It’s Burnout for Boredom, and it’s rampant in American work
Are you reading this article at your desk? At your job? Are you on break?
We WANT you to read DailyHap.com, and we don’t care if you read it at work, while you’re supposed to be working.
But it makes a critical point—we’re all doing non-work things at work. Fully 60 percent of online shopping is done from 8am to 5pm, and worse still, 70 percent of porn site traffic occurs during those times (don’t think too hard about that one)!
You may not be to blame.
Heard of Boreout? It’s a new kind of work burnout, but instead of getting tired, overwhelmed, and rundown from working too hard, we’re getting tired, overwhelmed, and rundown from working too little—being bored.
According to Peter Werder and Philippe Rothlin, two Swiss business consults who first coined the term in 2007, the absence of meaningful tasks, rather than the presence of stress, is many workers’ chief problem. Boreout consists of three elements:
boredom
lack of challenge
lack of interest
Those suffering from boreout are “dissatisfied with their professional situation” in that they are frustrated at being prevented, by institutional mechanisms or obstacles as opposed to by their own lack of aptitude, from fulfilling their potential (as by using their skills, knowledge, and abilities to contribute to their company’s development) and/or from receiving official recognition for their efforts.
Thus, we all become skilled at the art of not working at work (an Atlantic article), or “empty working”, and everyone—company, career, person—suffers. Even those employees who actively seek more work, tasks, or projects may not be able to combat boreout where it is institutionalized (remember the ol’ jacket-on-the-chair trick? or leaving the light on to make it look like you’re in you’re office but just in the bathroom?).
Awareness may be the first step. Asking for more work the second. And moving on the third.
Do you have any tips for combating boreout or empty working? Please share!