"98.26% of Workers Are BORED", Burnout vs. Boreout & The Most Boring Companies To Work For!
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Are you burned out or just bored at work? Burnout happens when you're overworked, but "boreout" is when you're constantly bored and not challenged. This Make Work Not Suck episode breaks down the differences between these two common workplace issues and offers helpful tips.
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#burnout #boreout #workplacestress #makeworknotsuck
Transcript
Number 1, had a board score of 98.26.
[:Hold on. That's the percentage of people that are bored?
[:They're a very boring people. Wow.
[:Elon Musk just heard that and be like, I'm gonna go fire 80% of their people.
[:How do we fix it?
[:I think that if you've got a job that is highly repetitive, AI is coming for your job. Let's be honest. That's what machines and computers are best at, precision and repetition. They're not good at
[:creativity. There's a particular guy I follow on Instagram that likes to prompt AI. He had it prompt this one to make a a hit country song. Oh, my gosh. Was it creative in the very weird wrong way?
Because the AI said it wanted to eat itself. In the song, it was like, I'll gladly eat myself and flush myself down the drain. It could be very creative in a you just missed the mark way.
[:If you have a boring job, a job you don't enjoy, it's on you to either change that job or find another one. Because I think change is coming, and so you want to be the agent of change, not the victim of change.
[:85% of the global workforce not happy, that's a big number. And if we spend 1 third of our lives sleeping, 1 third working, and 1 third doing everything else, Take a minute to look at that 1 third that is called work and figure out if that is causing a lot of the stress anxiety or negative sides of your work.
[:Welcome to the make work not suck podcast.
[:So, Ryan, imagine you land your dream job at a Fortune 500 company only to find yourself uninspired, disengaged, and bored out of your mind. Turns out you're not alone. Recent study analyzed millions of glassdoor reviews and found the most boring corporate jobs in corporate America. Here's the kicker. A lot of those jobs get paid very well.
They've got nice paychecks. So what's going on? These aren't mindless jobs. These are high paying jobs, and people hate them. I think this is evidence of the epidemic of workplace boredom, sometimes called bore out and its surprising consequences.
[:Bore out. That is a new one for me. I've never heard
[:of bore
[:out till recently. It's new for me too. Is the state of chronic boredom at work caused by monotonous or unchallenging tasks leading to disengagement? Have you ever experienced bore out? Oh, that's a harsh one.
Right. No? Wait.
[:Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
Wait. I to some degree, yes, but not not in the state of of my job is on it. Like, I hate doing repetitive work. I love building systems, but I hate doing repetitive work. So the moment I have to use a system more than, like, a week in a row, I get bored out of my mind.
But that's not that's not ever my job. So I've never worked for a Fortune 500 company directly or as an employee, but I've done a lot of work in the Fortune 500 space. But that may be the reason why I never experienced the bore outside of it is because I was always brought in to ignite a project or get something moving or something like that. There was nothing to be bored about.
[:Yep. Yeah. And and that's maybe a different episode and a different conversation of if you find yourself bored in a fortune 500 or large corporate job, what are some alternative options? And I think that'd be a very interesting conversation, but I have been in a couple of different roles where I have been bored but paid well because I was not challenged. I wasn't growing, and I don't really enjoy what I was doing.
It was fairly monotonous. So I've got some experience here with with Borrout. But as you think about the idea, maybe you personally haven't experienced it much, but if you put on your executive hat, what's the problem with board employees?
[:Oh, one, they're not producing any throughput. Usually, you got increased mistakes, lower velocity, lower quality of work, lack of engagement with their peers. And that's not to say that it's their fault if if it's the environment that's creating it, but at the end of the day, that's just a waste of resource.
[:Right. They're also likely to quit if
[:2x2x time 2x Yeah. According to this study here, they're 2x more likely to quit, and they're 50% likely to engage at work. So a meeting shows up, they're probably not gonna attend it. If they attend it, it's gonna be camera off, and they're gonna zone out. Oh,
[:shots fired.
[:I'm just saying. I I think burnout is a bigger problem, but I think bore out is a silent problem that we don't see. I think we're more focused on the burnout, but I think the boreout is we call it the silent killer. Because how many people are bored at work while other people are burning out at work in the same company?
[:Yeah. I've seen that. I have a friend who the last time I spoke with them about this, they were holding down 2 high paying jobs at Fortune 500 Companies and doing virtually nothing for both of them, making ridiculous money, and would, like, just go to Italy for 2 weeks. And they're like, as long as I respond to my emails nobody asks where I am, nobody asks what I'm doing, and it's fine. Like, you're you're bringing down 2 corporate salaries and doing absolutely nothing, and they're bored out of their mind, but paid well and finding other things in life to keep them interested.
Don't know the company they work the companies they work for, not gonna say their name or anything about them, but their employers are getting screwed because they're paying a fortune for somebody who's not adding any value.
[:Yeah. So I'm gonna do some pull some quotes here. So apparently, there was a book written in 2007 called Diagnosing Bore Out When Work is Boring. I didn't know this book existed until just now. So I'm gonna I'm gonna hit a couple of things on there.
It talks about a psychological disorder. I've got some health consequence notices on the next page here, but lack of fulfillment. If you are bored at work, you are not having a sense of fulfillment or purpose in what you do. Now you may find and, again, it depends on the individual. They may have somewhere else that they find their fulfillment in work, whether they, you know, serve at a charity or a church or, you know Right.
They're in a band or something like that. But if they don't have and and I'm gonna assume this is what's in some of the book. If if they don't have anything like that and their fulfillment is found through work, then where's the intrinsic motivation? I mean, that's really what gives us the drive to to do things. Here it says the health consequence.
Chronic boredom can lead to stress related illnesses similar to burnout, including depression and anxiety. Wow. Now that would have not come up on my radar, but that sounds very serious. But I guess if you're getting bored, your lack of productive there's probably a level of I guess if you have the lack of fulfillment Right. Then you're probably that's probably where the depression and anxiety comes in, and it's probably almost a self fulfilling fulfilling prophecy death spiral of the more Yeah.
Depression and anxiety you get, the probably the more disengaged from work you get get. And I don't know. This sounds like a real problem.
[:Yeah. I think I think it actually is. I think what's interesting is they called it a psychological disorder. I didn't understand how they were framing the cause and the effect. Right?
Is boredom at work the cause of the psychological disorder or is a psychological disorder the cause of boredom at work? I think it's probably more the former.
[:It says it's a psychological disorder resulting from the prolonged periods of boredom at work. So it's created from the lack of engagement at work.
[:Yeah. So here would be the first thing I would say to this is that engagement is not your boss's job. Engagement is your job. Now your your boss can help. You you fight me on this one, but you have to find what you are passionate about.
And if you don't care about what they're doing, you've gotta find a context where you can be excited to go to work. And there's no amount of work that your boss can do to make you passionate about something you don't care about.
[:I agree. I agree to the the extent of you can't lead the horse to water and force it to drink. Right? But I still think there's a level where it's the manager's responsibility to to seek that out and work to get to conclusion. And and and then I know this is probably gonna be an unpopular opinion, but if you're a manager with a with a, bore out employee and you're not doing that, like, that's poor management skill because the best thing you can probably do is help them find another job, is help them find the fulfillment.
Now if you go through all those troubles and they just zone out, like, that's I agree with I agree with what you're saying. But if a manager's allowing pour out, that's a poor manager. Yeah. Now if if the manager's allowing it I say and and, again, there's only so much a manager can do if the company created the situation. So then it, you know, goes up the chain.
Right? And then it goes all the way to the top. And if the top is allowing it, then of course, if you're in a big beast like Fortune 500, I don't think the the CEO of of a Fortune 500 company is you know, there's probably a stat that they're aware of, but they don't have a clue, you know, which groups are dealing with it. So it's somewhere in the middle management.
[:So how is boreout different from burnout? Because in in my mind, burnout is more just running too hard for too long, not taking breaks, not recharging your batteries, and basically just running yourself into the ground. Whereas, bore out is kind of the opposite where you're not being used. You're not leveraging your skills. You're not really engaged mentally and emotionally.
And so all of those things that you have to contribute just start shutting down because they're not being used. And they might manifest themselves in similar ways where you're just checked out. But I think the causes seem very different to me. What have you experienced?
[:Yeah. I think I think you're right. It's it's I mean, you look at in this thing, it says boreout creates, depression anxiety. And we know burnout creates depression anxiety because there's too much pressure. But I think boreout is the same thing as, you know, you drop the person in the middle of the ocean, and they have no idea where they are, and they're just kinda swimming there.
I think that's what the boreout creates, which also has the same thing. So I think they they have the same outcome, but they're caused by 2 different sources. And so yeah. What with burnout, you're just stressed and overworked, and there's too much on your plate. The other one, you just there's nothing on your plate.
There's so little on your plate. Right? It's just Right. Which I think I think can be even more dangerous. Because at least with the burnout, it's easy to look at somebody and go, okay.
You're working too much. Let's delegate some stuff or let's hire another body. How do you hire another body for somebody that's bored in their work? You can't justify it. What do you want them to do?
You you wanna crack the whip and and have them work harder Right. Or throw more work on their plate, but that's not what you hired them to do. So I think it's even worse.
[:Yeah. I think it's probably a harder problem to identify and potentially harder problem to solve.
[:Well and we live in a world I mean, one of our one of our comments on one of the podcast was just pay people more money. Right? Throw more money at it. You know, we're talking about how we said how how there are people that will take less pay and, for more meaningful work. And Mhmm.
The the viewer said, we'll just pay everybody more money. Right. But here's what's interesting. In this research study, it says, people with these high paying jobs, still leave employees feeling unfulfilled and bored. Throwing money at it doesn't solve the problem.
I've seen it make it worse. Right.
[:Right? I've seen really good people make a lot of money and not have anything to do, and they start to feel overwhelmed by guilt. It actually makes the problem worse if you pay them if you just throw money at it. Right.
[:Well, I think that's where the depression anxiety comes in. Sure. And I think because you're like,
[:I'm making good money. I don't I don't wanna quit and go work harder for less money. But if I stay, I know that at any point in time, there could be layoffs and I'm screwed. So do I stay in this good situation where I'm not paid I'm paid very well to not do much and hope that I don't get caught? Or do I quit now and go take a job where I work more?
[:Well, I think that's the when when you do what you love, it's not work. Right? Right. There there are people that work their ass off. They love what they do, and they're not bored, and they're not burned out.
Right. It's called passion. When when you work a lot of
[:hours and it's something you wanna do, it's called passion. When you work a lot of hours and it's not something you wanna do, it's called suffering or slavery or, you know, some some other word besides passion. Burnout. Burnout. Right.
[:It's well, and you just said it earlier. It it confirms what we said is people will leave their job and take less pay to find something more fulfilling, which almost makes me wonder. There's a couple of things there. Is it, a, you've got the wrong person in the role? Or, b, are you expecting, like, a high achiever in a particular role, but they're gonna be bored in it?
And, really, there there are people that love repetitive. Right? And I think we need to define what what board is. If you have a monotonous task that you do in day in, day out, and you can do it, you could do it well, but you're bored with it. Mhmm.
That's different than just doing that work day in, day out. Well, not having enough work. Not having enough work can also make you bored, but doing the same thing over and over can make you bored. I think then it's is is there a better person for the seat or the seats? And if you keep getting people in there and it becomes a revolving door, that's a different problem.
[:I think that that statement on people would take a lower salary for work that's more engaging. I think that is true, but there probably needs to be some caveats. Right? I would say at one end of the continuum, there are a lot of people, and sadly I think this is a part of the population that's actually growing in size. There are people that are just doing whatever it takes to pay the bills and put food on the table for their loved ones.
[:Yes.
[:And people in that situation don't tend to have a lot of options. They don't tend to have a good backup plan. I wanna be respectful to the fact that trading time for fulfillment is not a luxury that some people have. So there is, to some extent, a a level of privilege that comes with
[:making that trade off. Yeah. And I'm gonna guess anybody that's, you know, in a situation where they're probably not bored. They're probably trying to find ways to increase their their like, they gotta make this job sticky and work and
[:They're just trying to survive.
[:Yeah. Right. And that's more on the self created burnout category than, pour out. Right. Here's a question, because I I'm willing to bet there's gonna be some people listening to this.
It's gonna be a grass is greener situation.
[:Mhmm.
[:Well, I would totally take a job that is easy for me and pays a lot of money. And then you got, you know, people that are like, well, I will take a lesser paying job. Still gotta pay my bills. I'm not gonna, like, you know, go in debt to work for a new company. But I think there's a grass is always greener situation in this.
And I think there are there are there are people that would take the board boring job Mhmm. For the pay. The question is, how long would they last?
[:I have been in jobs that I was bored, and I stayed because it was a season of life where I needed stability in my work because I had too much going on in other places. And then there's times when I took jobs that were a lot of stress and not great pay because I knew that they would pay off in the long run. Right? So I was making an investment in my career, but I had the flexibility to do that because I didn't have a family depending on me. I don't think this is a binary love your work or get paid a lot.
I think it's a multi variable equation that you constantly gotta be balancing. How meaningful is my work? How much do I like my employees? How much does my commute suck? How much am I getting paid?
What are my benefits? What are my flexibilities? All of those things together are part of what makes your job suck or a good fit for you in this season. And when the seasons change, when the jobs change, when the variables change, that equation might look different and, and that's, that's okay. But it's important to be conscious of what am I trying to solve for in this season of my life?
Am I just trying to make as much money as possible? Is it important to me to love my job? Or maybe this is just a season where my family needs me to just suck it up and make as much money as possible because that's that's kinda what we need right now.
[:Well, and I I think you might be talking about the fringes here. So I'm gonna read this stat Okay. And I just had this thought. It says this Gallup survey found 85% of employees globally are not engaged at work. Here's a question.
There's not engaged and disengaged.
[:Are engaged. Good distinction.
[:Yep. Not engaged and disengaged. Are they the same thing? No. No.
K. Why? And what's the difference?
[:Well, I I would I don't know I don't know how Gallup defines their terms, but I would say not engaged means that there is something to engage in and I am checked out. This is how I would define this term. Right? There's something there I just choose to not participate in it. Disengage means I'm I might be actively sabotaging.
Disengage means I am fighting the system rather than just limp and letting the system carry me along. I would say disengaged is almost actively not engaged, and I am trying to minimize the work that comes to me rather than just doing the bare minimum.
[:Here's why I asked that. So it says the Gallup survey found 85% employees globally are not engaged at work, making boredom a widespread issue. So it almost sounds like this is making a claim that of these 85%, boredom is a big percentage of it. You know, I would I'm agreeing with you. I think disengagement can come from boredom.
I think disengagement probably comes more from burnout because you're you're getting burned out, so then you start disengaging to to reduce the burnout. Whereas boredom causes probably the disengage or the the lack of engagement or nonengagement as as it says, which almost makes me wonder if it's just, yeah, it's just the job is it's not too easy. It's not that's too hard. I don't think it's a matter of people sucking up and doing it. I think it's just a matter of the structure is not built.
Well, actually, here's a question. I'm gonna take a little sideways here. You're seeing a lot of layoffs in, you know, big tech companies. You know, Meta had a big layoff. CVS Health had a big layoff.
I think Citi's had a big layoff. Is part of these big layoffs is they're finding out is there's too many jobs making people bored and disengaged, which means none you know, big percentage of the work is not getting done. And so that's where because I I've got a friend that's in fortune 4, who I just gave the company away. Right. And, you know, does, not far up the chain, but up the chain enough that's in a level of management and has no time whatsoever.
I mean, borderline burnout because there's so much going on and very, very busy. There's not a bored moment. Right. I actually wonder how much of this is like, are we starting to see some of the the movement because of duplication of roles? I don't know.
I just after reading this quote here from from Gallup, I'm I'm a little
[:So I think there's 2 things going or at least 2 things going on here. 1 is when you talk about engaged versus disengaged versus bored, I think there's a difference between I love my job, I hate my job, and I just don't care. And I would say I hate my job as disengaged. I just don't care is apathy, boredom. And I think that's probably where a lot of people are.
Maybe they don't hate it, but they're just like, you know what, man? It's a job. I do what I gotta do to get the paycheck, and
[:then I move on with my life. Let's jump into this study here. The the Play USA study found the most boring companies. And and here here are 3, that it list, RTX, you know, formerly Raytheon, Albertsons. Yep.
Albertsons and Progressive Insurance. So for RTX, employees reported repetitive and uninspiring task is the reason. Big defense contractor. You know? Yeah.
There's there's probably some if you're not on the engineering side of new stuff, you're probably just cranking out the same thing over and over. Albertsons Companies here's boredom is prevalent in customer service and operational roles.
[:Albertsons is, it's a grocery store.
[:Grocery chain? Yep. Yep. Well, it might get more boring because the merger between Kroger and Albertsons is now off. And so, I don't know, it may get more boring or maybe they'll figure something out, but it's in customer service and operational roles.
I mean, there's there's nothing sexy about moving groceries around, I guess.
[:Stocking shelves is not, not what most people go
[:to college for. Even in the upper middle management at corporate and the supply chain logistics Mhmm. You know, it's it's pretty repetitive work. And it
[:progressively takes your
[:I mean, I guess if you're if it's a, you know, fender bender and you're processing a 100 of those a day, that could be pretty boring.
[:I have had a friend of mine work for an insurance company, not Progressive, but he has told me some just horror stories of working at an insurance company where, you know, he was tasked with processing claims and just getting yelled at and cursed at by different people. It it sounded like a horrible job. So, you know, boring most of the time, and then when it's not boring, it's contentious, and you're getting cursed at. That sounds awful. My guess is that a lot of organizations that are heavily regulated are going to struggle with board employees.
Let's talk down the list here. So
[:the industries that made the the board workers list, aerospace and defense, number 1. And and RTX had a board score of 98.26. So aerospace and defense Hold on.
[:Like like, that's the percentage of people that are bored?
[:I have to do some more research on what the board score was, but on this survey, Play USA board workers survey gave them a score of 98 0.26. So I'm guessing, they however they ranked it, it was nearly a 100% in the sense of they're a very boring Wow.
[:Wow. I have some friends
[:that work for RTX. I'm gonna ask some questions. Alright.
[:Elon Musk? I think Elon Elon Musk just heard that and be like, I'm gonna go fire 80% of their people.
[:So, top industries, aerospace and defense, automotive, banking, energy, and finance. So you talked about most of them being regulated industries. Aerospace and defense, definitely regulated. Automotive, if I'm gonna say little decently decently regulated. Yep.
Especially on the safety side. Banking is definitely regulated. Energy is definitely regulated, and finance is definitely regulated.
[:I spent almost 10 years in banking, and the regulations make things very bureaucratic and difficult to get stuff done.
[:Here here's a fun fact. Tech giant, Apple, made the boring list. Oh. 87th on the list. Not number 1, not a defense contractor at number 1, 87.
So that basically that that would tell me that there's parts of Apple that are not boring, probably in the innovation side, the creative side. But at the end of the day, customer service, you know, product logistics, there's probably areas of it that are just boring.
[:I mean, maybe even, like, you think about the Apple Store. Like, where's where are most of Apple's employees? Are they at corporate, or are they in the stores scattered around the world?
[:Stores are very, very minor, like, barely fraction. Oh, yeah. Okay. Most most of Apple is is gonna be in, I don't wanna say HQ, but it's it's gonna be in their corporate operations. This question here says, do these industries pay well to compensate for the monotony?
Do they recognize it, and they're just throwing money at the problem? Does it have a performance boost? Short term. I think it has a speed a spike with a plateau.
[:Sure. You get 90 days a lift on a pay increase, but look Albertsons grocery stores are a notoriously low margin business. Right? There's just not a lot of profit in grocery stores. Now there are some exceptions, I'm sure, but over the course of history, grocery stores don't make a ton of money.
[:Well, that's why they manufacture a lot of the stuff now.
[:Right. Trying to boost their margins there. So I would imagine if you're an senior vice president at Albertsons, you don't make as much as a senior vice president at Raytheon. You might both be bored out of your mind, but you're not making as much money because Albertsons just doesn't have as much to work with as Raytheon does because they've got massive government contracts that have, you know, tons of margin in them.
[:They might have not have those big fat margins when Doge comes in and starts, cutting all the contracts down. Maybe the average executive is gonna make more money.
[:Sure. But, historically, that has not been the case.
[:So let's let's talk about the cost of of boreout on the companies themselves. What's the cost of of dealing with Borat?
[:I think it's disengaged employees. Right? It's it's hard to get things done with people that are bored. They don't wanna work hard, And there's no reason to because they've been getting a paycheck and a, you know, 2 and a half percent bonus for cost of living every year. So why bust your ass when it's not really rewarded?
So it's just, you know, lower productivity. I think higher turnover. Your a players tend to have options, and so the good people leave and the average people stay. And so over time, you've got a culture decline. You're not getting as much done.
The people that leave tend to be the better people, so you've also got turnover, but what's left is is not what you want. Yeah.
[:So let let's hit it in 3 categories. You get reduced productivity, you get high turnover, and you get culture decline.
[:Mhmm.
[:And I know I'm gonna use a horrible analogy here. In the reduced productivity, if you ever had if you have a well trained dog and you put it in a room with a less well trained dog, it's not gonna throw all of its training out the window in one day, but you'll notice things will start to slide. You leave those 2 dogs together for a period of a week or 2, and all of a sudden, you'll find the smart dog is about as smart as the dumb dog because that's just how the pecking order work or not pecking order, but just, you know, change is only as strong as its weakest link. So when you have a board employee that's disengaged, it's going to bring the overall morale down Right. Overall, which which gets you 2 points.
Right? Disengaged employees contribute less affecting overall performance and declining culture. Widespread boredom can lead to negative work environments. What we all know negative work environments basically drag everything down, makes people less engaged. It's a it's a self fulfilling prophecy.
And then with the high turnover, okay, you're gonna have to backfill those people. You're just increasing your recruitment cost. So you have to beef up your recruiting department to basically find people that are gonna be bored in a role because you're enticing them with a paycheck. So I wanna put another spin on this, and this goes back to our previous episode. We were talking about remote versus in the office, and then I think even, like, the 4 day work week and whatnot.
There's, you know, the great detachment. It's the culture shifts, where employees seek more meaningful work and more fulfilling work, especially in post pandemic. When we went to all remote, we started putting in more bureaucracy and more policies and more things to to try to manage the remote better remotely, which created more monotony, which created more boredom, which created more disconnection.
[:Like monitoring and surveillance software? Yes.
[:You're gonna say the trigger words. Yes. Yeah. Those need to die. I think some of this is the post pandemic results.
And I I wonder if you know, we talked about the 4 day work week, and if the 4 day work week is instated or is is implemented alongside return to work, I think a lot of boredom was probably subsided because you if you enjoyed your colleagues. Right. You're in a if you're in a similar building, you go out to lunch, it might reduce your boredom or that monotony of that task. But when you're doing it at home, you're home alone, you're doing the work, you're bored out of your mind, you don't have, you know, the social interaction of your of your, colleagues. I think it's only accelerated it.
Yep. And here's a interesting one. I mean, this is from the American Psychology Association. 77% of workers have experienced work related stress in the last month alone.
[:Be curious how they define work related stress.
[:You know, this, from from my notes here, I think this is a little this is a bit of boreout and burnout. But as we said, boreout can create the stress.
[:I mean, I think both of them would contribute to stress. So I would absolutely believe that the bored out employees plus the burned out employees collectively equals 77% of the employees in the last night in the last month. Absolutely believe that. Absolutely.
[:Is the rise and bore out linked to increase in remote work or is a broader culture issue?
[:I think it's a broader issue that was accelerated by the remote work. I think that as technology continues to advance and software continues to eat the entire universe, there's this bifurcation of work. Right? And there are the higher value jobs get more and more valuable, and the lower value jobs get less and less valuable. And that's a harsh thing to say, and I'm not making a value judgment on the people, but you rewind 30 years, everybody had admins, and a lot of senior leaders had multiple admins.
Those jobs are gone now because Outlook and the Microsoft Office Suite has basically replaced an entire generation of admins. Those jobs are never coming back. Right? And and now you're seeing it with AI tools. So even the people that were hired as executive assistants, they're now being replaced by Calendly and other things.
So so there's just fewer of those lower value jobs, and it means that the higher value jobs are becoming more and more valuable. So I think those high value jobs are where the burnouts at. What's left is the bore out. It's the industries that are still catching up to the technologies. It's the industries that are highly regulated and are never allowed to move to the new technologies.
It's, those jobs that just haven't been transformed yet by what's happening in the world, and and those jobs are less and less engaging.
[:I and I think that's gonna be
[:a cause of problem for society.
[:Yeah. I I think I agree overall, but I don't like for 1, Chelsea's not going anywhere. There's no way Chelsea is getting replaced with AI, And she is Okay. She is not bored with her work, in the slightest because, you know, she manages
[:Chelsea is Ryan's admin, and she's awesome. So Admin is an understatement. She's not an admin, though. Like, she's she's doing higher value tasks than what a lot of admins do. Whether you're on a factory floor, you're
[:a fry cook at a at a restaurant, or you're an IT admin in a large organization, I think it's just the repetitive work. And if there's not something in the environment, at least the fry cook at the restaurant is standing next to coworkers, and it's dynamic. Right? Right. Right.
So I think where it's I think where it's getting bad in the more professional environment is when it's the monotonous task at a higher skilled job. It's like a knowledge worker level task, but it's just repetitive. How do we fix it? How do
[:you fix it? Yeah. That's where I was gonna go.
[:I like this one. I got a couple of notes here. I like this one. I like this. This is this is for the employers.
Job enrichment, rotating employees through departments and assign various tasks. You're putting in a a continual development, change of scenery as opposed to keeping them in the same role for 15 years. You move them around. Right. Recognition and purpose.
This is one I I recognize a lot, and I I work this in a lot. Help employees see how their roles contribute to the company's bigger mission. Now I'm a huge proponent of that because somebody has to do that repetitive work. It's gotta get done. And this goes back to our monotonous, jobs episode.
I think if you can have that intrinsic driver and connect how that work connects back to that intrinsic person again, it's not for everybody, but you'll find a better person for that role. Skill development. Offer trainings opportunities to combat, stagnation. And I like this one. This is a good note.
Google Google has the 20% time. So 20% of your time, it can be spent working on passion projects. If you have people that are in these repetitive roles, give them the opportunity to spend a percentage of their time working on a passion project that's still connected to the business. Now you need to set up the program. You gotta put a vision behind it.
You can't just, you know, work 20% of your time on a passion project. I mean, you'll have people in, you know, financial baking working on, you know, some side hustle on the side. I mean, that's not what you're wanting. It's still gonna contribute back to the business. So I I do like that.
It's it's find opportunities to keep people engaged, which is connecting them back to purpose.
[:I think the organizations that I've seen do this well, Chick Fil A is an example. I've worked with several Chick Fil A operators. You know, they make chicken sandwiches, and and they have a challenge as you can imagine keeping people engaged in working in a hot kitchen. Those people work hard back there, and it is not a super comfortable work environment. I mean, you're around hot grease and and you're working hard for your whole, you know, 8 hour shift or whatever.
What they have done or at least the best ones is they have spent time developing that person. Right? So you might be the fry guy, but we're investing in you and helping you find what it is you're passionate about. You're not gonna be the fry guy forever. We both know that.
So how can I help you become a better version of you Whether you're in high school, college, or, you know, trying to figure out life, how can I help you become a better version of you? And then connect that to what the organization's doing for as long as you are here. And and I love that because sometimes they'll help people realize, hey. This is not where I wanna be, and that's okay. We can work on a transition plan to get you where you belong, but I've I've added value to you into your life for the time that you were here with us.
[:Let's talk about so that that's what the employers can do. What about the employee? What can the employees do?
[:I think I said this in one of the previous episodes. I I think it's not your manager's job to
[:You said that 20 minutes ago.
[:Oh, was it 20 minutes ago? Okay. Like, it's not your manager's job for to to engage you. Like, you have to figure out how to be engaged. And if what you're doing today is not something that you wanna be doing, then you've gotta figure out where you wanna be.
And and the manager, a good manager will meet you halfway, but you gotta do your part. If you hate what you're doing, go find what you're do, what you are passionate about doing and figure out a path to get there. Each employee needs to take the initiative to have a passion, have a plan, and then work with their manager to move in that direction. I have a friend who likes to say network
[:or not work. Network or not work. Okay.
[:And he basically believes, and and I think I agree with him to an extent that, like, if you're not networking and you're not building the set of people who know you, who know what you're good at, and believe in the value that you add, it doesn't matter what you're doing. And that was a challenge. I mean, this guy was a was one of my managers early in my career, and he challenged me with that. He's like, look, you're doing a good job, but you know, if nobody knows that you're doing a good job, what does it matter? Like, you have to find a way to network and build out the network of people that know who you are, that know what you're good at, and believe in the value that you can add.
And the more I have done that, the more opportunities I've had.
[:So instead of, always be closing, it's always be networking.
[:Always be networking.
[:There you go. Networking. Alright. So some of these roles, are they boring by nature? Certain roles, especially in industries like aerospace, insurance, and banking involve or yeah.
Involve high repetition and precision which can lead to boredom. Are there just roles that are boring by nature?
[:I'm gonna go not much longer.
[:That's my answer. Okay.
[:Not much longer. Okay?
[:I think that if you've got a job that is highly repetitive and requires precision, you were on notice. Like, AI is coming for your job. And I mean, that's let's be honest. That's what machines and computers are best at. Precision and repetition.
Right? They're not good at creativity or not as good. Right? AI might be challenging that.
[:Well, anyway, I'm gonna rabbit trail. I did get started in an Instagram, loop last night, and there's particular guy follow on Instagram that likes to prompt AI to write countries or songs, various songs, and he he had it prompt this one to make a, you know, a a hit country song, and I'm not gonna repeat the title of it because it's strange, but, oh my gosh, was it creative in the very weird wrong way? Because the AI said it wanted to eat itself. In the song, it was like, I'll gladly eat myself and flush myself down the drain. I'm I'm giving the better version or the cleaner
[:The better version of it. Okay.
[:So, it it could be very creative in a you just missed the mark way. Right. Right.
[:So I think that if you have a a repetitive, precise job, those are exactly the kinds of things that AI and other type of technologies are looking to replace. I don't think that there are going to be as many of those kind of roles in the future as there have been in the past. A lot of them, I think, are gonna be collapsed down and consolidated into a technology program that will do the majority of that, and then they'll just have one person checking the answers of what used to
[:be 10 jobs. I think there's a couple of things. I think companies will solve it with AI. I think the question is right now is is within a reasonable like, I mean, you can't be in a government contract and probably, you know, pull an open AI and, there's probably some rules about that. But so within Right.
Like, not breaking some sort of contract rule or law or something, can you automate your work with AI? Like, if if you've got the time, 1, what you gotta figure out what you're gonna do with that free time anyway. But if if what's making it boring is the repetitiveness, can you use AI today to to make it not boring is 1. And then 2, if you're the business side of that, how can you just eliminate that work from the workforce by automating it?
[:Most managers have more problems than they have answers. If you can find a way to automate a significant portion of your role, do it, and then go ask what else you can work on. That is a very quick way to get yourself promoted.
[:A 1000%.
[:If you have a boring job, a job you don't enjoy, it's on you to either change that job or find another one. Because I think change is coming, and so you want to be the agent of change, not the victim of change.
[:If you were bored in your role, I think there's, according to this study here, it's a very this could be a very serious health issue. So if you're feeling a level of stress, depression, anxiety, I think taking a good hard look at your job and the unfulfilling side of it as being the cause of it, and I think take action to correct, whether that's find a more fulfilling role or whether that's a, you know, number of things that you just suggested. Prior to doing this episode, I didn't realize how much of a problem this is. I'm more focused on burnout than boreout. But I think after doing the research, especially in much larger organizations, this could be a serious problem, and I think it's it's contributing to, again, what this the survey said.
85% of employees are dis are not engaged at work. That's a very unhappy population. I mean, at the end of the day, our podcast is make work not suck. And so our whole goal here is we're trying to make work not suck. And so I think if you can take any information from what you heard today and put it into action, I think it can help make work not suck.
And like I said, 85% of the global workforce not happy. That's a big number. And if we spend 1 third of our lives sleeping, 1 third working, and 1 third doing everything else, take a minute to look at that 1 third that is called work and figure out if that is causing a lot of the stress, anxiety, or negative sides of of your work. So we would love to, you know, share share your experience. You know, drop a note on social media, email the show.
Let us know if boreout is impacting you. If you're experiencing boreout, if you're struggling with boreout, or if you think we're full of shit and we're wrong. Either way, we'd love to know because, again, we wanna make work not suck. If you like the episode, subscribe, share with your friends, and together, we can help make work not suck.
[:Make work not suck. Our podcast that talks about exactly that, our process, vision, journey, culture, and results. We present real world business solutions that make the difference. Our goal is to make work not suck. Hosted by Ryan Hodges, cohost Daniel Steer.
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