Boredom Isn't An Option Anymore

And this might, paradoxically, be bad for us.

Started thinking about this the other day through a series of intersections and videos. Let me try to walk you through it.

At Work

I think, or rather I hope, by now that people realize a lot of white-collar work doesn’t take 8 to 10 hours/day. Some work does, but not most of it. There’s a lot of sitting around pretending to be busy or general presenteeism. And, because that is what most bosses value in subordinates, this will continue. Not much of a path through on all that. But at work, the whole equation is especially toxic: we think those who even mention “boredom” must somehow lack “work ethic,” and thus we place them in a “bad” or “quiet firing” box, giving them less and less projects, even though they just identified a huge problem at your organization. Because of the negativity associated with the word “boredom” at work, many people find themselves tasks to “busy” themselves with, but “busy” is not the same as “productive” and never has been. So, because we can’t tolerate boredom, we have 37% of our workforce at a given time scrolling Instagram and claiming “so slammed this week.”

With Addiction