Why there’s nothing wrong with having a ‘boring’ job
There is a common phrase that you will probably hear almost every evening when you come home from work. While cutting the vegetables for dinner with your partner or are you using rice to your roommates around the table, I bet someone is going to ask innocently: “So, how was the job today?”
If you are something like most people, your answer is usually somewhere on the staircase between “ok” and “fine” because the truth is that most of the working days are not the shocking moments, based on purposes, that the career consultants who have once led us to believe.
Bored at work? You are lucky.Credit: Louie Douvis
According to the latest report on the state of Gallup’s global work, only 21 % of Australian workers said they were engaged in work, slightly lower than the world average of 23 %. It is a surprising statistics that puts a reality that we rarely discuss: many of us have boring jobs.
But rather than see this as a negative that we must instinctively correct, it is time to admit that there are many positives underestimated to have a typically “boring” job.
So that we are clear, by “boring” I mean the types of predictable and stable jobs, where you know exactly what you have to do, often repeat until the time closes and do the same almost every day.
They could be considered not very sexy or not very interesting by some, and once masterful exactly like doing it, there are few chills remained in learning new things. The polar opposite of a boring job is the one in which every day is unpredictable, requesting every ounce of your energy to dodge the new challenges.
Another advantage of repeating most of the days is the mental freedom that gives you to pursue hobbies and sideways on your conditions.
I often help people to identify their fundamental values at work, as part of a process to improve the way they feel about their work. I like to call these “anchors” to separate them from the work values and are basically three or four words that summarize your priorities as succinctly as possible.
Two of the most common that emerge still and are still “stability” and “family”, and in reality they are often indicators that someone could benefit from having boring job.
