Relevance to today's lamentations

So, here we are today analyzing our lives and our work and trying to find worth in what we do. Here is an article that outlines the problem and an approach to improving the situation.

The mid-career lament: 'I'm bored'

Are you bored with your work? Speaker and organizational career management consultant Barbara Moses says her research indicates that a good half of you would answer yes to that question. It is a paradox of our times that we can be both overworked and under-stimulated. Although we often think it's a lack of things to do that causes boredom, in truth the content of the work we do and the degree of intellectual challenge it provides can be just as important. And we've been feeling bored for some time. The Yankelovich Monitor, a consumer survey, concluded in 2000 that we are in the midst of a “boredom boom.” Sixty-nine per cent of respondents agreed that “even though I have so much to do, I'm always looking for something new and exciting to do.” In fact, boredom is one of the most common complaints of professionals. For many professionals, career progression is simply a question of widening their arena of influence, while staying put with the technical skills being used. So, for many mid-career workers, the prospect of spending the next 15 years doing essentially the same type of work carries no excitement at all. Many people are motivated by a desire to learn and be stretched professionally. But by the time they hit 40, many professionals feel they have gone as far as they can or want to in their area of expertise. Their malaise is exacerbated by the fact that most organizations have truncated career ladders and are not investing in staff development.

Self-employment is not necessarily an escape route from boredom and predictability, as it often poses exactly the same challenges. If you're good at what you do and have been doing it for some time, there is little someone can ask you to do that you haven't been asked to do a thousand times before. But is it really boredom? These days, many of us seem to have the attention span of a gnat. We are addicted to being busy and the adrenaline of the new. We've become conditioned to constant excitement and stimulation, and feel flat when it's missing. We have also become lazy. We skim information and don't force ourselves to really make sense of it. So perhaps the issue is not so much boredom as it is not allowing ourselves to experience the moment, to stop rushing to move onto the next "to do" on the list. In other words, we bore ourselves by closing down the potential to engage deeply with a person or task at hand. It's also sometimes true that when we say we are bored, what we really mean is that we feel empty. Then we rush to fill ourselves up, thinking another job or some other form of distraction will do it. But the problem may be not a lack of intellectual stimulation in the work as much as a restless discomfort with ourselves. Boredom in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, as it often drives creativity. Look around and you will find plenty of opportunities for deep engagement.
(full version of article: Globe and Mail 051021)

***Sarcasm alert*** I guess I think everything is wrong and everyone is stupid simply because I don't engage them deeply enough. Works fine for some things, but I still think a lot of things are boring and stupid (like pop culture) and therefore aren't worthy of my engagement. Screw that. Feh.