According to the 2007 employment survey conducted by the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training, almost one in seven employees in Germany feels underchallenged given their qualifications. Underdemand, boredom and disinterest characterize the state of dissatisfaction at work known as boreout.
“Every now and then I have something to do for about an hour or two. The rest of the time I’m surfing the Internet, looking for bargains in online stores, planning the next vacation. There is nothing to do. What I do is totally irrelevant. My phone sometimes doesn’t ring for days…”. This is what a desperate participant writes in the forum “Boreout”.
Definition: what is boreout?
Boreout – a new made-up word for a not-so-new phenomenon that afflicts both men and women in their working lives. It is about underchallenge, boredom and disinterest, three elements that condense into “being fed up” – the translation of boreout. Mind you, this is not about laziness, because the person affected actually wants to work, seeks challenge and recognition.
But creeping on, sometimes over years, behavioral strategies set in that the employee uses to appear busy at work and to keep work at bay. At first, this sounds paradoxical. But who wants to admit that they have nothing to do, are bored out of their minds, and find work completely uninteresting? After all, the fear of losing one’s job is not unfounded.
Boreout: symptoms
So it seems to make much more strategic sense to feign stress and full employment. There then the keyboard at the PC is operated loudly, although one sends only private e-mails, one looks concentrated on documents, which cover the magazines lying under it, for the camouflage complicated-looking Excel tables lie around while one compares the prices for vacuum cleaners and studies test reports.
Boreout sufferers don’t feel real stress; on the contrary. “Stress does not equal negative, properly dosed it even increases performance. Every physical or mental effort, every problem solving requires a certain amount of stress energy, and professional challenges can really inspire,” explains a psychologist at the Techniker Krankenkasse (TK). And stress in the job belongs to the good tone and signals that one is indispensable. A certain amount of stress is therefore quite positive for many people and gives them the feeling of having accomplished something and being appreciated for it.
This is the crux of the matter: the appreciation that one does not receive in many professional activities. Philippe Rothlin, who wrote the book Diagnosis of Boreout together with author Peter R. Werder, explains: “Those affected feel drained, dissatisfied and frustrated because recognition is lacking, because they can’t apply their knowledge.”
