Chapter 18 How to prevent boredom

Are you bored with your job?Then why don't you play a "pretend" game with yourself, try to make you like it, then you will reap unexpected achievements from it. Boredom is one of the top causes of fatigue.Let's take a lady typist named Alice as an example.One night Alice came home from get off work feeling exhausted and looking worn out.She was really tired too, with a headache and a sore back, too tired to eat and go to bed.She sat at the dinner table only after her mother asked repeatedly.At this time, the phone rang, and it was her boyfriend who asked her out to dance.Her eyes suddenly brightened.She put on the sky blue dress, rushed downstairs, and danced until three o'clock in the morning.When she finally got home, she wasn't tired at all, and she was so excited that she couldn't sleep!

Was Alice really that tired eight hours earlier when she looked and acted exhausted?True, she was tired because she felt that work bored her, and even bored her life.There are countless people like Alice in the world, maybe you are one of them. It is a well-known fact that a person is usually more fatigued due to psychological factors than physical labor.A few years ago, Dr. Joseph Barmack reported in the Acta Psychological Act some of his experiments showing that boredom produces fatigue.Dr. Barmack had a large group of students perform a series of experiments which he knew were of little interest to them.The result?All the students felt tired, dozed off, had headaches, eye strain, lost their temper easily, and a few even had an upset stomach.Is all this "imagined"?No, these students have all done metabolism experiments, and from the results of the experiments, we know that when a person feels bored, his body's blood pressure and oxygenation will actually decrease.And as soon as the person finds his work interesting, his whole metabolism kicks up.

When we do something interesting and exciting, we rarely feel tired.For example, I was recently on vacation at Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies and fished salmon for several days.At that time, I had to pass through bushes that were taller than me, cross many branches lying on the ground, and climb many old trees that fell on the ground. Don't feel tired.why?Because I was very happy, very interested, and felt accomplished because I caught 6 very large salmon.But if I think fishing is a dull thing, how do you think I feel?I must have been exhausted from running up and down the mountain at 7,000 feet above sea level.

Even something as strenuous as climbing a mountain probably doesn't tire you out as easily as boredom.Mr. S. H. Kingman, president of the Agricultural and Industrial Savings Bank of Naples, Minnesota, once told me something that may illustrate this fact: In July 1943, the Canadian government asked the Canadian Alpine Club to assist the Welsh Regiment in mountaineering training. Mr. Kingman was one of the coaches selected to train these soldiers.He told me that he and other instructors—these men ranged from about 42 to 59 years old—took the young soldiers on long treks, through many glaciers and snow fields, and then used ropes and some small mountaineering. The device climbed a 40-foot cliff.They climbed Mi Peak, Vice President Peak and many other unnamed peaks in the Little Moon River Valley of the Canadian Rockies.After 15 hours of mountaineering, the able-bodied young men were all exhausted.

Are they fatigued because their muscles were not trained as hard as they were in military training?Anyone with serious military training must scoff at such absurd notions.In fact, the reason they're so exhausted is because they're sick of climbing.Many of them were so tired that they fell asleep before supper.But were the coaches—people two or three times the age of the soldiers—weary?Yes, they are tired too, but they are not exhausted.The coaches sat and talked for hours after dinner about their day.The reason they don't tire out to the point of exhaustion is because they are interested in this matter.

Dr. Edward Dyke of Columbia University conducted experiments on fatigue by maintaining the pleasure of sobriety in young men for as long as a week by employing the same means by which they are often kept interested.After much investigation, Dr. Dyke said: "Being bored is the only real reason for low energy at work." If you are a mental worker, the reason why you feel tired is seldom because you are working too much, but because you are not working enough.For example, do you remember last Sunday, when you were constantly interrupted, not a single letter was answered, none of the things you agreed with people were done, there were problems waiting to be solved everywhere, and nothing happened that day. Well, you haven't done a single thing and come home exhausted and with a splitting headache.

Everything in the office went pretty smoothly the next day.You've done 40 times as much work as you did the first day, and you come home looking energized.You must have had this experience, right?I also had. What can we learn from this?That is, our fatigue is usually not caused by work, but by worry, tension and unhappiness. While writing this chapter, I found time to watch a musical comedy starring Jeremy Caine.Captain Andy, the protagonist in the play, said in a philosophical sentence: "People who can do what they like to do are the luckiest people." More enjoyable, with less worry and fatigue than others.Likewise, where your interests lie is where your abilities lie.Walking a few blocks with a nagging wife is far more exhausting than walking 10 miles with your sweetheart.

So what to do?In this matter, what can you do?Here's what a lady typist did for an oil company in Tosha, Oklahoma.For a few days each month she had to do the most uninteresting job imaginable: filling out a printed report on oil sales, filling it with statistics.The job was really not interesting, and in order to improve her work mood, she came up with a solution to turn it into a very interesting job.How did she do it? She competes with herself every day.She counted the number of reports filled in every morning, and then tried to break her own record in the afternoon; then calculated the total number of reports made each day, and then tried to break the record of the previous day the next day.What was the result?She was much faster than other typists in the same department, and filled out many boring forms in one go.What good would it do her?Got compliments?No, got appreciated?No, got promoted?No, did you raise your salary?No.But doing so helps prevent her boredom-related fatigue and keeps her in high spirits, because she's doing her best to make a boring job interesting, and she can save money. Put more physical and mental energy, so that she can get more happiness when she is resting.

The reason I know this is a true story is because I married this girl. The following is the story of another lady typist.She finds it fun to "fake liking" a job, which leads to more unexpected rewards.She used to dislike her job very much, but now it has changed.Her name was Willie Gordon, and this is the story she told me in her letter: "In my office, there are 4 typists in total. Each of them is responsible for typing letters for several people. Every once in a while we will be too busy because of the workload. One day, a department I was annoyed by the assistant manager's insistence on me having to retype a very long letter. I told him that the letter would just need to be corrected and not retyped. And he told me that if I didn't want to If he retypes, he will find someone who is willing to retype it again. I was furious at the time, but when I started to retype this letter, I suddenly realized that many people would actually jump up and grab this I have a chance to do what I am doing now. Besides, I am paid to do this job. Thinking about it, I start to feel a lot better. At this time, I suddenly made up my mind that although I don’t want to I like this job, but I'm going to pretend to like it. Then I made a big discovery: If I pretend to like my job, then I really like it to a certain degree; and I also I found that when I started to like my job, the speed of my work can be greatly accelerated. Therefore, I rarely work overtime now. This new working attitude makes everyone think that I am a very good employee. Later, a unit supervisor needed a personal secretary and he put me in that role because he thought I was happy to do some extra work and never complain. This incident proves that a shift in mental state can have tremendous power . For me, it was a very important discovery, and it did wonders for me."

Here, Miss Gordon uses the "pretend" philosophy taught by Hans Wesinger, who tells us to "pretend" that we are happy. If you "fake" an interest in your work, a little faking will make your interest real and can reduce your fatigue, tension, and anxiety. Many years ago, Mr. Hanan Howard made a decision that turned out to change his life completely, making a very boring job interesting.His really boring job was washing dishes, cleaning counters, and selling ice cream at the high school welfare house while the other boys played ball or dated girls.Hanan Howard was not satisfied with the job, but he had to accept it, so he decided to use the opportunity to study how ice cream is made, what ingredients are in it, and why some ice creams are better than others. tasty.

He started researching the chemistry of ice cream, and the results made him a whiz in that high school chemistry class.Later, he became very interested in food chemistry, so he entered Massachusetts State University, specializing in food nutrition.The Cocoa Company of New York later established a $100 prize for essays on applications of cocoa and chocolate, an open essay contest open to all college students.Who do you think won the first prize?Exactly, that's Hanan Howard. He found it difficult to find a suitable job, so he opened a private laboratory in the basement of his home.Soon, the authorities passed a new bill: the bacteria contained in the milk must be counted.So Hanan Howard began counting bacteria for 14 milk companies in Anhurst City, for which he needed to hire two more assistants. How did he get to the top after 25 years?Yes, the few gentlemen who are still working in food chemistry experiments will either retire or have passed away by then, but there will be many young people who are now just starting to learn and full of enthusiasm to take their place . Twenty-five years later, Hanan Howard may well be the leader of his profession.But those classmates who bought ice cream from him back then were likely to be poor and even unemployed at home.They just blame the government and say they don't have good job opportunities.And if Hanan Howard hadn't worked hard to make a very boring job interesting, he probably wouldn't have had the same chance. A few years ago, a young man in a factory felt very boring because he stood by a garage all day making screws.His name is Sam.He really wanted to quit his job, but he was afraid that he would not be able to find another job.Since he had to do this boring job, he decided to make it interesting.So he started to compete with another worker who was in charge of the machine next to him. One of them would make a large sample on his machine first, and the other would grind it to the specified diameter.They swap machines occasionally to see who can make more screws.Their foreman, impressed with Sam's speed and precision, soon moved him to a better position, and this was just the beginning of a string of promotions. Thirty years later, Sam became chairman of the Balwyn Locomotive Manufacturing Company.If he hadn't thought of making his boring job interesting, he might have been a worker all his life. The famous radio news analyst H. V. Katenborn told me how he made a boring job interesting.When he was 22 years old, he worked on a transatlantic cattle ship, watering and feeding the animals on board.Later he traveled around England by bicycle, and then went to Paris.At that time, he was penniless, poor, and had no food, so he had to pawn the camera on his body for 5 dollars. He posted a job advertisement on the Paris edition of "New York Herald" and got a job selling a stereoscope. errands.When using this kind of observation mirror to see two identical photos, a miracle will occur: the two lenses of the observation mirror superimpose the two photos into a three-dimensional photo, and the distance between the front and back can be seen, and a quite real three-dimensional sense. Katenborn had just started selling the scope door-to-door in Paris—and he didn't speak French.But in his first year he earned $5,000 in commissions and made himself the highest paid salesman in France that year.Kattenborn told me that the experience improved his ability to succeed more than a year at Harvard; as for his self-confidence, he told me that after the experience , he even thought he could sell the Congressional Record to French housewives. This successful experience gave him a deep understanding of French life, which made him particularly valuable in the analysis of broadcast news, especially when it came to European events. How did he become a salesman without knowing French?It turned out to be like this. He first asked the boss to write down what he should say in pure French, and then he memorized it.When he went to ring the doorbell, a housewife would answer, and Kattenborn began to recite the sales pitch.His American accent made it sound ridiculous, and he showed the pictures to the housewives.If the other person asked a question, he would shrug his shoulders and say "I'm American .Usually, the housewife would laugh, and he would laugh along with it immediately, before showing her more pictures. When Katenborn told me these things, he was very candid that the job was not easy.He told me that what kept him going was a little bit of faith—his determination to make the job interesting.Every morning before he goes out, he looks in the mirror and says to himself: "Kattenborn, if you want to eat, you must do this well. Since you must do it, why don't you do it quickly? Why? Instead of imagining yourself as an actor every time you ring the doorbell, you are standing on the stage, and there are many audiences watching you? Because what you are doing now is also like acting on the stage It's funny, so why not have a little fun doing it, and do it with a little more enthusiasm?" Kattenborn told me that his words of encouragement were instrumental in turning a job he hated and dreaded into something he loved and made a lot of money doing. I asked Mr. Kattenborn if he could give some advice to young Americans eager to succeed, and he said, "Yes. Make a bet with yourself every morning. We often feel the need for some exercise to get us out of that half-sleep wake up from the waking state; but what we need more is some mental and mental exercise so that we can really move every morning, so remember to give yourself a pep talk every morning." Is it a silly, superficial, childish thing to do to give yourself a pep talk every morning?No, on the contrary, it is psychologically very important. "Our lives are formed by our thoughts" is as true today as it was when Marquez Ole wrote it in his book 1,800 years ago. Say it to yourself every hour, and you can direct yourself to think many brave and joyful things, and you can gain strength and peace from it.Talk to yourself about lots of things to be grateful for, and you can fill your mind with positive thoughts. You can make any job less annoying as long as you have the right idea.Your boss wants you to be interested in your work so that he can make more money; but we don’t care about what the boss needs, you should think about it, if you are interested in your work, what benefits can it do to you?Reminding yourself often will double the joy you get out of life because more than half of your waking hours are spent at work.If you can't find happiness in your own work, you can't find happiness anywhere else. Keep reminding yourself that taking an interest in your work will take your worries away and, in the end, may lead to promotion and salary increases.Even if things are not as good as the results mentioned above, at least it can minimize your fatigue and allow you to fully enjoy your leisure time.