Latest / The Burnout Podcast with Fexingo: Workplace Exhaustion, Recovery, and Sustainable Careers / How Boredom Burnout Is Sabotaging Your Career
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this assumption that burnout is always a story of too much — too many hours, too many demands, too much pressure. And that's true for a lot of people. But there's a quieter, less talked about version that's actually on the rise, especially among mid-career knowledge workers. Luna: You're talking about the 'boreout' phenomenon, right? Where the problem isn't overload — it's underload. Lucas: Exactly. And I think it's worth putting a specific number on it. There was a study out of the University of Essex published last year — 2025 — that tracked cortisol patterns in employees across different job demands. And they found that people in under-stimulating roles had cortisol levels 18 percent higher than those in moderately demanding jobs. Luna: Wait — the bored people had higher stress hormones than the appropriately busy people? Lucas: Yes. And not just a little higher — nearly a fifth higher. The researchers called it 'chronic under-stimulation stress.' Your brain is wired to solve problems, and when there aren't enough interesting problems to solve, it starts generating its own — usually anxious ones. Luna: That tracks with something I read from a psychologist at the University of Chicago — she argued that boredom is actually a low-grade threat signal. Your brain interprets lack of engagement as a survival risk, like you're wasting energy in a resource-scarce environment. Lucas: Yeah, and that's the mechanism. Your body doesn't know the difference between 'I'm in danger' and 'I'm dying of boredom at this spreadsheet.' Both can spike your cortisol. And if this goes on for months or years, you get the same kind of exhaustion that an overworked person gets — but with an added layer of shame because you feel like you shouldn't be tired. You're not even doing anything. Luna: Right — 'I have no right to be burned out, I barely work.' That's a really corrosive thought. Lucas: And that's exactly what happened to a former colleague of mine. He was at a Fortune 500 insurance company, very stable role, six-figure salary. But his job — no joke — required maybe ten hours of real work a week. The rest was waiting for approvals, attending meetings that could have been emails, and pretending to look busy. Lucas: After about two years, he started getting chronic fatigue, insomnia, and this kind of low-grade depression that he couldn't explain. His doctor diagnosed him with adjustment disorder — basically his system couldn't adapt to the mismatch between his capacity and his daily reality. Luna: And what did he do? Did he leave? Lucas: Eventually, yes. But the interesting thing is what he tried first. He thought the solution was more recovery — longer weekends, more vacations, better sleep hygiene. None of it worked. Because the problem wasn't that he was depleted from doing too much. He was depleted from not doing enough meaningful stuff. Luna: So the standard burnout recovery playbook — rest, boundaries, sleep — doesn't fix boreout. What does? Lucas: Before I get into that — and I promise this is connected — I want to mention something. If this conversation has ever helped you think through a career move or a tough decision, and you've ever thought 'this is worth a coffee,' there's a direct line for that. It's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Literally the price of a coffee, and it's what keeps this show ad-free and focused on stuff like this. Luna: Yeah, and I think that's a fair trade — we get to keep doing deep dives on things like boredom burnout, and listeners who find value in it can toss in a few bucks. No pressure, but it does make a difference. Lucas: So back to what actually works for boreout. The first thing is what the researchers call 'job crafting' — but not the fluffy version. It's about systematically adding back elements of challenge, autonomy, and connection. For my colleague, that meant negotiating to take on a small project outside his official remit — a process improvement thing that gave him three hours of real cognitive work a week. Luna: And that small dose helped? Lucas: It helped enough that his insomnia started improving within a month. That's the second thing to know: with boredom burnout, microdoses of meaningful work can be more effective than microbreaks. The recovery isn't about stopping — it's about switching to a different kind of engagement. Luna: So the cure for too little stimulation is... more stimulation, but of the right kind. That's almost counterintuitive when you're exhausted. Lucas: Totally. And that's why so many people get stuck. They feel tired, so they do less. But doing less of something that's already not enough makes everything worse. The third strategy is about reframing the problem internally — which is harder. You have to stop telling yourself 'I should be grateful I have an easy job' and start acknowledging that chronic under-stimulation is a legitimate occupational hazard. Luna: Because the guilt itself is a stressor. You're stressed about being stressed when you have 'nothing to be stressed about.' It's a feedback loop. Lucas: Exactly. And the research from Essex backs this up — the group with the highest cortisol wasn't the one with the most work, it was the one with the biggest gap between their perceived capability and their actual daily tasks. The mismatch, not the volume, was the driver. Luna: So what does that mean for someone listening right now who thinks they might be in a boreout situation? Lucas: I'd say three things. One: get real about the data. Track your energy hour by hour for a week. If you consistently feel more drained after three hours of low-stimulus work than after one hour of deep work, that's a sign. Two: experiment with adding one small challenging task — something that requires learning or problem-solving — and see if your overall energy improves, even if it feels like 'more work.' And three: if you can't change your role, change your relationship to it. Find a side project, a volunteer gig, a skill you learn outside work that provides the cognitive engagement your job doesn't. Luna: I like that last one because it doesn't require you to quit. And sometimes quitting isn't feasible. Lucas: Right. But I will say — for my colleague, none of those half-measures were enough in the long run. He eventually left the insurance role, took a pay cut to join a small startup where he had to build things from scratch. His burnout symptoms resolved within three months. And he told me later: 'I thought I was broken. Turns out I was just bored.' Luna: That's a powerful line. 'I thought I was broken. I was just bored.' Lucas: It stuck with me. And I think it's a useful lens for anyone who's been feeling that vague, gnawing exhaustion that doesn't seem to have a clear cause. Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is ask: am I under-stimulated? And then take that seriously as a source of real stress. Luna: So next time you're staring at the ceiling at 3 AM, wide awake after a day of doing nothing — it might not be insomnia. It might be boreout. Lucas: Exactly. And the fix isn't another sleep meditation app. It's finding something worth waking up for.