Fran is struggling with boredom with her job. She is unmotivated to work hard or give it her best effort because it’s become routine and unchallenging–and she’s bored. Her first challenge is to tackle the slippage of her work habits; that is never right for any reason. So, she’s aware that she must do good work regardless of how bored she may feel.
Now, she wants to seek some advice to find out if this is just a boring period she will pass through, or if she’s truly bored with her job. All jobs have boring periods and all people get bored from time to time, even with a job they like.
"I think I’ll talk to my Bible study leader, Nancy," Fran decides. "She’s bound to have been through this in her own career." She gives Nancy a call and they make a date to have lunch on Saturday. But it’s only Wednesday, and Saturday seems a long way off. When you’re bored, time just drags, so now Fran must find a way to motivate herself through the rest of the week.
"What can I do to make myself think correctly so that these feelings of boredom don’t keep me from doing good work?" she thinks to herself. "I need to think of a creative approach to what I’m doing now,” Fran says to herself, “like doing it differently…" She begins to think about this as she is looking at a proposal that needs to be done for one of her clients. "How could I do that proposal differently?" Her creative juices start to flow, and instead of doing it in the same format as she always has, Fran comes up with a new approach. She calls her friend, Andy, in the art department, and gets a little help from him, and before she knows it, she’s into this project with enthusiasm.
At the end of the day, she has her proposal almost completed, but it doesn’t look like any other proposal she’s ever done. Her friend, Louise, walks in her office as she’s finishing, and she shows her the proposal.
"Wow, Fran, that is really different," Louise says. "But I like it. Where did you get the idea?"
"If I tell you, you’ll laugh, Louise," Fran says.
"Don’t tell me; I know: Jesus gave it to you!" Louise laughs and rolls her eyes.
"Yep, exactly right," Fran says. "My goodness, is it time to go home already? Where did this day go?"
Sometimes we get in ruts and we don’t have to be in those ruts. Try doing what you do every day with a different approach, and that will take away a lot of boredom. Just changing the schedule and routine can help.
