4 ms·

You've clearly never been in the situation then. It's fine for the first couple of weeks. Maybe even the first few months. But when one third of your life or m

You've clearly never been in the situation then. It's fine for the first couple of weeks. Maybe even the first few months. But when one third of your life or more is spent with absolutely no meaning what so ever, when you hands feel tied behind your back due to certain obligations / job prospects / whatever, it wears you down. It did for me. It drove me to the point of wanting to end it all. I really hope you're never properly bored at work.

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 5y ago
Boreout sounds amazing in a remote work situation.
- soylentgraham 5y ago
  Until guilt sets in. I started getting anxious that I would be "found out", but every week ended again being told I was the most productive. I ended up quitting when someone popped up with a much more creative job
  - rjzzleep 5y ago
    It's not guilt that's the problem. Just because you're in a remote work situation doesn't mean you just stop thinking about the boring shit that you do. Meetings also don't stop. You get angrier and angrier about the whole situation. It nags on you and actually spend more time thinking about it than you would normally spend on it outside of work. I guess there are quite a lot of people that can just tune out things they don't like, but I'd wager most people are not capable of that trait. I think the more competent you are the more it bothers you not to produce anything. And it's not related to guilt, at least it never was for me(and looking around in this thread I'm obviously not the only one). Just because you are paid doesn't mean you want to pass your life without perspective. This is basically someone sucking your life away without drive or mission and only compensating in money. And if there is any truth to the "Drive!" book, then the money is almost secondary to the other two factors.
- imtringued 5y ago
  No, if you straight up do "fun things" (watch movies or play video games) then you won't be motivated to work even when it's time for "boreout" to end. So you must do "work safe" activities that wont get you fired all day which is worse than doing boring work that lets you feel useful.
Spivak 5y ago
I’m so sorry that it got so bad for you. I recently quit my job because I was in that situation. I literally had nothing to do. I had maybe 8 hours of actual work a week. Paid really well to do basically nothing all things considered but it drained my soul. Being at home made it more tolerable but after cooking, baking, reading, side projects, getting my side hustle off the ground, exercising, starting an herb garden, taking up sketching, finishing my entertainment backlog, I don’t even know anymore I just couldn’t do it. There’s something so terribly draining about having so much “kinda free time” where I might have to do random tasks sporadically but is otherwise completely empty.
- tdfx 5y ago
  It sounds like a joke but: if they company was paying you and giving you good performance reviews, your effort was obviously meeting expectations. Why didn't you get an additional full-time job?
  - bruce343434 5y ago
    Because the time is not truly free? It would only take one agenda collision to foil everything.
    - SkyPuncher 5y ago
      I've worked remotely for a long time. I've always had this dream of pushing through my work early in the week so I can fit in a round of golf or a few hours of skiing on a Friday morning. It's panned out less than 5 times because something always comes up on a Friday morning.
anon9001 5y ago
> when one third of your life or more is spent with absolutely no meaning what so ever I recognize that you're being sincere, and I don't mean to offend, but why would you tie meaning in your life to your labor? Work time is labor time for me, and any amount of it is actively detracting from me being able to pursue the things that I do think have meaning. The more time work takes, the less time I have for things that are meaningful, practically by definition. Tying any sense of meaning or purpose to employment would seem to put the worker in an emotionally precarious position without any obvious benefit. When I stop requiring additional funds, I'll stop going to work. What am I missing?
- thebricksta 5y ago
  I was once in a position where I had nothing to do for around 5 months straight after starting a job. It was an open office plan, we were clocked in 9-5, and I had a supervisor from another team who sat across from me and meant to keep an eye on me. I was also young and naive enough that I didn't know how far I could push limits slacking, so I didn't really push them at all. I desperately pleaded with everyone for work, but was always told the equivalent of "next sprint we'll have some for you, go read some documentation for now!". I had never been more depressed in my life than those 5 months. The closest thing I could compare it to is imagine printing out a copy of your current project's documentation, locking yourself in a room with it for 8 hours, then doing that 100 more times. It's a special type of hell. No matter how well you think you can divorce your work time from your personal time, it starts to cross over. Work becomes so boringly painful that you actively dread it even in your time off. You know that tomorrow you're going to have to wake up and pretend to stare at documentation. For hours. And hours. And hours. And then repeat that the next day. And the next. And the next - with no end in sight.
  - Aerroon 5y ago
    Reminds me of school. One of the coping mechanisms I found was daydreaming while pretending to do the work.
- lmz 5y ago
  I think it's the "faking it" part that's draining.
HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
It may be a personality thing. I was in that situation and I didn't find it having "absolutely no meaning whatsoever." It was a time to learn, research new technology, experiment, etc. I was in that situation for at least two years before the company went under. It was before widespread internet, so I can imagine that if I had the net in my pocket it would only have been so much better. [edit] I had forgotten about this, but ironically, a few years earlier the company started selling a software package that was written by an engineer in a similar situation. He worked at a water plant and his job was basically to sit there all day occasionally checking some gauges to make sure everything was OK. Since he had essentially all day free with no one caring what he did, he wrote a complete software application.

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 5y ago

Boreout sounds amazing in a remote work situation.

soylentgraham 5y ago
Until guilt sets in. I started getting anxious that I would be "found out", but every week ended again being told I was the most productive. I ended up quitting when someone popped up with a much more creative job
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  It's not guilt that's the problem. Just because you're in a remote work situation doesn't mean you just stop thinking about the boring shit that you do. Meetings also don't stop. You get angrier and angrier about the whole situation. It nags on you and actually spend more time thinking about it than you would normally spend on it outside of work. I guess there are quite a lot of people that can just tune out things they don't like, but I'd wager most people are not capable of that trait. I think the more competent you are the more it bothers you not to produce anything. And it's not related to guilt, at least it never was for me(and looking around in this thread I'm obviously not the only one). Just because you are paid doesn't mean you want to pass your life without perspective. This is basically someone sucking your life away without drive or mission and only compensating in money. And if there is any truth to the "Drive!" book, then the money is almost secondary to the other two factors.
imtringued 5y ago
No, if you straight up do "fun things" (watch movies or play video games) then you won't be motivated to work even when it's time for "boreout" to end. So you must do "work safe" activities that wont get you fired all day which is worse than doing boring work that lets you feel useful.

Spivak 5y ago

I’m so sorry that it got so bad for you. I recently quit my job because I was in that situation. I literally had nothing to do. I had maybe 8 hours of actual work a week. Paid really well to do basically nothing all things considered but it drained my soul. Being at home made it more tolerable but after cooking, baking, reading, side projects, getting my side hustle off the ground, exercising, starting an herb garden, taking up sketching, finishing my entertainment backlog, I don’t even know anymore I just couldn’t do it. There’s something so terribly draining about having so much “kinda free time” where I might have to do random tasks sporadically but is otherwise completely empty.

tdfx 5y ago
It sounds like a joke but: if they company was paying you and giving you good performance reviews, your effort was obviously meeting expectations. Why didn't you get an additional full-time job?
- bruce343434 5y ago
  Because the time is not truly free? It would only take one agenda collision to foil everything.
  - SkyPuncher 5y ago
    I've worked remotely for a long time. I've always had this dream of pushing through my work early in the week so I can fit in a round of golf or a few hours of skiing on a Friday morning. It's panned out less than 5 times because something always comes up on a Friday morning.

anon9001 5y ago

> when one third of your life or more is spent with absolutely no meaning what so ever I recognize that you're being sincere, and I don't mean to offend, but why would you tie meaning in your life to your labor? Work time is labor time for me, and any amount of it is actively detracting from me being able to pursue the things that I do think have meaning. The more time work takes, the less time I have for things that are meaningful, practically by definition. Tying any sense of meaning or purpose to employment would seem to put the worker in an emotionally precarious position without any obvious benefit. When I stop requiring additional funds, I'll stop going to work. What am I missing?

thebricksta 5y ago
I was once in a position where I had nothing to do for around 5 months straight after starting a job. It was an open office plan, we were clocked in 9-5, and I had a supervisor from another team who sat across from me and meant to keep an eye on me. I was also young and naive enough that I didn't know how far I could push limits slacking, so I didn't really push them at all. I desperately pleaded with everyone for work, but was always told the equivalent of "next sprint we'll have some for you, go read some documentation for now!". I had never been more depressed in my life than those 5 months. The closest thing I could compare it to is imagine printing out a copy of your current project's documentation, locking yourself in a room with it for 8 hours, then doing that 100 more times. It's a special type of hell. No matter how well you think you can divorce your work time from your personal time, it starts to cross over. Work becomes so boringly painful that you actively dread it even in your time off. You know that tomorrow you're going to have to wake up and pretend to stare at documentation. For hours. And hours. And hours. And then repeat that the next day. And the next. And the next - with no end in sight.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  Reminds me of school. One of the coping mechanisms I found was daydreaming while pretending to do the work.
lmz 5y ago
I think it's the "faking it" part that's draining.

HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago

It may be a personality thing. I was in that situation and I didn't find it having "absolutely no meaning whatsoever." It was a time to learn, research new technology, experiment, etc. I was in that situation for at least two years before the company went under. It was before widespread internet, so I can imagine that if I had the net in my pocket it would only have been so much better. [edit] I had forgotten about this, but ironically, a few years earlier the company started selling a software package that was written by an engineer in a similar situation. He worked at a water plant and his job was basically to sit there all day occasionally checking some gauges to make sure everything was OK. Since he had essentially all day free with no one caring what he did, he wrote a complete software application.