20 May 5 Tips to Best Handle Boredom at Work
The COVID-19 crisis has changed the workplace in many ways. Not only are new guidelines in place to keep yourself and your employees safe, but it has also caused many businesses to see a decrease in sales, temporarily shut down certain services, experience a reduction of in-person interaction with customers, etc. These changes may be causing yourself and other employees to twirl your thumbs and experience full moments of boredom.
However, it isn’t just COVID-19 that may be causing boredom at work. If you simply don’t have enough to do, you don’t love your job, or for a million other reasons, boredom can be a daily occurrence. In fact, most employees are bored at least 10.5 hours of their 40-hour workweek.
To help you battle boredom, here are five tips to help.
1. Force Yourself to Learn
If you find yourself bored at work, ask yourself a question about your current project or an aspect of your work. Spend just a few minutes learning and answering your own question. When you aren’t learning, you aren’t engaging your mind.
2. Take a Break
When was the last time you took a break? Often, you become bored at work because you haven’t given your mind a time to recharge and refocus. According to one productivity experiment, you should give yourself a 17-minute break after every 52 minutes of work. However, this break shouldn’t be sitting and scrolling on Facebook. It should be a time to get up, go for a walk, clear your mind from work talk, etc.
3. Get Enough Sleep
Getting enough sleep at night is critical to handling boredom at work. When you are deprived of sleep, your mind has a difficult time focusing on the tasks at hand. You may find that your mind wanders, you struggle to concentrate, some tasks can appear harder than they are, etc. Plus, getting enough sleep offers many health benefits such as it can decrease the risk of certain health conditions, can reduce your stress levels, and can even make you smarter.
4. Change Your Work Environment
Sometimes a little change of scenery can make a significant difference in our productivity and help you fight boredom. If possible, switch up your workspace. This could be something as simple as moving to a new desk for the afternoon, starting on a project in a different room, etc. If physically moving desks is impossible, find ways to switch up your current workspace. For example, add some new decor such as a plant, move your desk to the other side of your office, etc. Be creative as you find ways to switch up your work environment.
5. Create a To-Do List
A to-do list is a great way to see all of the tasks you need to accomplish. It can help to keep you on task and prevent you from sitting idly while there is work to be done. At the end of each day, spend a few minutes working on a to-do list for the upcoming day. Prioritize the three most important tasks of your day and place them at the top of your list. Once you have accomplished these tasks, move on to lower-priority tasks. By working through your to-do list each day, it will help to keep boredom at bay and you’ll increase your productivity as well.
By being conscious of your boredom, you will find it is much easier to fight it and increase your productivity each day.
