Self Maid

There are few professional indignities as quietly corrosive as boredom. Not the idle boredom of a lazy Sunday or the luxuriant drift of a long train ride, but the sterile, institutional variety that creeps into offices and open-plan workspaces, where the hum of productivity somehow bypasses you entirely. To sit at your desk with nothing meaningful to do is to feel the peculiar sensation of being both present and absent. Emails are answered, tasks are complete, but skills remain untapped. You are there, but unnecessary. Available, but unused.

It is in this state that restlessness takes root. A bodily impatience so severe it can feel like crawling out of one’s own skin (no, it’s not just the jitter of over caffeination). The hours stretch, like an elastic on the verge of snapping. Every keystroke becomes a performance of utility, every browser tab a discreet escape route. All failed distractions from the thought, “I could be doing so much more”.

The modern workplace often celebrates the language of “engagement,” yet so rarely addresses the opposite: disengagement born not of apathy, but of neglect. The problem is not a lack of willpower or creativity, it is the starvation of opportunity and mismatched needs. For the highly skilled, the creative, and the curious, there is no torment quite like watching one’s abilities sit idle. The mind sharpens itself against resistance, and without it, begins to dull.

Psychologists call this phenomenon “boreout,” a cousin of burnout and, in many ways, its mirror.

Boreout: Burnout’s Silent Cousin

Coined by business consultants Peter Werder and Philippe Rothlin, the term describes the slow corrosion that happens when employees are consistently under challenged. If burnout is the exhaustion of overuse, boreout is the decay of underuse. The symptoms, fatigue, irritability, disengagement, mirror burnout. both states can corrode confidence, motivation, and health and hollow out a career from the inside. But boreout has the crueler irony: to feel depleted not by too much work, but by too little. For ambitious or skilled professionals, this wasted potential can be more demoralizing than overwork itself.

How Boreout Manifests in Daily Work Life

• Endlessly drafting reports no one reads
• Attending meetings that could have been an email
• Perfecting the art of looking busy rather than being needed
• Spending more time browsing tabs than applying skills

This isn’t simply boredom; it’s a steady erosion of meaning, which over time can impact confidence, creativity, and even health.

Reclaiming Meaning and Purpose at Work

For those caught in this inertia, the challenge is twofold: to advocate for more meaningful responsibilities where possible, and, when not, to seek parallel outlets where one’s skills can find purpose. Side projects, volunteer work, continuing education may all feel like an attempt at filling a void, but they can also rewire something in your brain, and help you see your situation in a different light and see a new path. Restlessness, after all, is the body’s signal that you are capable of more. It is not merely discomfort. It is a call to action.

In the meantime, many of us will continue to sit in meetings that need not exist, drafting reports no one will read, or perfecting the art of looking busy. But beneath the stillness lies a truth worth naming: to be bored at work is not to be ungrateful. It is to be underutilized. And perhaps the first step in reclaiming one’s sense of purpose is admitting you might be at the tail end of this chapter in your life and a page turn away from the new one. You just have to stay awake long enough to flip the page.