If You Are Bored, Challenge Yourself

A lot of people complain about being bored at work. They suggest the reason they’re bored is the nature of the work. That is to place the responsibility for your level of engagement on something external, instead of recognizing that it is internal.  How you feel about your work is a decision. The difference between work being boring and work that engages you—or even inspires you—is your willingness to bring your best self to that work.

If you decide to make any project or task a passion project, giving yourself over that work, that work will not be boring. By the very nature of the energy you bring the work, it simply cannot be boring. Your effort, your energy, and your imagination are the variables when it comes to the quality of the work—and whether or not you are bored.

The fact that you infuse the project with your talents and energies magically transforms something that might have been boring into something spectacular. Or maybe even better than spectacular, maybe something exceptional. It could set a new bar for what good looks like.

The more challenging the project, the more interesting it becomes. If a project causes you to stretch and grow to obtain some outcome, it cannot be boring. This is true even if what you’re doing is not your favorite thing to do. The truth of the matter is much more in line with what Martin Luther King said:

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

The Buddhists would agree with Dr. King but say it in a different way. They would tell you that how you do anything is how you do everything.

If the work is not challenging, then change the outcome to set a new standard that others will struggle to follow. Raise the bar on yourself and do work that is extraordinary. If you are bored, challenge yourself.