Depending on your personality, you probably fall into one of two categories of workers: those who thrive on habitual tasks and the ability to perfect one single skill, or those who crave change, love new challenges and associate routine with stagnation. If you find yourself bored to death at work, you’re most likely the latter. But how can you tell for sure?
1. Are your contributions at work undervalued?
2. Is your company utilizing your skills to their fullest potential?
3. Do you feel like your skills are misunderstood by your boss or co-workers?
Did you answer yes to one or more of these questions? Chances are you’re already bored to death at work (or close to it) and not sure what to do next.
Believe it or not, being bored at work can cause stress. Most people have a natural tendency to want to be productive and proud of the work they do. Feelings of boredom, being undervalued or recognizing that many of your skills are being wasted can be demoralizing. As a result, the related stress can lead to health problems. So much of our identity and self-worth, for better or worse, is wrapped up in our work. This makes it important to take action.
Check out our Top 5 tips to beat the boredom at work:
Start looking for a new job.
With change comes excitement and anticipation. Venturing into an unknown can re-invigorate you and your relationship to your work. But you don’t want to swap out one bad job for another. Make sure you understand why you want to leave and what it is that excites you about the new opportunity. And remember, discussing being bored in your current role is a turnoff in a job interview.
Try looking at your job differently.
It’s not easy to do, but if you can reframe the job and what it means to you until your situation changes, it will have a big impact on your outlook. Does the job allow downtime to work on outside hobbies you enjoy? Maybe its time to start that blog you keep putting off or get your side hustle off the ground. If you can make use of the boredom and create a positive outcome as a result, you just might realize this job is exactly what you need at the moment.
Set some serious goals for yourself.
We all get bored sometimes. But the tragedy is not going after what you really want or pursuing the things that will ultimately make you happier in your professional life. Start setting goals to help you get your career on track. Consequently, you’ll find that just making the commitment to make a plan for yourself will help you start to feel better about things.
Talk to someone.
It may sound crazy to tell your boss you’re bored. But if you’re doing good work and still considered a valuable, team player, you have some leverage. Center the talk around the skills you want to utilize more in your work, your commitment to the company and desire to grow in different ways within the organization. Change might not be immediate, but you may be able to start putting an approved plan in place.
Educate yourself.
Part of knowing what you want means you really understand what it means. If you think you want to make a move into advertising, talk to people in the industry to get an inside view as to what it’s really like. Often our perception of what it must be like to work in certain industries or to hold certain positions is much more glamorous than reality. Do your research and really learn the ins and outs of the area you think you want to move into.
