The Big Yawn

It’s been a busy few years. We’ve lived through the Great Resignation (workers quitting in droves after the Pandemic), the Big Stay (workers hunkering down in their jobs after things normalized), and Quiet Quitting (staying, but doing the absolute minimum to keep from being fired.

Now we have the Big Yawn (my words, not theirs.) A new survey, sponsored by (this is my favorite part) Solitaire Bliss, an online solitaire game site, finds that over a third of Americans have found their job boring for years. Let’s pause for a moment to share our shock and disbelief.

Solitaire Bliss says, “The myth of consistent, all-day productivity is exactly that—a myth. Let’s face it: Not everyone is firing on all cylinders for 8 to 10 hours a day. We were curious about the nature and frequency of workplace boredom, so we surveyed over 1,000 individuals about the myriad of ways they cope with boredom at work.”

Here are the key findings of the survey (comments in parentheses my own):

• Americans are bored for a quarter of the average workday. (And probably only half engaged during the other 75 percent.)
• Using social media (56%) is the top way Americans cope with boredom at work. (only 56%?)
• Nearly 3 in 10 admit they tend to distract their colleagues when bored at work. (So it’s contagious.)
• Over 2 in 5 admit that if their boss knew they were bored, they’d be given more work. (So they don’t admit it)
• A third say they enjoy being bored at work. (This one doesn’t surprise me – more on that later.)

There are plenty of jobs that simply won’t be fascinating, ever. Repetitive work will always be a bit mind-numbing. And there are plenty of workers who don’t want their work to be fascinating. They want to earn a paycheck and go home to their more interesting pursuits. I’ve written before about Albert Einstein, who chose a boring job on purpose.

Einstein, arguably one of the smartest men on the planet, subscribed to the theory that interesting work would take too much of his bandwidth. He needed his brain for bigger things. He, like many other powerful men, including Steve Jobs and President Obama, always wore the same thing to work. He chose a job that was so boring it gave him plenty of time to think about his scientific theories. The more mental energy you send on your day job, he reasoned, the less mental energy you have for what really matters, like the Theory of Relativity.

I don’t judge people for choosing boring jobs, as long as they do them well. Get the order right. Keep the machine running. Show up consistently and be competent.

But I do worry about other workers who have jobs that pay well and bore them. The survey found that some pretty critical work was boring to its workforce. Here’s the survey finding.

“Certain sectors report higher levels of anticipated job boredom, with the legal field leading at 45%, followed by technology (41%) and healthcare (36%). The primary causes of boredom are notable as well: lack of motivation (43%), the work itself being boring (42%), and waiting on others (40%).”

My lawyer, my nurse, and my tech support team are pretty crucial in a pinch. Making mistakes on the job because you’re on cruise control can have serious consequences.

Even if they’re not making mistakes, bored employees find ways to fill the time that are not just distracting, but destructive. Idle minds can start rumors, spread gossip and discontent, and infect other workers with bad habits.

Solitaire Bliss makes the valid point that short mental breaks are good for workers’ mental health and productivity. And after all, every PC comes loaded with a game of solitaire. We’ve seen representatives playing during budget speeches (I cannot fault them there, but it’s a bad look) and a Norwegian judge playing during a very serious court case (very concerning, not even funny.)

Don’t be those people.

People have been bored on the job since jobs were invented, so I’m not sure there will ever be a fix for it. Only one boss has managed to develop a method, and it became his signature move.

In the mid-90s, the Emeril Lagasse was hosting Essence of Emeril, one of the original cooking shows on television. “Because of my restaurant schedule we were shooting eight shows a day,” he says. But “after we had had lunch, people began to start falling asleep a little.” There was no audience in the studio to react and keep things lively; just Emeril and a few sound and camera technicians.  In order to keep his staff awake on the set, he had to resort to shouting something to jolt them when they started to flag. Thus “Bam!” was born.

Do not blame me if your employer figures out a way to startle bored workers back into productivity. Blame Emeril.