Boredom is an anti-aging alarm
Last week I went to see human biologist and longevity expert Gary Brecka speak at the International Convention Centre in Sydney.
He’s gained international renown for his no-BS approach to how cellular-level mechanics function and for designing protocols that accelerate the body’s natural ability to heal itself.
To help it do the job it was designed to do.
This type of thinking and approach appeals to me.
During his presentation Gary said: “Aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort.”
It’s an inconvenient truth. But insightful.
And it’s not just true for how our bodies function, it’s a principle that also applies to how we function in the workplace.
What makes comfort so appealing is that it doesn’t have immediate consequences.
Taking a break after an extended period of intense work is healthy. But going years without meaningful challenge, while it might feel good at the time, comes with predictable consequences that eventually show up.
Just like years of eating comfort food or smoking eventually lead to disease.
Harvard researcher Robert Kegan, who specialises in adult development, found the leading cause of workplace burnout isn’t overwork, it’s going too long without significant development. Or said another way, it’s getting too comfortable for too long.
But too much comfort sounds a high pitched alarm - boredom.
Boredom is an anti-aging alarm designed to keep us safe
About two years is the limit our minds can cope without a challenge big enough to stimulate sufficient growth in our expertise and skills.
What we feel as boredom is really an internal alarm setting off that’s designed to wake us up to start looking for new challenges to keep our skills developing.
It’s not something to avoid, it’s something to pay attention to. It's an internal safety mechanism that’s been biologically programmed by evolution.
There’s two ways we can deal with the boredom alarm:
Hit snooze: by finding distractions like entertainment or creating drama that feels like a big challenge but isn’t. It’s tempting because it temporarily mutes the boredom alarm, but it never truly stops it. Research shows that the more we treat boredom with distraction, the more it can develop into addictive patterns that are hard to break.
Turn it off: by finding a new challenge that isn’t easy, one that’s worth solving that both excites and scares us a little. This switches the alarm off because developing new capabilities makes us feel safe. If we can’t find a suitable new challenge in our current workplace, 25% of us will choose to leave. It’s by far the leading reason people continue to change jobs, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
So what does this mean for leaders and organisations?
It means we can’t assume a comfortable team equals a healthy team.
People in roles that haven’t changed substantially over the past two years or haven’t been part of an initiative to solve a bigger challenge likely aren’t “happy”, they’re slowly and silently becoming bored, disengaged and are on the path to burning out. Even if they don’t yet realise it themselves.
A team that lacks challenge for too long becomes a burned out team with lower productivity and higher rates of absenteeism and voluntary turnover.
This doesn’t mean we need to make life harder for the sake of it. It means creating a culture and mindset where challenge is expected, visible and safe to pursue.
It’s designing work that excites, scares a little, and stretches a team without breaking them.
The rule of thumb between challenge and ability, researchers have found, is when people can do 85% of what they are assigned and 15% where they have to struggle, fail at and learn from. It’s called the Zone of Desirable Difficulty.
How can you shift a team towards seeking challenge and growth?
Here are three strategies others have taken to shift a team away from comfort and towards challenge and growth:
Rotate opportunities: Give team members projects that stretch them in new ways and experience collaborating with new people. Even small cross-functional tasks will spark growth. At Pixar, directors and creative leads regularly rotate between projects and roles. Leaders intentionally expose team members to new creative problems, because they believe sustained comfort leads to mediocrity.
Encourage problem hunting and provide coaching support: Don’t just assign new challenges. Encourage and coach people to identify problems worth solving, so they feel ownership over challenges and develop a responsibility for taking initiative. Proctor & Gamble switched on innovation within their business by asking for tough challenges to be found and then assembling cross functional teams and problem solving specialists to work with the problem finder to develop creative solutions.
Reward curiosity and learning, not just outcomes: Celebrate ideas, effort, experimentation, and progress, not just success. The most innovative businesses know that curiosity is the foundation of innovation and improvement. Heston Blumenthal, one of the world’s most innovative chefs, built this mindset into his kitchen by asking his team: “What interesting thing are you working on? Why is it interesting to you? What’s surprising about it? Is anyone else thinking about this?” Questions like these kept curiosity alive and creativity flowing.
Just like our body ages poorly and becomes vulnerable with excessive comfort, so too does our careers, teams and businesses.
The most effective anti-aging strategy is to do the opposite — the purposeful pursuit of challenge.
Or put another way, to become what I call a Problem Hunter.
Looking for more strategies to beat burnout and create teams that run towards challenges and not away from them?
Check out my new book Problem Hunter.
It provides the mindset and methods successful people use to make it easier to find and solve the right challenges to innovate and grow.