Bored at Work but Exhausted? That’s Still Burnout

I’ve hit that point more than once in my own career, even as a coach, and nothing was wrong on paper. But you feel frustrated. I felt flat and wondering then if something’s wrong with me. And there’s a reason that happens. So today I’m gonna show you what that really looks like.

And there’s, there’s 3 experiments that you can run to get your career back on that growth edge. But before we go to the whiteboard and model this, before I share these experiments with you, we need to go back to the fall of 2002 when I was playing junior varsity tennis. For my high school. Now, every athlete knows that you rise to the level of your training and your competition. And if you want to improve as an athlete, you need to level up your coaching, level up your teammates, level up your training partners, and play against better opponents.

If you keep training at the same level, playing against the same people, you stop improving and In fact, you might even catch yourself losing games to opponents that in the past you’ve beaten easily. Well, in 2002, I was playing junior varsity tennis for my high school. And at the beginning of every practice, we would pair up and volley with someone on the team to warm up and get ready for practice. And you’d generally pair with somebody who was at your same level.

You know, the best players would volley with each other and the worst players would volley with each other. Well, I was kind of a middle-of-the-pack And if you watched me and my buddy Joel warm up, it wasn’t exactly Wimbledon, okay? I’d put the ball in the net 2 or 3 times in a row, send one soaring past the baseline, and just kind of write it off as, hey, we’re warming up. But one day I got to practice early, and the only other player who had arrived was Steven. Steven was our number 1 varsity singles player. He was exceptional. He was on track to play college tennis on scholarship. And Steven looked at me and said, hey, let’s warm up. And I thought, you gotta be kidding. You know, I’m not nearly good enough to volley with Steven.

And I was kind of freaking out. But what happened actually shocked Steven just as much as it shocked me. As we started to volley, you know, Steven puts a lot of pace on the ball. Well, I struck the ball better than I maybe ever had in my entire life and started to build some confidence. I started to get really excited. It felt incredibly fun. I was putting more pace on the ball. I was putting more topspin on the ball. It was some of the best tennis I’ve ever played in my life. And it lasted about 10 minutes. Then the number 2 singles player showed up and he kicked me off the court so he and Steven could warm up together as they always did. And I went back to playing with the other middle-of-the-pack players. And the truth is, it wasn’t quite as fun. I wasn’t anywhere near as engaged with playing the game because I had tasted what it was like to be at my edge, to play at my best. And I couldn’t draw that part of myself out when I was volleying with people who were Constantly putting it in the net, and the same thing can happen in your career. 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. Boom. 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, right? 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 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. I’m zooming in on this. As you pass the required development line, you know, especially as a top performer, you want to stretch this even further past, right? You want to grow beyond what’s required for the role. But there’s this tension that starts to build between what you can do and what the role demands from you. And that tension It actually has an effect of pulling you back down a little bit. You start to notice yourself not just plateauing, but almost feeling like you’re regressing. I hated this feeling, the feeling that not only had I stopped growing in a role, but that I was losing my edge, that the boredom of just doing another one of those.

This project, yeah, it’s a new project, but it’s another project just like my last one. This team member, yeah, they’re new, I just hired them, but it’s onboarding another team member just like any other team member. And that growth curve not only flattens, but it’s like the demands of your job, it pulls you down to that level and it won’t let you escape to something more. Have you ever felt this before? That feeling that I’m just trapped at this level? And here’s the worst part, it’s usually a pretty good Situation. It’s an okay life. It’s a career where you’re making good money. You might even be getting excellent performance reviews, but you’re not at that growth edge. And there’s something about being stuck in that plateau, in that feeling of stagnation, that can be even worse than being let go. At least then you know exactly what to do. Go find a new opportunity. And guess what? You get to go right back. to this exciting growth curve section of learning something new at a new organization. It lights you up again. But when you’re trapped in that flat spot, oof, that is a place that can leave you feeling really empty and drained. It’s burnout from boredom.

I actually had a client recently go through my Lifestyle Engineering Blueprint coaching program. His name was Chris Yonker, and Chris left a video on our website explaining his own experience with this type of burnout. He’d been 10 years at the same company, good pay, stable life. He was not in any type of crisis, but mentally he sat there and thought, well, I’ve got, you know, 4, 5, 6 years of career that I want to continue, and how can I make the most of this? But that feeling was muted by this plateau. And I wanna give you the direct quote, exactly what Chris said, because it’s exactly what you might be experiencing if you’re in this place. Chris was a senior engineering leader in space and deep sea robotics. Here’s what he said. 2 and a half months ago, I came to Zach because I was feeling stuck in my career. I didn’t know where to go. I had good pay, a good life, and I was enjoying it, but I wasn’t getting much out of it. You see, that’s that growth curve flattening. It’s like good pay, good life, but it just, it just wasn’t feeding my soul.

I didn’t want to go in and do it. Back to Chris. He said, hey, look, I’ve got about 4 years left and I could retire from my current company. So how do I make the best of those 4 years and then just figure out what I want to do going into retirement? Oh, it’s that feeling of like, can I just get through this next season? And maybe you’re not near retirement like Chris was, but You still think about, man, I’ve got all this work ahead of me. Do I really want to just be a manager for the rest of my career? Do I really want to just do more projects as a senior engineer for the rest of my career? Well, back to Chris. He said, I got really clear on my vision, really clear on my purpose, understanding what I wanted in life. Do you understand what you want in your life? Accelerating those 4 years to today, I’ve been able to make some really big breakthroughs, and I actually just left my job of 10 years, moving across the country to be closer to family and start something brand new as an engineering director next week. Back to the growth curve.

You see, he needed to get back to that place, that place of challenge, that place of enthusiasm and excitement. When you stay out here in this flat spot too long, It just doesn’t matter how good it might be on paper. We have inside of us a compelling desire to be at that growth edge, and that’s what I want for you as well. For Chris, he thought he just needed to ride it out for a few more years to retirement. But what he realized when he got clear in terms of his vision, his values, his purpose, what he really wanted as we worked through the Blueprint journey together was that no, I want to continue to operate in a way that lights me up where I can perform at my best. And that means getting to our growth edge. Let’s talk about how you can start running experiments to activate that in your own career.

And by the way, if your career does look good on paper like Chris’s did, this can be a hard problem to even admit. You make good money, you’ve got the stability, maybe you’re Not working long hours. You’ve got 40-hour work weeks. Like, all of the things are good. And so you get that sense from the inside. It’s like, what am I even complaining about? But feeling stuck is still painful, and it’s information you need to respond to. So I made the Next Move experiment to help you figure out whether you’ve outgrown the role, the company, or maybe the direction of your career entirely, and then run one small experiment before you make a giant career decision and change course in something that you may regret.

So I’ve put all of what we’re about to walk through into a simple doc that you can download and work through. Grab it in the link in the description and follow along as we walk through the next move experiment. The question I get when someone is in burnout from boredom is, do I need a different role? Do I need a different company? Or in an extreme case, do I need to leave engineering altogether? Maybe start my own company, do something completely in a different direction. And here’s the trap. You can spend months trying to think your way into the right answer for that. But when we’re up here in our mind, Clarity is not going to arrive. Clarity does not arrive before action. Action is what will lead you towards clarity.

So let’s talk about the Next Move experiment. There are 3 different kinds of experiments that we can run. The first is a role experiment. And I’m calling these experiments because I’m not telling you that you need to change your role. What I’m telling you is that you need to take an action now to help you understand with clarity if changing roles will be the right next thing for you. We can run a role experiment. Should I move from this type of work to that type of work, from this team to that team, this department to that department? There are so many ways that you can activate growth again by changing role within your existing organization. But the second kind of experiment is the bigger one lots of people want to run. Is it time for a new company? A company experiment. Hey, Zach, I’ve had this conversation before. I’ve talked to my boss about my desire for growth, my hunger for the bigger project, my interest in learning new things, and nothing is happening. I’m just not getting the support here. Or, Zach, I’m going to have to wait for my boss to retire before there’ll ever be an opportunity here. Okay, maybe a company experiment is the right place for you to take action next. And in some cases, you may have reached a point in your life and in your career where it’s time for an entirely new direction. Just had an amazing conversation With a past client named Hadi, who’s had some tremendous success.

And in fact, the vision that we wrote together in our Blueprint coaching has come to pass. He has actually overdelivered and crushed it on the things that he set out to accomplish. And now he’s thinking about what’s next. Is it time for a new direction? You might be thinking those same things, but we don’t want to disrupt an amazing career that we’ve built with a move that we haven’t tested. Let’s Run an experiment. 3 kinds of experiments you can run: a role experiment, a company experiment, and a direction experiment. So how do you know which type of experiment to run first? Good question. The first thing I’d ask you to consider is, do you feel depleted or do you feel stagnant? And I know those 2 words might feel similar, but let me explain the distinction. Sometimes you’re energetically depleted. You have been working 60, 70, 80 hours a week. You’ve been in a toxic, terrible culture.

You’ve been micromanaged. You’ve been treated in a way that is emotionally taxing and your energy is depleted. There’s nothing in the tank, and you’re experiencing the kind of burnout that feels like an empty rock bottom depletion. That is different from the feeling of simply no longer growing, the burnout from boredom that we’re talking about here. And these 2 require different responses. If you’re in a depletion state, these experiments It may not work for you at all. Depletion requires a different intervention. But if you’re in stagnation, then we can look at these 3 and say, which way do I want to go? How can I find that growth edge again? The next important question: is it time for me to push or is it time for me to pivot? This is the bigger question when looking at stagnation, because our temptation is to just run away from the situation. I don’t know how to solve it here. I’m in this plateau, so I’m just going to leave. I’m going to leave the team, leave the company, leave the direction, whatever that is. Well, I want you to ask yourself, can I imagine achieving the career and the life that I actually want? From inside the company that I’m in today.

Here’s a more general way to think about it. When we do coaching together, we build a really clear vision and we create a clear set of values that drive you towards that future. So if, if your career is the vehicle, it’s the, you know, it’s the Ferrari that you’re going through life in, and your vision is in the driver’s seat and your values are in the passenger seat. Mm-hmm. And you’re asking yourself, can I get to the destination in this vehicle? Can I achieve the career and the life that I want inside the vehicle that I’m in today? And if you can see yourself at full speed, if this vehicle were to continue to the peak that it could, to its max capacity to deliver in your career and life, could you get to your vision? And if the answer is, Yeah, I think it could. I think that there are opportunities inside my organization that look like where I want to go. I do think that my values can be aligned and honored and work for me in this company. Well, then great. Let’s continue to push because changing vehicles comes at a cost. Changing vehicles means you’ve got to ramp back up and build speed again. So if you believe that the vehicle you’re in could take you where you want to go, then let’s focus in on a role experiment. Let’s use the existing momentum we have to look carefully at what can I do to push to a growth edge with a role experiment? If the answer is no, Zach, this company, this organization, this direction, I don’t see my vision ever coming to pass here. I cannot even imagine.

A situation where my vision could happen here. If that’s true for you, not because you’re feeling a little unhappy, not because you’re upset at a boss, but because you’ve taken a really clear, open, and honest look. Zach, it’s not gonna happen. Okay. It’s time to pivot, and we need to make that decision. Is it a company or a direction experiment? Now, how do we decide which one of those 2 is right for you? Is it a company or direction experiment? Here’s the simplest way to think about it. Fulfillment in our work, fit between your job, your career, and yourself comes down to what you are doing all day, every day. The actual activities that fill your calendar, the work that you show up to do. And making money is great, but if you show up to work and what you’re doing from 8 to 5 is actions you just don’t enjoy taking, well then we’ve got a real problem in terms of direction. Right? That’s not going to change if you just switch companies, right? You’re going to be doing similar work just in a new environment with a new opportunity, with new scope, new trajectory.

So the company experiment is great for you to run if you enjoy this kind of work. You do see yourself continuing on the path. It’s just that the place right now looks like a vehicle that won’t take you to your vision. If that’s you, a company experiment is great to run. But if you can say honestly, I just can’t see myself Waking up and doing this every day for the rest of my life. My vision is something completely different. It’s time to go run the direction experiment. And I need to be honest with you, most people think they know what they want, but at best they have a vector and not a vision. They know they want to lead people or make a bigger impact or make $1 million a year or whatever. And it’s these general things that you know that you want. But general things, a vector towards the future, is not the same as a clear vision of the future. And if you don’t know the difference and you don’t have a vision, then you need to reach out. We need to talk about that because none of these experiments are going to be clear and helpful if you don’t have that piece first.

But let’s get back to where we go from here. You’ve got an experiment that you want to run. Why is this so important and how is it gonna help you get back to the growth edge? Remember, we’re engineers, so experiments are designed to test hypotheses, to answer a particular question. And so if you’re running a role experiment, the question that you’re testing is, can I get back into meaningful growth without leaving my company? That is a role experiment. I’ll give you 2 or 3 really great options for exactly what to do in the free download in the description. I won’t go through all of those now because you’ll want to do some critical thinking about which one is right for you. When you move on to a company experiment, the question here that you’re testing is, is my career actually wrong or Or is the environment wrong for the career that I want? And if that isn’t where you head, if it’s a direction experiment, then the question is, have I outgrown or evolved into something that doesn’t match this path at all? Have I outgrown the path itself? Those questions, we wanna take specific actions to test.

And I’m gonna, like I said, provide for you 2, 3, 4 different ways that you can run those tests as an inspiration. And I want you to go through this tool and I want you to ask yourself, following the guideline, which test, which experiment is for me? Which specific action is the right one for me to take next? And most importantly, how quickly can you get into action on that experiment? Last piece. Experiments in career are best run with support outside yourself. So don’t go alone. Get a coach, get a mentor, get a colleague who you trust that you can work with. I think about taking a big group of my clients out to Copper Mountain, Colorado for a live lifestyle engineering event. We did some amazing coaching. We had some amazing fun. on the slopes together, and I love to snowboard. And as a snowboarder, it’s just like we’re talking about here in our career. You begin on the bunny hill, you begin with no skill at all, and you’re constantly falling down, and, you know, your knees and your butt are pretty sore at the end of the day. But once you master those beginner slopes, you want to move on, go from greens to blues, and eventually blues to blacks, and blacks to the big Double black bowls on the back of the mountain. And the point is, if you don’t continue to move up and find your edge, yeah, it’s always fun, but it’s not as fun.

And I remember being in Park City, Utah on a cat track that lasted forever. It was like the longest, most boring run of my life. And at the end of that, I was genuinely tired and fatigued. My, like, my calves were burning and my body was just sort of stiff and sore from this really long, boring run. And it took a lot of energy out of me to do this incredibly simple and boring run. And I think it’s as much mental as it is physical, because the next day we got 10 inches of powder. And my buddy Jack and I went out to the back bowls and we just did run after run.

And I had endless energy. And it was incredible because in those more exciting and difficult conditions, I was able to find my edge again. It’s time for you in your career to get yourself back to that edge, your growth edge, where you can get out of stagnation, live into your full potential, and disrupt the feeling of burnout from boredom. So like I said, I made the Next Move experiment to help you figure out whether you’ve outgrown the role, the company, or maybe the direction that you’re headed entirely. And then run one small experiment now before you make some giant career decision, because you will not find clarity by sitting and thinking. Grab it from the link below. And if you want to go further with these ideas, I’d really encourage you to check out a video that I made recently that is going to explain another one of the main reasons that stagnation can happen in your career.

If you’re feeling stuck, if you’re not sure, it’s called Why Great Engineers Get Passed Over for Promotion. We’re gonna put the link to that video here. If you’re feeling like, yeah, Zach, I am growing, I am doing great work, I don’t think it’s this thing you’re talking about with burnout from boredom, That video may have the exact key to exactly why you’re getting passed over and someone else who’s not even as good as you is getting that next opportunity. So go check that video out next. I’ll see you there. Let’s do this.