Welcome to Dear HBR from Harvard Business Review.

I'm Dan McGinn.

And I'm Alison Beard.

Work can be frustrating, but it doesn't have to be.

We don't need to let the conflicts get us down.

That's where Dear HBR comes in.

We take your questions, look at the research, talk to the experts, and help you move forward.

Today we're answering your questions about being bored at work with Dan Cable.

He's a professor at London Business School and the author of the book Alive at Work.

Dan, thanks for coming on the show.

It is a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

So why did you write this book?

It bothers me. It actually kind of makes me a little angry that we spend most of our hours at work when we're not sleeping.

And if that is something that we shut off, that kind of means we're shutting off through life.

Do you find that there are specific points where they're more likely to get bored?

Absolutely. Most jobs, including the most insipid, you know, the most repetitive jobs, they're still kind of cool like the first month.

Like even if you get a job in a factory where you work in the midnight shift, the first three or four weeks, you still feel like you're learning something new and like all the machines are around you and you're meeting all these new people and it's just crazy to be up all night. But after you kind of have it all worked

out and you've already done it successfully a number of times, I think that's when the cycle turns,

you know, boring. And how would it be different for knowledge work? Yeah. It does seem that because the world is changing quicker,

maybe we're moving toward project-based work

where there's a lot to learn every project when it ends,

and that might be every six months to a year

...