Stuck at Work? Tips on How to Conquer Work Boredom

It’s already September and the holidays are a few months away; everyone is working themselves harder to earn extra for the coming festivities. However, overworking leads to many reasons that can disrupt your productivity.

Riding the See-Saw of Work-Life Balance

One of the core values that Quest Adventure Camp promotes is the concept of work-life balance. We understand how important it is for us to reach our goals and attend to our responsibilities, but we only live once! Everything we work hard for will crumble before our eyes if we neglect taking care of ourselves.

In Japan and South Korea, overworking death has become common among the working class. Those who overwork themselves to death suffered from medical conditions such as heart attack and stroke. Doctors found out that this was due to stress and a starvation diet; something that’s fairly common with our working habits, right?

Overworking can also lead to work boredom. People get bored with repetitive work, people shy away from responsibilities that lead to work inefficiency and ultimately, they just quit because they feel that they do not belong to the office anymore.

If you’re beginning to be bored at work, or if you’re monitoring your team’s productivity and work interest, Quest has some tips on how to conquer work boredom to get your team back on track:

Tips on How to Conquer Work Boredom

1. Curiosity kills the bored cat.

Indeed, staying curious helps conquer boredom. If you’re stuck on one concept of your work, try to divert your attention from another productive task.

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths,” Walt Disney said. We cannot let ourselves be stuck in an endless cycle. However, if your work itself is repetitive in nature, try a new approach in doing your work. Try to see your work in a new light.

If you tried looking for another approach, why not try putting yourself in the shoes of those who will benefit from accomplishing your work? What would happen if you decide to just watch videos of cute dogs and babies on the Internet all day? How will your choice affect your team’s output? Try this perspective to motivate yourself to remain curious for the benefit of those who will be affected by your output.

2. Feed from other’s creativity and motivation

On the other hand, if you cannot spark curiosity from within, try to get motivation from other sources of inspiration. If you’re currently bored with work, turn it into a productive time to be bored!

How? If you know any industry-related pieces that you can study, get inspiration from it. Inspire yourself to make a difference, even within the small confines of your office.

Use this time to be bored to spike your creativity; studies have shown that people who are bored ‘think more’ outside of the box. A psychologist conducted a study on college students at the University of Central Lancashire, where they were asked to perform mundane tasks and then asked to do some creative exercise. It turns out that the participants of the study showed more creativity than those who were not subjected to the boring task beforehand.

3. Laughter is the best medicine, but take it in moderation

You can’t be bored if you’re laughing!

Look for something amusing that can laugh away the stress and boredom from your mind. Work can be boring, but a little bit of fun can shake up things. How can you conquer boredom with laughter? It’s easy to whip up YouTube and watch cats, but we suggest that you do this in moderation. If you’re fully distracted from your work, that’s just as counterproductive as boredom.

To stay in focus, we recommend this Chrome Extension called StayFocusd to help you regulate watching your favorite gags on YouTube. This does not only regulate the time you spend on YouTube but also on other time-wasting websites like Facebook, 9GAG, Twitter, etc.

In a team setting, you can break the monotony with gamification—wait, by playing games? No, gamification is different from games. Bunchball has differentiated games and gamification here:

But gamification is not about creating something new. It is about amplifying the effect of an existing, core experience by applying the motivational techniques that make games so engaging. When you gamify high-value interactions with customers, employees, and partners, you drive more sales, stronger collaboration, better ROI, deeper loyalty, higher customer satisfaction and more.

A little bit of caveat though, gamification can make or break your team’s productivity. If you choose the wrong kind of gamification for your team or rather introduced it ineffectively, you risk losing your employees’ focus on the work itself.

4. Go on an Adventure

If you’re hitting a roadblock with your tasks, and it feels like you’re burned out, we suggest moving things outside the office. Get out of the office, set a date and go on an adventure!

A series of studies published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology revealed that your much-needed break should be done outside the office. Being outside in nature for just 20 minutes in a day was enough to significantly boost vitality levels, the research finds.

You can go to different parks around the metro and take a 15-minute walk to revitalize. However, if you want to fully submerge yourself even just for a day in nature, we welcome you here in the nature scape of Quest Adventure Camp. Quest Adventure Camp is an 11-hectare property of rolling hills, flowing streams, various trees and flowers blew with a cool breeze from the mountains of Rizal. Quest is a perfect venue for a healthy mix of work, leisure, relaxation, and adventure. Spend the day with your teammates and we’ll help ease out the knots as you enjoy your date with nature here in Antipolo.

5. Get your ducks in line

Sometimes, boredom is just plain boredom. Nothing’s up, and you’re just having a rough day at work. Before you let yourself sink in deeper in boredom quicksand, get up, grab a piece of paper, and list the things you need to accomplish.

While it may not be simple as that, it’s going to be a good wake-up call to make you realize that you have a lot to still finish. Once you’ve listed your tasks, reorganize and arrange it by the level of priority. Now that you’ve figured out which tasks you need to accomplish before the others, it’s time to get to work!

The key here is to set priorities. Multiple tasks may be overwhelming at first, but prioritizing those urgent tasks to the other tasks that you can do at a later time can ease out that feeling of dread. Don’t let yourself be stuck in planning all of your tasks just yet — once you have a good list of things to do, work on it. Worry again later once you regroup and redefine your goals for the day.

The feeling of being stuck at the workplace plagues us all. There are some days that you feel very productive, yet there are some lazy days as well. Employees and employers must work hand-in-hand to find the balance — there are many ways and tools that can help you maintain the equilibrium, use these to your advantage.

Aside from our tips above, what do you do to conquer office boredom? Share it with us in the comments!