After a billion shots worldwide have been administered, many of us are starting to
re-emerge into the world. And while the pandemic rampages through many
parts of the globe, another more silent epidemic lurks – boredom.
Languishing is what
some call it. It’s not burnout (though some are suffering from it), and
it’s not depression. It’s a sort of joyless, aimless muddling through
days. When we’re bored, we have a sense of emptiness and everything
being the same and uninteresting. Sound familiar?
Psychologically speaking, boredom is the opposite of interest. While
it doesn’t quite capture people’s attention like stress, boredom is not
only a joy killer; it is also a job killer.
Businesses, especially public sector organizations, conduct stress
audits, but have you ever heard of one doing a boredom audit? It
might sound strange, but it would make much more business sense. Bored
employees are not only underperforming (they’d have to be if they’re
bored), but they are also a higher flight risk – they are
unhappy, and they have the time to look for a new job.
As we emerge from this prolonged period of enforced boredom away from
our normal lives, there is both great opportunity and danger for the
future of work. The opportunity is that we all recognize our work lives
are a source of great stimulation for us — it can be both challenging
and rewarding. It can also give us a sense of purpose as we make a
contribution to the world. The danger is that we see our work as a means
to an end and never bring our best selves to work, seeking other avenues
outside our work for stimulation.
Though stress and boredom are both sources of unhappiness in our lives,
they are not equal. Everyday boredom is much more corrosive than
everyday stress. This is not to say that being over-stressed (especially
for prolonged periods) doesn’t have serious consequences such as
burnout – it’s just
that moderate stress doesn’t. However, even mild boredom has negative
work consequences.
At Friday Pulse, we believe in making the science, not just referencing
it, and we see these differences in our data about happiness at
work. Using a data set of 24,000 respondents in research that we
conducted with our friends at Robert Half, we can examine the impact of
boredom and stress on employee wellbeing.
Here’s what we found:
Happiness, Boredom and Stress
Odds are, if you’re bored, you’re unhappy. On the other hand, while
stress is often seen as the opposite of happiness, it’s not a foregone
conclusion. The graph below shows that when people find their jobs
uninteresting, they are rarely happy (only 9%), whereas even when “very
stressed”, 38% of people still report they’re happy at work.
This pattern also holds for other key indicators:
- Flight risk: those who find their work boring are 4x more likely
to leave than those who are stressed (44% vs 11%)
- Innovation: interested workers express their creativity 4x more than bored
colleagues (58% vs 14%) whereas, even when highly stressed, 37% still
feel creative
- Productivity: only 29% of bored workers feel a sense of
accomplishment about their work (a soft measure of productivity)
compared to 85% for their interested colleagues. 61% of stressed
workers still feel productive.
So, with all of this evidence, why do people talk about stress more
than boredom?
We all have a bias towards negative emotions and stress is largely seen
as an unpleasant, negative emotion. It usually comes with fires that
need to be put out, and there’s an immediacy to it.
But comparing stress and interest is a bit like comparing apples and
oranges — they’re not strongly correlated with each other. However, both
are key parts of happiness. If we were to put it in a formula, then it
would roughly be:
Happiness at work = (3 x Interest) – (1 x Stress)
It’s unrealistic to have a successful and happy job without stress.
There must be some stress to drive forward innovation and creativity.
However, you also can’t have a successful business if employees are
bored with their jobs. If boredom sets in, then it’s significantly worse
for both employees’ happiness and key business outcomes in the long
run.
Flow: the antidote to boredom
There has been little escape from boredom in the time of COVID, but it
is beatable. The famous Hungarian American psychologist Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi first coined the idea of “flow” in the 1970s. Flow is
that wonderful feeling of being so absorbed in something that we lose
track of time. Research has since shown that it happens when the
challenges we face are well matched to our skill levels.
Flow is almost like a peak experience when it comes to “interest”.
Tennis players get into the zone. Musicians get lost in the music.
Statisticians get immersed in excel spreadsheets.
The diagram below identifies the “flow zone” and the tension between
boredom and stress.
Our research highlights that the costs of being bored at work far
outweigh the costs of being over-challenged. Having a low amount of
stress is undoubtedly optimal, but it’s much better to push ourselves
(and our teams) than to go too easy.
Beating back the boredom blues
Boredom is a signal to explore novelty, to do something different.
Unfortunately, that’s sometimes difficult to do within the rigid
structure of work. So, how do we make work more interesting in the
middle of a pandemic? Here are some suggestions:
Talk about interest
If you’re conducting one-to-one meetings with your team, consider asking
them what they find most interesting about their jobs. We often don’t
talk about interest at work, yet interest is related to our long-term
development — it’s about our passion and sense of purpose.
Find new things to do
Job variety is important. People have been doing a lot of the same
things since the beginning of COVID. While there may be a desire to
return to how things were pre-COVID, be bold and try new things. This could be adopting a
hybrid work schedule or even mixing with people you don’t typically
engage with. The variety will bring new interest to the job.
Challenge and Empower
Two of The Five Ways to Happiness at Work – Challenge and Empower – are key
components of interest. Employees that are empowered to work with their
strengths will find work more interesting. Likewise, work that is
challenging (but not impossibly so) makes things better.
Ultimately, post-pandemic growth is going to be driven by interest — especially as we’ve all
had some time to evaluate what matters to us. We’ve all had to deal with
the trauma of COVID, and the way to move forward is to find interesting
things in our work.
How we can help
If you’re struggling to figure out if your people are interested and
engaged in the work they do, Friday Pulse can help. By measuring and
monitoring weekly happiness scores, we help you get a pulse on what is
going on in your company, so you know who needs more of a
challenge. Let us know how we can help today.