We all know someone who dislikes their job, and some of us may know that person to be ourselves. Inevitably, this develops into boredom. That overwhelming feeling of not wanting to repeat the same thing. It is painful.
Why do we become so bored? How can some occupations be more intriguing than others? What makes a job more enjoyable?
It's all about perspective. What you find interesting.
But it does not end there. I adore video editing, and often cannot bear to complete a project. It becomes monotonous, repetitive, and just unenjoyable.
There is a diminishing return of curiosity and purpose.
Our "job" requires harmony between these two intrinsic temperaments. So much emphasis is placed on extrinsic criteria such as KPIs, bonus incentives, long-service leave, annual income. Few supply us with adequate curiosity and purpose to ignite the "Seeking System."
Dan Cable, a Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School, says
When I learned about this seeking system it really turned me on, because it started to give me an insight into why disengagement from boring work may not be a bug - it might be a feature.
What he’s talking about is a space in our brain called the ventral striatum. Yep, this isn’t just an idea, but a physical spot in our brain that “is urging us to explore the boundaries of what we know. It's urging us to be curious.”
You give a child a new toy, and they’re enamoured… for 24 hours. Okay, maybe a little longer, but your car keys become more attractive as they get used to it. That is the perfect example of what this system in our brains is responsible for; the “new” – the desire to learn. We evolved this system to keep us learning, switching lanes and gathering new information.
So now viewing boredom as a potential feature and not a bug of the human species isn’t so hard.
But what leads us to be curious in the first place? It can’t all just be this section of the brain.
It seems that this concept of purpose is uniquely human. It's a really interesting one. It's this idea of having an answer to the why of what we do.
Purpose is not your why; it’s the answer to it. And that’s one of the things that activate the seeking system. We become curious to find the meaning in… everything. Our ability to abstractly attach answers to questions that only humans can think of. The real struggle is there’s no ‘correct’ answer.
Say you’re in a class (we’ve all been there), and the teacher asks you, yes, you in the middle row:
“What are you doing right now?”
How do you answer? Is this a trick question?
“I’m sitting.”
That… would be correct. So the teacher asks another student:
“And what you are doing, John?"
“I’m listening.”
“Julia, what are you doing?”
“I’m learning."
So which answer is correct? None, there is no right or wrong. Yes, we all appear to be doing the same thing, but with very different intentions. All of our "why" answers are valid. To our minds, they can all be considered true stories.
And that’s where purpose gets tricky. We just need to justify it to ourselves and we’re done. Except when we’re not because we can never really settle on an answer. And since all answers can technically be right, we need to choose the best of the bunch.
Expanding this into what we may do for work:
“I punch numbers into a spreadsheet."
Could also be:
"I construct databases of sales data for my organisation to analyse and learn from in order to forecast future sales, incomes, and revenues.”
Try it yourself on this one:
“I greet people as they enter the building.”
I think you get the point. This is very similar (if not the same) to what I proposed in my last letter about attaching purpose to your to-dos. It’s moving away from the behaviours of our work and into the why.
But which answer should we strive to give? That’s your choice. This ability to switch lanes and adjust our focus is what makes us human.
Still, we are left with something; where’s the curiosity and purpose gone in your job today?
The examples below have been pulled from the following video. What can I say? They were wonderful examples 🤷♂️
Records suggest that back in the 1850s or so, you could go and purchase shoes from a Cobbler, who may have employed another 2 people. It may not have been the best work in the world, but each person watched the customer walk in and tailor a shoe for them. They’d measure, cut, create and deliver their solution.
But around 1890, we had a grand idea, to not sell two pairs of shoes per day, but 2 million. This idea of scaling up had particular implications for how work felt. And part of that was because it was decided that the way to do this would have extreme efficiency by breaking the work into small tasks where most people don’t meet the customer. Most people don’t invent the shoe. This idea of removing the meaning and the curiosity from the work was intentional. For Henry Ford, curiosity was a bug, it was a problem, and he needed to stamp it out in the name of reliability and quality.
Our satiation for scale is a detriment to our seeking system. We really don’t care for scale. That solution works, so what more do we need to learn from that? I don’t mean that quite literally – I’m sure if you come up with a solution, you’d love to see it at scale. But then again, we frequently see founders of major companies either moving on or expanding into new territories.
Amazon is the perfect illustration. Beginning as an online bookseller and nothing else. Today, they utilise cloud computing and satellite Internet. You may consider Amazon to be the equivalent of the seeking system. Developing ‘boredom’ in one area and expanding lanes to explore something else.
I would like to take a detour here, which you may have already done while reading this letter. Our “seeking system” may not be currently stimulated at work. Yet, it is ablaze with social media, news, entertainment, and anything else geared to grab your attention.
Sometimes I feel guilty for spending time scrolling through Facebook or watching yet another episode of Baskets, the wannabe French clown. But my brain is literally wired to seek out novel experiences, events, objects, and forms of entertainment. Boredom serves mostly as a signal that our time here is up. Time to move on. Scroll on.
I could certainly write an entire letter about this, but I believe there is enough here to ponder.
But Josh, what if I really am bored at work?
To be fair, it isn’t your fault. Over time we’ve designed jobs to be fundamentally more boring. We separate the clients from the workers with a bunch of middlemen. But if there’s anything we can do, just like with your to-do's – attach the purpose. The answer to why you're there. Write it down and stick it on your computer screen, so you don't forget. It's easy to lose sight of the motivation that sparks us. We enter the confines of the menial tasks and then close the door. A convenient reminder when you need it most (when you've forgotten) is perhaps one of the most essential things in the modern office.
Whatever your purpose, it is correct. There's no right or wrong. Fight the boredom with purpose.
Stay safe, and pass-it-on.