Bored at Work but Exhausted? That's Still Burnout | Ep 225

I call this phenomenon burnout from boredom, and I've heard it described by hundreds of leaders who I've talked to, and I want to show you what actually happens.

You think about in your career, what you're developing are capabilities, traits.

We're going to bundle it all underneath skills, what you can do.

your capabilities, the results that you're able to drive, you as a leader, the impact you can make, you're developing skills.

And those skills develop over time as you do new roles.

Well, the role that you're in has a level of skill that's required for you to perform well.

So let's just put a line on this chart where the y-axis is the development of your skills and the x-axis is time.

developing skills over time.

And you can probably relate to the curve that happens when you're new in a role, new at a company.

It's really exciting.

And you have this steep section of growth, a steep section of growth at the beginning.

This is the fun part.

It can be challenging.

You're drinking from the fire hose, but it's that kind of challenge that is what you signed up for.

And when you're growing and you're being developed and you're getting all of these new inputs, that's a really exciting time in the role.

But then you know what happens.

As you approach the skills that are required to do your job, you start to flatten out a little bit.

You get this flatter part of the curve.

And the reason that the flattening happens is because once you can do the job that you've been hired to do, you stop getting all of those inputs.

You stop getting all of those development opportunities because the role is designed differently.

for you to perform at a certain level.

And so you start to flatten out and that's okay, that's normal.

In fact, for some of us, it's a bit of a relief at first because the pressure of that steep growth curve is taxing.

It takes a lot of energy.

But here's the part that we don't like.