Summary
Is crushing office boredom a curse or an opportunity?
Manuela Saragosa hears from David Bolchover, a writer who spent years at major insurance firms with almost nothing to do all day, and Tom Hodgkinson, founder of the Idler magazine, on why being idle is so important to the creative process.
(Photo: A man relaxing at work, Credit: Thinkstock)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC with me, Manuela Saragossa. |
| 0:07.8 | Coming up, doing nothing. |
| 0:10.1 | Many furloughed staff in the developed world have had a lot of that during COVID lockdowns. |
| 0:15.0 | So in this edition, we're going back to stories we broadcast several years ago of people who found a productive way to be idle and |
| 0:22.3 | changed their lives in the process. You felt very tired, even though you did very little, |
| 0:27.0 | it saps you of energy. It was the fact that your mind is just becoming duller. So then I decided |
| 0:32.8 | this is the opportunity to make the move and take the plunge, and so I did. Also, why a little boredom is good for you. |
| 0:39.5 | I think to be creative, you need thinking time and that's what idling really is. It's thinking. |
| 0:44.3 | It's the chance to reflect and meditate, go for a walk. And anyone created knows that's when |
| 0:50.5 | the ideas come. Actually, it's not when you're staring at a screen. Well, signs are a lot of us have been mulling over our jobs amid lockdown. A recent survey in the UK, |
| 0:59.5 | for instance, showed that almost half of all employees are now either leaving their jobs, |
| 1:04.3 | thinking of doing so, or actively looking for new work. So if you're bored and want to change, |
| 1:09.2 | stay with us here on Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:14.4 | Let's start with David Bolkova, who you heard from just a few moments ago. These days, he's a |
| 1:19.6 | published author, but he used to work in insurance. And whatever you may think about working in |
| 1:24.7 | the insurance industry, David certainly didn't start |
| 1:27.6 | out thinking he'd be bored on the job. |
| 1:30.0 | Well, I started working the London insurance market after I left university and I started |
| 1:34.8 | working for a couple of small companies. |
| 1:37.6 | And I was very busy in those jobs, not necessarily very efficient, but busy. |
| 1:42.0 | And I enjoyed it. |
| 1:42.8 | I felt that I learnt quite a lot there. And I graduated |
... |
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