you get up and start talking to multiple people to allow you to kill some time. These can be some of the impulsive coping mechanisms to the boredom that you're facing in the workplace.
Congratulations, distraction complete! Wait, now you feel guilt and anxiety because the items you should have been working on are coming due and you realize that you've taken longer than you should to finish. What you thought was helping you step away from the boredom and stress you were feeling only deferred it. Now you're feeling even more stressed.
My boredom at work began when the jobs I was given became too repetitive and no longer challenged me mentally. It was the type of job that once you learned the various aspects then it's rinse, adjust and repeat. I had become efficient enough with what I was doing that I could use my reactive coping mechanisms to procrastinate until I felt sufficient pressure to force me to finish the job.
This started a cycle of boredom and anxiety. While outside stress and emotional situations would show up to provide the occasional change-up, the main contributors to the cycle were boredom and anxiety. After many years, job changes, and trying to figure out other outlets within the job title to bring challenge to my job, none of it was working.
I was in full burnout. I had chosen to stay in a job that was underwhelming to me while continuing the same self-destructive cycle. I had reached a point where I didn't want to go to work. When I was there, I wasn't fully mentally there. I was checked out and going through the motions.
I walked away from that job eventually and went back to school. I would like to say that was the end of my boredom, but it wasn't. I only upgraded to a different level in the field I had first chosen. The intent in writing this article is not to explain how bored I was at work but to bring to light that boredom may not just be a case of not being interested in what you are doing. If you find yourself in a situation where you can't focus on the tasks at hand and constantly need to find an outlet. Then start asking yourself these questions:
Questions to Identify the Root Cause
There are many solutions to a problem. The first step is to recognize the problem and then work through the issues to solve it. The idea is to access where the boredom is coming from. Is there a quick solution? Can it be implemented right away? What does the long-term solution look like? Are there "baby steps" to help me have little wins along the way? Does a professional need to be brought in to help work through the issues that are causing it? As we self-discover the events that are leading to or causing our burnout, let's choose to take the steps necessary to break the stress cycle.