This article was printed in The Christian Science Monitor, November 17, 2008. by Marilyn Gardner Nicole Haase would like to work harder than she does. But as a receptionist and payroll administrator for a manufacturing firm in Milwaukee, she finds limited opportunities to take on more duties. “Work is slow, and we’re a small company, so it’s not always easy to find other things to do,” Ms. Haase says. To fill empty moments, she e-mails friends and works on freelance writing assignments. “The Internet is my friend – anything to make the time pass,” she says, adding that the strain of having too little to do creates its own kind of burnout. Now there’s a name for this kind of underemployment: boreout. In a new book, “Boreout! Overcoming Workplace Demotivation,” authors Philippe Rothlin and Peter Werder call it a pervasive problem. Studies show that one-third of workers in the… Read More
