Tiredness in office work is caused by boredom, worry, or resentment. Basically it is a huge “do not like” feeling. Source: Dale Carnegie
About right, though I don’t think “boredom” is really it. I can and have done entirely mechanical work for something I wanted to accomplish for hours on end without boredom.
The tiredness, and the dissatisfaction, are almost entirely psychosocial, between lack of intrinsic investment in the work itself, and the various social indignities associated with modern corporations.
David Rock has a good book, Your Brain at Work, which details a number of specific psychosocial factors in play at work.
Doing something boring means you have more abilities than required, so pretty sure you will be never fired for underachievement.
I don’t know about your work situation, but in my experience in the US, incompetence gets almost no one fired in the modern corporation. You get fired when there are reorgs, and the Top Men cut head count. Sometimes the Boss is given a say in who is dumped, and sometimes not. He’ll dump the guys he doesn’t like, who don’t show loyalty, faster than the guys who don’t produce. If you’re bored and dissatisfied in your job, it’s very likely the guy your boss doesn’t like is you. Particularly if you’re given to pointing out faults in plans, instead of spouting happy talk.
Job cuts from the Top Men have little to do with you at all, while when the Boss is given a say, it’s more about social factors than productivity. Taking a job beneath your general capabilities is no protection against cuts from the Top Men, and may be a net negative protection if the job leaves you dissatisfied, and therefore less pleasant to the Boss.
I’ve seen a lot of your posts. You can string sentences and ideas together. Guys who can do that don’t grow on trees. If you find a job challenging, while you have the basic background knowledge for it and find the diligence to apply yourself to it, the job is probably hard, and the Boss won’t easily find someone who can do it much better. You have to judge your competence, but I recommend you judge it relative to the competition, not relative to your own standards.
The point of my Ranger story is that what was soul crushing for me, was a day at the amusement park for him, entirely on account of our different attitudes toward the work. Having spent some time unemployed, I catch myself whenever I start thinking I “have to go to work”. No, I “get to go to work”. Yay!
And there are even better and more satisfying jobs I could work at. Yay!
they would think you should have sticked to the boring, comfy, well paying one that you can do without many challenges and seek excitement elsewhere.
If it is indeed comfortable, secure, and well paying, that’s not bad advice. If on honest evaluation, it really is a good situation, maybe what you need an attitude adjustment more than you need a new job.
Dale Carnegie’s “do not like” feeling is largely a “do not want” feeling. From this and other posts, I see a lot of “should” and “duty” in you. Embedded in every should, every duty, is an implicit, unexamined, “don’t want to”.
How about you lay aside that duty for a second, and honestly evaluate based on the available options, and what you want? Beyond duty, do you want to support your family? Of your available options, which ones are the best for all the things you want?
Often times, we’re doing out of a leaden sense duty what we would want to do if we allowed ourselves to examine our options based on what we want.
My point is this. You leave the comfortable boring job and start looking for a new one (or start looking while working). Pretty sure it requires a knowledge you don’t have, because jobs that require learning nothing new are probably precisely the boring ones. First issue is not being hired at all, because the HR idiots want 3 years o experience in a technology 5 years old and we want people who can hit he ground running yada yada. But let’s say they are willing to invest. Still there is a probation period—usually 3 months here—where they can still easily think you are not up to it. Moreover, to be really considered part of the family—I am using this term on purpose, to demonstrate I have no idea about how big impersonal corporations are like, I am more used to the kind of small-business culture of Central/Eastern Europe and to a certain extent rural UK where the business owners office is three rooms away from yours—can take up to a year. After that, it is hard to get fired, indeed. But there is a temporary risk factor.
Attitude adjustment is IMHO one of those things that depend heavily whether reliable methods exist or not. We cannot just decide to feel different about something. When I used to go to buddhist meditation centers they were always like, OK you understood this teaching now, but in the head or in the heart? As it takes a lot of work for a teaching to go down from the head to the heart, to become not just thought but felt, and this is why methods like meditation exist to change the heart. Your Ranger co-worker did not just decide one day to feel good about it, there were probably really powerful psychological forces going on inside him to make him feel that way. This powerful forces may or may not be simulated or evoked by conscious emotion-traning methods, but the point is we at least need experimental methods for that. Some kind of an at least potentially reliable emotion changing tools.
I am afraid what-do-you-want will not really cut it as a method as “want” is such a tricky term. What do I want? To quote an old joke, tax cut, free beer and forever life. Well, or a lottery win will do it. So I guess the question is, what do I want what is actually realistic? Well, getting a black belt in kick boxing would be nice. It is realistic for people of my age and fitness level, eventually. But wait, I am probably unwilling to invest into it what it takes. I want it, but not want the price to pay for it. So I guess it is more like, what do I want what is not only realistic, but I really want the whole package, not only the goal but also all the side-effects and want to pay the price that has to be paid for it, goal, side-effects and price being a whole package? Well, that is precisely the issue, there are probably no packages that are really perfect, there is always some side-effect, a too high price, or sometimes I am the weak link, unwilling to pay even a realistic price or all that. So reformulating it yet again, which one is the least bad of the available packages? Well, the current one, obviously, or else one would have changed it already. But it is still possible to feel unhappy about it—for example to feel if I was only braver or more diligent I could choose a different package, and then feel unhappy, not even as much about the situation but about myself. I am actually of the opinion that almost any kind of unhappiness for almost any reason reduces to a kind of self-loathing, because, if you were heroic enough you would have solved the problem, right?
I’ll take your word on the local job security situation.
Attitude adjustment is IMHO one of those things that depend heavily whether reliable methods exist or not. We cannot just decide to feel different about something.
A lot of attitudinal adjustment can come from choices about self talk and mental focus. One of the drivers of depression is habitual negative self talk. Reading your posts, I see a lot of that.
It’s all “what if the bad thing happens”?
How often do you ask yourself “What if the good thing happens?”
So reformulating it yet again, which one is the least bad of the available packages?
There’s a sun shiny outlook—life as a buffet of bad packages to select from. Is it any wonder you’re not feeling motivated?
and then feel unhappy, not even as much about the situation but about myself.
And that’s the way to really drive it into the ditch. You’re not just making mistakes, you are a mistake.
I am actually of the opinion that almost any kind of unhappiness for almost any reason reduces to a kind of self-loathing, because, if you were heroic enough you would have solved the problem, right?
No. Heroism doesn’t imply you’ll have all the right answers or all the right behaviors.
What if you’re just doing it wrong because you never learned a way to do it better? What if it’s really not that complicated? What if life really isn’t that hard?
On the simplest and most obvious level, the kinds of things you’re saying to me here and saying to yourself are just the kind of things people have identified as generating depression. That’s called doing it wrong.
You seem to have the same approach as the Cognitive Behavior Therapy folks, claiming that thoughts generate emotions. I tend towards the opposite emotion, that emotions are pretty much just chemicals and thoughts are used to rationalize them afterward. But let’s suppose you are right. What’s next? Positive thinking doesn’t workmoremore
About right, though I don’t think “boredom” is really it. I can and have done entirely mechanical work for something I wanted to accomplish for hours on end without boredom.
The tiredness, and the dissatisfaction, are almost entirely psychosocial, between lack of intrinsic investment in the work itself, and the various social indignities associated with modern corporations.
David Rock has a good book, Your Brain at Work, which details a number of specific psychosocial factors in play at work.
I don’t know about your work situation, but in my experience in the US, incompetence gets almost no one fired in the modern corporation. You get fired when there are reorgs, and the Top Men cut head count. Sometimes the Boss is given a say in who is dumped, and sometimes not. He’ll dump the guys he doesn’t like, who don’t show loyalty, faster than the guys who don’t produce. If you’re bored and dissatisfied in your job, it’s very likely the guy your boss doesn’t like is you. Particularly if you’re given to pointing out faults in plans, instead of spouting happy talk.
Job cuts from the Top Men have little to do with you at all, while when the Boss is given a say, it’s more about social factors than productivity. Taking a job beneath your general capabilities is no protection against cuts from the Top Men, and may be a net negative protection if the job leaves you dissatisfied, and therefore less pleasant to the Boss.
I’ve seen a lot of your posts. You can string sentences and ideas together. Guys who can do that don’t grow on trees. If you find a job challenging, while you have the basic background knowledge for it and find the diligence to apply yourself to it, the job is probably hard, and the Boss won’t easily find someone who can do it much better. You have to judge your competence, but I recommend you judge it relative to the competition, not relative to your own standards.
The point of my Ranger story is that what was soul crushing for me, was a day at the amusement park for him, entirely on account of our different attitudes toward the work. Having spent some time unemployed, I catch myself whenever I start thinking I “have to go to work”. No, I “get to go to work”. Yay!
And there are even better and more satisfying jobs I could work at. Yay!
If it is indeed comfortable, secure, and well paying, that’s not bad advice. If on honest evaluation, it really is a good situation, maybe what you need an attitude adjustment more than you need a new job.
Dale Carnegie’s “do not like” feeling is largely a “do not want” feeling. From this and other posts, I see a lot of “should” and “duty” in you. Embedded in every should, every duty, is an implicit, unexamined, “don’t want to”.
How about you lay aside that duty for a second, and honestly evaluate based on the available options, and what you want? Beyond duty, do you want to support your family? Of your available options, which ones are the best for all the things you want?
Often times, we’re doing out of a leaden sense duty what we would want to do if we allowed ourselves to examine our options based on what we want.
My point is this. You leave the comfortable boring job and start looking for a new one (or start looking while working). Pretty sure it requires a knowledge you don’t have, because jobs that require learning nothing new are probably precisely the boring ones. First issue is not being hired at all, because the HR idiots want 3 years o experience in a technology 5 years old and we want people who can hit he ground running yada yada. But let’s say they are willing to invest. Still there is a probation period—usually 3 months here—where they can still easily think you are not up to it. Moreover, to be really considered part of the family—I am using this term on purpose, to demonstrate I have no idea about how big impersonal corporations are like, I am more used to the kind of small-business culture of Central/Eastern Europe and to a certain extent rural UK where the business owners office is three rooms away from yours—can take up to a year. After that, it is hard to get fired, indeed. But there is a temporary risk factor.
Attitude adjustment is IMHO one of those things that depend heavily whether reliable methods exist or not. We cannot just decide to feel different about something. When I used to go to buddhist meditation centers they were always like, OK you understood this teaching now, but in the head or in the heart? As it takes a lot of work for a teaching to go down from the head to the heart, to become not just thought but felt, and this is why methods like meditation exist to change the heart. Your Ranger co-worker did not just decide one day to feel good about it, there were probably really powerful psychological forces going on inside him to make him feel that way. This powerful forces may or may not be simulated or evoked by conscious emotion-traning methods, but the point is we at least need experimental methods for that. Some kind of an at least potentially reliable emotion changing tools.
I am afraid what-do-you-want will not really cut it as a method as “want” is such a tricky term. What do I want? To quote an old joke, tax cut, free beer and forever life. Well, or a lottery win will do it. So I guess the question is, what do I want what is actually realistic? Well, getting a black belt in kick boxing would be nice. It is realistic for people of my age and fitness level, eventually. But wait, I am probably unwilling to invest into it what it takes. I want it, but not want the price to pay for it. So I guess it is more like, what do I want what is not only realistic, but I really want the whole package, not only the goal but also all the side-effects and want to pay the price that has to be paid for it, goal, side-effects and price being a whole package? Well, that is precisely the issue, there are probably no packages that are really perfect, there is always some side-effect, a too high price, or sometimes I am the weak link, unwilling to pay even a realistic price or all that. So reformulating it yet again, which one is the least bad of the available packages? Well, the current one, obviously, or else one would have changed it already. But it is still possible to feel unhappy about it—for example to feel if I was only braver or more diligent I could choose a different package, and then feel unhappy, not even as much about the situation but about myself. I am actually of the opinion that almost any kind of unhappiness for almost any reason reduces to a kind of self-loathing, because, if you were heroic enough you would have solved the problem, right?
I’ll take your word on the local job security situation.
A lot of attitudinal adjustment can come from choices about self talk and mental focus. One of the drivers of depression is habitual negative self talk. Reading your posts, I see a lot of that.
It’s all “what if the bad thing happens”?
How often do you ask yourself “What if the good thing happens?”
There’s a sun shiny outlook—life as a buffet of bad packages to select from. Is it any wonder you’re not feeling motivated?
And that’s the way to really drive it into the ditch. You’re not just making mistakes, you are a mistake.
No. Heroism doesn’t imply you’ll have all the right answers or all the right behaviors.
What if you’re just doing it wrong because you never learned a way to do it better? What if it’s really not that complicated? What if life really isn’t that hard?
On the simplest and most obvious level, the kinds of things you’re saying to me here and saying to yourself are just the kind of things people have identified as generating depression. That’s called doing it wrong.
You seem to have the same approach as the Cognitive Behavior Therapy folks, claiming that thoughts generate emotions. I tend towards the opposite emotion, that emotions are pretty much just chemicals and thoughts are used to rationalize them afterward. But let’s suppose you are right. What’s next? Positive thinking doesn’t work more more