Ask Christa! My Job Bores Me-- How Do I Stay On Track? (S5E60)

Introduction

Hi everyone and welcome to Ask Christa! the place where you can ask questions about how to work through business challenges and workplace issues. I'm Christa Dhimo and here we are at episode SIXTY at just EIGHT MONTHS since launch. This episode concludes Season 5, focused on career growth, so be sure to tune in for Season SIX, which will be about dealing with bad bosses (and whooo I’ve been there).

Call to action: put YOUR business or workplace issue question in the comments OR visit my site to submit your question, AskChrista.com, that’s Christa with a C-H. While you’re there, click the blue follow button, submit a review, and sign up for my weekly Sunday night newsletter, More Answers, where you get relevant insights to common workplace challenges to set you up for the work week.

Listener Question

Here’s the listener question, “My job bores me. I’ve been at it for three years, and it has always bored me, but these last few months have actually felt painful. There is no challenge. My manager and I have been talking about how to challenge me more at work, but we started that discussion over a year ago. He was able to advance me to a higher-level of the job I’m doing, which came with more pay, but the excitement of getting more pay wore off within a couple of weeks because I’m still doing the same boring work. I can’t make it more efficient because I’ve spent time improving as much as I can, and I’ve even been assigned to work with other team members to teach them how I’ve improved my own work, but I’m done with that now, too. 

My manager asked me to stay put while he works out a promotional path or finds an opportunity in another group that may offer more of a challenge to me. I’m looking internally also, and I appreciate that they don’t want to lose me. I really love the people I work with and the company I’m in. Due to my employment type, my boss can’t give me more complex work yet, but as soon as I’m promoted, everything will change. We’re hoping for a promotion by March of next year. 

But I feel like my brain is breaking down every day I stay in this role. It’s like I have senioritis all over again, but instead of a few months before I graduate high school, it’s been a prolonged 15 months and now I’m waiting another few months.  I need to stay on track for this promotion. Can you give me some tips to work through my boredom and stay on track?”

Some jobs are boring

Yes—yes, I can do this, and a good Google search can help you with this, too. But first, let’s talk about all the things you, our listener, are doing right. 

You’re being honest with yourself and balanced with what you like and don’t like—meaning, I heard you say how bored you are, but also that you love the people you work with and appreciate the path your manager and your organization is trying to provide to you.

You’re being honest and forthcoming with your manager—and I give your manager a lot of credit for this, also, because there are a lot of times when employees do not feel they can be that honest with their manager OR, if they are, the manager doesn’t know what to do about it. This is ESPECIALLY true if you have a great employee who is exceeding the level of their role, and are becoming… bored. Having an employee who has outgrown their role but is also in a role that prohibits taking on more responsibilities can be complicated. My guess is that our listener may currently be in what we refer to as a non-exempt role, where the level responsibilities allowed are different from exempt roles, and that’s by labor regulations and exist for good reason.

Last, but certainly not least, I want to applaud our listener for calling it what it is: boredom. This isn’t unusual for employees, especially good learners who master their work quickly and are ready for the next step at a faster pace than others. 

Now—don’t confuse fast learning with ambition. Yes, fast learners are usually ambitious, but along with ambition usually comes a strong eagerness for action and change. What I’m hearing from our listener, or reading from their submission, is that they’ve been waiting and are still willing to wait. The issue is: what do I do to stay somewhat engaged so I can still do my best every day while I work in a job that…. Is… boring… while they wait for that promotion that will alleviate their boredom.

The good news: trust for the manager, and care from the manager 

Here’s the good news: trust for and in the manager and care from the manager, too. For those of you who have managers like this, you are fortunate. You are talking openly, your manager is listening, they are doing what they can to pull the various organizational levers to keep you on board—in favor of the organization keeping you—while also doing what they can to keep you engaged.

My hope is the manager is offering additional learning opportunities during the wait. One way is to go to formal training outside of the organization as prep-work for what the promotion might look like. 

But another way, which can often be more meaningful, is through rotational observations where our listener isn’t just helping others on the team BUT ALSO gaining exposure to other groups in the organization. Many times this includes sitting in with other teams for a month to learn how other areas of the business works, or if your work status allows, taking on some light and easy work like taking notes during project meetings for one to two months, where you can feel a small part of a different team while, again, learning how others do their work.

If you don’t have the type of manager you can turn to when it comes to feeling bored with your work, or even that you’re languishing—slowly draining away with each day that passes—there are a few things you can do on your own until you can actively change your employment status, either by going for a new position in your current organization or applying to positions outside your organization.

Languishing is a real thing

Let’s take a moment, though, and talk about boredom at work, from not having enough work to being assigned work that simply doesn’t challenge you. Both circumstances occur more frequently than many care to admit, and both really slow down an organization’s ability to meet or exceed their goals.

Of course, you need to be in an organization that cares about that in order to fix it organizationally, so let’s just focus on the employee perspective.

If you don’t have enough work, it’s often because the scale of economy has caught up with you, meaning that you’ve done your job long enough to have not only mastered it, but found ways to make it more efficient and do it more effectively. Instead of taking 8 hours, maybe it takes 5. It could be work that challenges you or not; the issue is that you can get it done in far less time than you’re allocated for.

But not having enough work might also be because your company really doesn’t have enough work for you to do. They’ve over-estimated the work of your role, and anyone could do in 25-30 hours what you’re given 40 hours to do.

In either case, it can be a scary prospect to admit to anyone that you are under capacity and can take on more work. You’ll either be afraid of losing your job because people will interpret that as you not being needed at all—which is absurd, because to me it means you have someone who can be plugged into a gap, and ALL organizations have gaps that need a few hours to fill here and there to alleviate a stretched team—or you’ll be given SO MUCH work that you’ll be WAY OVER capacity within a few days. Neither is a good situation, and so, employees stay bored, under their capacity, waiting for the next opportunity to take them away. Maybe even rescue them.

And here’s an interesting take on being underutilized at work: it can actually lead to feeling burnt out and depressed. Your days are hardly fulfilled, and you’re also isolating yourself to some extend to stay under the radar and protect yourself from being fired or being overloaded with new work. That’s not great. 

Then there’s being assigned work that simply doesn’t challenge you. This is work that is within the capacity of your work day, meaning you’re getting it done within the normal hours of a workweek, but there isn’t much to the work. You feel like your brain isn’t working very hard, not much to solve, very little critical thinking… boring work. That’s not great either.

Feeling less bored: the self-fix or the work-fix 

So if you feel bored at work and have a manager you can talk to, like our listener has, do what our listener is doing and also see if there are observational or small rotations you can take at work to spread yourself out just a little bit more until your promotion comes through.

But if you don’t have that kind of manager, you can take two primary steps: the path for a self-fix, meaning you take it upon yourself to fix the reasons why you’re bored: maybe you start a part-time degree or professional certificate, or maybe you explore a few rotational opportunities at work, or perhaps if you’re in a larger organization you join an Employee Resource Group or if you’re in a smaller organization, you determine ways to network within the organization and offer some extra support to other teams. If you feel you’ll be at risk if you admit you have extra time you can spare, then help out of service to the organization. But you’re taking the initiative to fill in some of that time.

The other step is a path for a work-fix, and this requires at least one sponsor who knows you and your reputation for good work and dependability. The work-fix is offering to fix something at your organization that you know you can fix in the spare time you have each week. You can offer your service by way of saying, “I think I can find a few extra hours a week to address an issue that will make things easier for us.” You gain the sponsorship to lead a more formal, but timebound, initiative. Sponsorship is essentially someone saying, “yes, I agree, and I’m willing to back you up to do this work more formally,” then you carve out time each week to lead some of that improvement work—and you do it like a formal project, with a clear objective, bound by clarity of scope, bringing the right stakeholders on board, designing the work within a small team or maybe just you, then tracking your progress and reporting that out. Yes, that’s more involved, but if you’re in a job where you don’t feel challenged, that’s probably exactly what you’ll need to offset the languishing you’ve been feeling. 

Additional Resources

For your resources, located in the show notes, I’ve offered an article from Indeed’s Employer Content Team that will explain the difference between Exempt and Non-Exempt employees. Most people have no idea that there are laws about those two classifications, and it’s good information to have, especially if you’re considering a future management position. 

Next up, an article from The Muse by Kyle Lee. It’s from June 2020 and remains right on target called, “I’ve got a good job, but I’m bored, What do I do?” The writer offers three suggestions, two similar but different from what I’ve talked about here, which is a good thing. I offer additional resources to help you with additional perspectives.

Last, an article by Ayelet Fishbach titled, “How to keep working when you’re just not feeling it.” It was published in Harvard Business Review in Q4 2018, and again—still holds.

Wrap Up & Submitting Your Questions

And there it is, Episode 60! of Season 5 focused on Career Growth! We have Season SIX coming up soon, which is another consolidation season focused on A LOT of questions about dealing with bad bosses. Your call to action? Sure, hit like and subscribe, but I’d really like you to send in YOUR question by going to my show’s site, AskChrista.com, that’s Christa with a C-H. While you’re there, browse through other episodes that might be helpful to you. They’re organized by category and season, and each season has a theme to guide you through what will be more helpful. And sign up for my More Answers… newsletter to receive a boost every Sunday night to set you up for the workweek.

Thank you for your support. And remember, if you have a business challenge or a workplace issue—Ask Christa!