Easy And Inexpensive Ways To Avoid Being Bored With Work

Many people are bored with their work. This is a genuine fact and is a problem for both employees and employers. Considering that work is a major part of one’s life, it is important that boredom be at least alleviated if not eliminated as it can have negative long term impact to both employees and employers.

But how bad can the negative impact be? Pretty bad. There are for example employees who have resorted to alcoholism and drug addiction to escape their boredom and dislike from their jobs.

The Statistics

Here are some online statistics I found about boredom from work:

According to a Forbes article titled ”Bored At Work? Science Says That's A Good Thing”, between 30 to 90 percent of adults experience boredom at one point in their lives. Youths experience boredom between 91 to 98 percent.

This is just one of the many articles stating the grim statistics of people bored with their jobs. Some report that more than half of American workers for example are bored with their jobs.

If you tried to Google the keywords “statistics people bored with their work” for example, you would instantly see that boredom is a major concern in the workplace. This condition is not only happening in developed countries, but is happening on a global basis.

Why Are People Getting Bored With Work?

The Repetitive Nature Of Work

One of the distinct features of work is that you get paid for repetitive work. You are paid money to do a certain task over and over again. In essence, you are an organic machine that is being fed with money to continue to function.

Work by its very nature is not bad. Civilizations needs people to work in order for it to continue to thrive and prosper. But as civilizations evolved, so has the function of many workers. In the olden days, workers create products individually which results in a lot of job satisfaction.

For example, a shoemaker in the olden days would make shoes by himself from scratch to the end product. The worker sees his work and has full control of it. These two factors bring a lot of satisfaction to the workers.

But today things have changed, production has become more efficient by maximizing the single task of workers. In our shoemaker example, today shoes are mostly made be several workers doing repetitive and much simpler task.

Imagine having a job where all you do every minute of your working day is to for example glue the soles of the shoe to the bottom of the shoe repeatedly. All you see is your work table all day. Years could even pass without you not knowing how the other work tables look like.

This is how boring work can be for many. In fact, during the old days, the American and British car manufacturing companies suffered low quality car workmanship from their workers which cost them a lot of money.

One of the reasons for the low productivity of the workers in these companies was boredom from work. Even today, car companies still have to contend with employees being bored from their work resulting in lower productivity.

Work Tasks Are Too Limiting

Besides being repetitive, many of the jobs today have limited scope. Using the shoe as an example again, it is easy to see that glueing soles in shoes every minute of the day do not only lead to boredom but also can lead to psychological problems.

How psychologically damaging boredom and limiting work can be? Most people would have probably heard about the suicide nets in some of the manufacturing facilities located in China. As the name suggests, these suicide nets are installed to prevent workers from committing suicides.

These nets are placed outside the windows of the factories to catch workers attempting suicide by jumping from the windows. What are the reasons why these workers are committing suicide?

The long hours of work, repetitive tasks and limited tasks make workers think that they are just like machines and not humans anymore. They begin to think about the pointlessness of their lives. Combine these thoughts with a tired mind and you could easily see why these workers would think of committing suicide.

The more limited the task you give to a person, the more their level of self-esteem goes down. Like it or not, many people want the feeling of being important and wanted. People like to think that they mean something to other people.

If people begin to think that they are not doing something worthwhile in their job, they might stop caring about their job which results in sloppy work. The more sloppy work they do, the more they get bored with their job. This is because they see the futility of their job effort.

Simple Ways To Prevent Boredom

There are simple and inexpensive ways to temporarily remove your boredom from work. You could go on long and expensive vacations of course, but this requires you to wait until your vacation leave is approved. By then you would have to wait months at least.

You could also wait until the weekend where you can do your own thing. However, you would have to wait until it’s Friday afternoon before you can do this. Also, an increasing number of people have to work on Saturdays and even Sundays as well.

Lastly, you could wait until the workday is over before you can do your own thing. However, by this time you would mostly spend your time commuting back to your own home and doing household chores like attending to your children.

While a vacation, the weekend and the hours after work may provide some escape from the boredom of work, the reality is that work is still a major part of your life. This is true whether you work in an office, factory or in your own home.

Unless you find a way to escape boredom from work, you would likely be spend a lot of your waking life sad or lonely. Here are a few simple and easy ways you could try to avoid being bored from work:

Take A Different Route To And From Work

This applies more to workers who have the ability to change the route they take to and from work. For example, people with their own cars can change their entire route or a partial part of the route they take to and from work.

If you have a car and have time to spare especially before arriving to work, you can intentionally vary your route to see different surroundings. Most of us do have not much time to go sightseeing before going to work. This is a simple way to do it.

For example, when I used to drive to work, I would experiment and slightly vary my route to see the different sidestreets along my route. I find it enjoying not having to see the same things as I go to work.

It also helps me to get acquainted with my surroundings in case I need an emergency route. It is also like taking a very small vacation. For example, in one of my route changes I get to see a park where from time to time there would be activities like a sport being played.

Small sightseeing activities like these even under mundane surroundings like passing through rows of normal houses can give simple pleasures especially when you see small changes.

For example, seeing trees as they slowly lose their leaves due to the change of the season can have a surreal effect on you and liven up your day as you make your way to work. It’s like traveling to an entirely new place when your surroundings have not changed at all.

Having Pictures Of Your Loved Ones In Your Desk

This should be a no brainer. The pictures of your loved ones even just your pet or car could be enough to brighten up your day. Whenever you start to question why you are even working in a dreary and boring job, you see the answer.

As I have said, your job is a necessity in society. That is why they are paying someone like you to do the job. The pictures of the people and things you hold most precious in your life is a reminder that your job helps you to maintain the precious things in your life.

In fact, the pictures of the people and things that are precious to you is a good motivator for you to even work harder in your job. For example, in many of the offices of the companies I used to work for, I would see children’s pictures on the desk of most of the female employees who are mothers.

One of them even told me that the tiring work she is doing seems to disappear whenever she sees the picture of her child in her desk. One told me that she would rather be at home with her child, but her job pays for the needs of her child. This is why she is able to bear the discomfort of work.

Play While You Work

Remember the fun you have at work whenever you pretend that a piece of crumpled paper is a basketball ball and the desk bin is the pretend basketball ring. For a few precious seconds you forget about work and have fun playing basketball.

This is the reason why many men for example, have sports related merchandise in their office. Your bosses play with their golf clubs and golf balls in their office as they make their business decisions.

The other men who are less sports oriented have toys in their desk which they play with whenever they have the chance. For example, One of your officemates could be playing with a toy car or an action figure with one hand while holding a telephone in the other hand and doing business talk.

The toys do not have to be simple. Some could be complex. For example Kinetic Toys can challenge the mind of those who see them in action. They also make good conversation pieces.

Be Creative During Lunchtime

There are those who have managed to make their lunchtime interesting so much so that at least for a brief moment, they forget about work. Lunchtime is the one hour of the day which indicate that a worker has gone through the first half of his working day which makes the rest of the hours more cheerful if one is merely looking at the office clock.

Contact A Loved One:

I used to have an officemate who always call her husband doing lunchtime. She would hardly eat lunch, she would rather spend most of her lunchtime talking to her husband. This must be the reason why she seems to be always happy after lunch and always manages to finish her tasks before the end of the working day.

Exercise:

I have bosses who workout during lunchtime. They would use lunchtime to go out and workout in the gym for an hour. Then when they return to work, they take their lunch while doing work. My boss states that he can do a full workout in less than twenty minutes and this livens up his body that he could work even late during the workday.

But you do not have to go to the gym or wait until its lunch time to exercise. You could simply stand up and walk a small distance from your work desk and then back. You could do this following a regular schedule.

A few minutes of exercise by walking and stretching can add up to an hour of workout each day. There are even people who bring dumbbells with them to work so they can exercise their muscles while working.

Taking A Quick Nap:

Perhaps one of the most undervalued ways to not get bored from work is by taking a nap during lunchtime. For example, one of my bosses seemed alarmed when he saw me taking a small nap after lunch. He asked one of my co-employees if I was not feeling well.

But if you search online, you would find that many experts actually recommend that people should take small naps during lunch. They state that short twenty to thirty minutes naps are good to liven a worker’s mood, alertness and so on.

I myself work from home and take short naps after eating lunch. Though I do not really sleep in the process, I am able to at least close my eyes temporarily for almost an hour. When I open them, I feel refreshed and active enough to continue doing my work.

The Benefits Of Working At Home

Perhaps the best reason to work at home is that because it gives you the ability to fashion the way you work the way you like it. In many of the offices I have worked for, the managers try to eliminate as much distraction from work as much as possible.

For many of them, even the ability to listen to music you prefer is eliminated. I am the kind of person who tend to be more productive when I hear my preferred music as I work. Having the ability now to work at home has given me the ability as well to listen to my music.

As a result of this, I am able to work more than eight hours a day from morning to evening without almost the need for a break. This must be the reason why there are now workers who would rather work at home even though they are offered higher wages just to work in an office.

Conclusion

Boredom from work is not only costing businesses money but is also dangerous for the morale and the psychological health of the workers. The repetitive and the limiting nature of many jobs are one of the biggest causes of these.

Simple changes to one’s lifestyle can significantly help to boost your morale as a worker. Changing transport and commute routes can give the feeling of a mini vacation daily. Pictures of the people and the things you care about could also boost your morale. “Play” at work can safely be integrated into one’s work routine.

By getting more creative with what you do with your lunchtime, you could significantly make your workday enjoyable. Contacting people, taking exercises and naps are just a few of these.

Music and other entertainment could also make your workday more comfortable and lively. This is especially if you are working at home.