
The Challenge vs. Skill diagram, showing the "Flow" region of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow Model. Boredom is characterized by low challenge and moderate skill. That is, we're at risk of boredom when we're fairly competent at doing what must be done, and it presents little or no challenge. When many employees find themselves in this situation, the organization is at risk, both from voluntary terminations and from insufficient attention to benign but evolving situations that eventually become critical. Many authors have observed that a significant fraction of all business failures occur when top executives become bored. The diagram is by Oliver Beatson, and it's available at Wikipedia.
It seems clear to me that we're more likely to thrive when we're plugged into Reality. And I've noticed that some people who are bored at work are unaware that they are, because they find things to do that disguise the boredom, or at least make it more tolerable. For these people (a little tongue-in-cheek) I offer this list of boredom indicators.
- You can't sleep at night, so you sleep at work.
- You've figured out how to sit at your desk so that nobody can see that you're actually sleeping.
- You wonder if anyone heard that snore when you woke yourself up just now.
- On the way to the coffee machine you look down at your coffee cup and you notice that you already have coffee.
- You look forward to your bathroom break.
- You just arranged lunch with two people you can't stand, just to get out of the office.
- During lunch, you find yourself thinking about what to have for lunch tomorrow.
- You enjoy deleting sp*m.
- You read your sp*m.
- You send sp*m.
- You're usually current on your expense reports.
- You look forward to required training.
- It's all you can do to keep yourself from correcting obvious typos in Wikipedia.
- You correct obvious typos in Wikipedia, but you do it under an assumed name.
- No matter what you're doing, if it's work-related, you feel relief when you're interrupted.
- At work, you surf the Web looking for a new job.
- You do your Web errands (shopping, gifts, etc.) at work. No point wasting time at home on this stuff.
- You've learned the keyboard commands for quickly displaying the next or previous browser tab so you can switch quickly to a tab more suitable for work when someone suddenly enters your office.
- You listen carefully to the phone conversations of the person next door.
- You look at your boss's home in Google street view — again.
- You got pretty good at some of Google's more arcane commands by searching for your ancient love interests.
- You've figured out how to use the Internet All your paper clips are
pointing the same wayto spy on your dog sleeping on your sofa at home. - All your paper clips are pointing the same way.
- All your paper clips are pointing the same way except the ones that you intentionally turned around so that they wouldn't all be pointing the same way.
- You've discovered that your office is in a time warp, because the clock, while not actually stopped, is moving so slowly that it might as well be stopped.
- You send long email messages to colleagues debating the finer points of stuff that even you don't care about.
- You send email messages that are so long that if you were a recipient, you wouldn't read them.
- Under an assumed name, you hold the daytime North American record in an Internet computer game.
- When a random question comes into your head (like which tree species leafs out first in springtime) you immediately get onto the Web and find the answer.
- And the Number One Indicator That You Might Be Bored at Work: You've read all the way through this list to get to the number 1 indicator that you might be bored at work.
There's nothing magical about the number 30. I just stopped because I didn't want you to get bored. Top
Next Issue
The article you've been reading is an archived issue of Point Lookout, my weekly newsletter. I've been publishing it since January, 2001, free to all subscribers, over the Web, and via RSS. You can help keep it free by donating either as an individual or as an organization. You'll receive in return my sincere thanks — and the comfort of knowing that you've helped to propagate insights and perspectives that can help make our workplaces a little more human-friendly. More
Your comments are welcome
Would you like to see your comments posted here? rbrenogMhuqCxAnbfLvzbner@ChacigAthhhYwzZDgxshoCanyon.comSend me your comments by email, or by Web form.About Point Lookout
Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and
found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.
This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.
Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.
Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.
Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.
Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
Mastering Meeting Madness
- If you lead an organization, and people are mired in meeting madness, you can end it. Here are a few
tips that can free everyone to finally get some work done.
Decisions, Decisions: I
- Most of us have participated in group decision making. The process can be frustrating and painful, but
it can also be thrilling. What processes do groups use to make decisions? How do we choose the right
process for the job?
Virtual Communications: III
- Participating in or managing a virtual team presents special communications challenges. Here's Part
III of some guidelines for communicating with members of virtual teams.
Asking Clarifying Questions
- In a job interview, the interviewer asks you a question. You're unsure how to answer. You can blunder
ahead, or you can ask a clarifying question. What is a clarifying question, and when is it helpful to ask one?
Collaborations or Cooperations?
- Modern products and services are so complex that many people cooperate and collaborate to produce them.
Strangely, few of us have given much thought to the difference between cooperating and collaborating.
The two do differ, and the differences matter.
See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness and Emotions at Work for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming September 27: On Working Breaks in Meetings
- When we convene a meeting to work a problem, we sometimes find that progress is stalled. Taking a break to allow a subgroup to work part of the problem can be key to finding simple, elegant solutions rapidly. Choosing the subgroup is only the first step. Available here and by RSS on September 27.
And on October 4: Self-Importance and Conversational Narcissism at Work: I
- Conversational narcissism is a set of behaviors that participants use to focus the exchange on their own self-interest rather than the shared objective. This post emphasizes the role of these behaviors in advancing a narcissist's sense of self-importance. Available here and by RSS on October 4.
Coaching services
I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenogMhuqCxAnbfLvzbner@ChacigAthhhYwzZDgxshoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.
Get the ebook!
Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:
- Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
- Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
- Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
- Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
- Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
- Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )
Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info
Follow Rick





Recommend this issue to a friend
Send an email message to a friend
rbrenogMhuqCxAnbfLvzbner@ChacigAthhhYwzZDgxshoCanyon.comSend a message to Rick
A Tip A Day feed
Point Lookout weekly feed
