Are you burned out or ‘bored out’? With Lotta Harju, PhD, and Sharon K. Parker, PhD

September 23, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

When Work Feels Meaningless: The Hidden Toll of Chronic Boredom

Burnout gets all the attention, but there's a quieter workplace affliction that may be just as damaging. In a Finnish study, roughly 27% of workers reported being bored to some degree while also feeling exhausted. That figure challenges the common assumption that boredom is simply a problem of having too little to do—and that it's harmless.

Lotta Harju, an associate professor at EM Lyon Business School, and Sharon Parker, who leads the Centre for Transformative Work Design at Curtin University in Australia, study what they call "bore-out" or chronic workplace boredom. Unlike the occasional boredom everyone experiences, bore-out is persistent: feeling disengaged, unfulfilled, and frustrated most or all of the time at work. And its effects, they argue, can be as harmful as burnout.

What Bore-Out Actually Is—and Isn't

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What you'll learn

1 (00:24) **Defining Bore-Out vs. Burnout** - The guests distinguish chronic workplace boredom from the more familiar concept of burnout.
2 (05:04) **How Common is Bore-Out?** - Research suggests chronic boredom at work is more prevalent than often assumed and can co-occur with burnout.
3 (09:33) **The Damaging Impact of Bore-Out** - Chronic boredom has serious mental, physical, and organizational consequences.
4 (15:01) **Can Jobs Be Designed to Prevent Bore-Out?** - Work design is a key solution, and Dr. Parker introduces an evidence-based model for creating engaging work.
5 (17:49) **Who is Responsible for Redesigning Work?** - Preventing bore-out is a multi-party responsibility, not just up to the individual employee.
6 (21:42) **The Role of Remote Work** - The shift to remote work has a double-edged impact on boredom and engagement.
7 (25:50) **AI: Making Jobs More or Less Boring?** - The impact of AI on boredom depends on how it is designed and implemented, not just the job itself.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Burnout gets all the attention, but some employees struggle with a different problem: chronic boredom on the job, sometimes called "boreout." Lotta Harju, PhD, of EM Lyon Business School, and Sharon K. Parker, PhD, of Curtin University, discuss how boreout differs from burnout, how it can affect workers’ health and well-being, and what individuals, managers and organizations can do to design more engaging work.

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