In the experience of boredom, nothing happens except the passage of time. As the Romanian philosopher reminds us Emil Cioranboredom transforms the whole “universe […] Sunday afternoon. Boredom is therefore the test of a pure time, hollowed out and laid bare.
Long before becoming a concern in business, philosophers, poets and novelists have long considered boredom as a phenomenon that directly and deeply affects human beings.
So the writer Gustave Flaubert depicts boredom through the character ofEmma Bovary, a woman who dreams her life instead of living her dreams. He insists in particular on the emptiness of his days and on this boredom which extends its web like a spider.
“His life was cold as an attic whose skylight is to the north, and boredom, a silent spider, spun its web in the shadows, in all the corners of his heart. »
With Madame Bovary, Flaubert examines the silence of the provincial countryside and the moods of a child of the century. Here, boredom is that companion of misfortune that arises when dreams die.
We find the devastating power of boredom in The solitarythe first and only novel published by the Franco-Romanian writer Eugene Ionesco. We discover the daily life of a man who receives an unexpected inheritance and withdraws from the turpitudes of wage life: he decides to become a spectator of the lives of others.
Away from the world, he experiences dizzying loneliness and deep boredom. From then on, his life is punctuated by the outpourings of his isolated soul:
“I’m dizzy and I’m afraid of boredom […] Boredom paralyzes or only makes you do destructive actions or puts you in a state close to death. »
In the novel, boredom is also compared to an animal lurking in the shadows and ready to pounce at the slightest opportunity:
“I feel in the background that boredom is there, that it is watching me, threatening me, that it can grow, envelop me, suffocate me. »
Under these conditions, boredom appears as a very singular feeling of emptiness which will become a leitmotif or even an obsession for pessimistic philosophers, symbolist poets and romantics (Lamartine, Cioran, Pessoa…).
“The Art of Yawning Your Life”
applied tobusiness, boredom offers many avenues of investigation. As part of a recent research paper centered on the work meetings, the ambivalence of boredom appeared as one of the major results of the interviews conducted with the participants.
Far from being just an unpleasant and pernicious affective state, boredom can be a sign of our humanity. Thus, when boredom is felt for long periods, it is harmful and destructive, while when it occurs for short periods, boredom becomes a moment of breathing and a treasure of creativity.
Beyond this ambivalence, it is indeed the taboo nature of boredom that manifested itself in the exchanges with the participants in the meetings. It is indeed improper to speak of boredom publicly by virtue of social conventions. Our collective unconscious is largely impregnated by this common maxim: “idleness is the mother of all vices”. As Palmyre* reminded us:
« [L’ennui], we don’t necessarily talk about it, it’s a bit taboo. »
Talking about boredom in an organizational context goes against the norms and conventions that govern interpersonal relationships at work. Employees affected by boredom ultimately prefer to restrain and internalize their emotions rather than express them because this time for daydreaming seems to have no place in competitive environments.
Boredom remains largely decked out with a negative connotation, it is often associated with idleness, laziness; in short, it is “the art of yawning one’s life” of the romantics. Moreover, “to be bored” and “harm” have the same Latin root: hate.
A word that embarrasses
During our interviews, a certain embarrassment appeared among the people interviewed when the term boredom was directly mentioned. Some were looking for synonyms or making periphrases not to mention boredom directly.
For example, Raphaël preferred to speak of weariness and insisted on the importance and relevance of the meeting that had just ended:
“It’s not boring in “it’s boring” mode [sic] because in itself, if we are present at this meeting, it is because we want to. »
Moreover, an interesting contradiction emerged between the behaviors observed during the meetings among the participants and the comments they made afterwards in the interview. Some participants have notably multiplied the signs of boredom in meetings: motionless body, staring, sustained yawning…
On the other hand, during the interview, they never managed to say that they had been bored. A real dissonance between body language and verbal expression then appeared. Where speeches could be manipulated or skimmed over, there was a kind of bodily truth to boredom.
A process of generalization to others
Throughout the interviews, people who used the term boredom to describe their emotional state in meetings then generalized to other colleagues. Admittedly, these people conceded that they were bored, but they were never alone in this situation. Within an educational institution, Baptiste confided:
« Oui, [je me suis déjà ennuyé en réunion]. Anyone who says otherwise is a hypocrite. […] it’s sure and certain “.
In bank branches, Palmyre was also suitable:
“Indeed, it can happen to me to have a state [d’ennui]… like everyone I think, it would be a lie not to say it. »
To say that you have already been bored in a meeting is one thing, but to find yourself alone in this case is another. It is then necessary to remember that the other colleagues were also bored and if they were to omit to say it or to contest it, they would be liars or hypocrites. By generalizing, one feels less isolated and a little less responsible for experiencing a taboo emotional state.
The way of literature
First of all, the anonymization of the interviews was an effective way to free the interviewees to speak on the hidden subject of boredom. Indeed, when you are identifiable, it is not necessarily easy to talk about sources of boredom such as the lack of charisma of your manager or his fatigue in meetings. It is thanks to the anonymity that an uninhibited word was able to hatch.
In addition, managers also have an essential role to play in playing down boredom in the workplace and listening to their employees. This is what the sociologist Michel Crozier called for in his work The company listens. Perceiving weak signals, hearing whispers and collecting the grievances of employees are all essential conditions for a management healthy and effective.
Another way out of boredom is to take the path of literature whether through the literary works that we have read before and which still resonate with us or through the act of writing itself. Putting into words what we experience in business thanks to a logbook is one of the surest ways to get out of the clay of everyday life.
This is what the writer did Joseph Ponthus in his novel titled At the line and released in 2019.
As a worker in the food industry, he spends his days on the assembly line cutting cow’s tails. In such conditions, boredom comes very quickly. These are then verses of Guillaume Apollinaire and texts fromAlexandre Dumas that resonate within him. He reinvents his days at the factory and then takes himself for a musketeer who scraps against the cardinal’s guards.
His novel is also a diary, a factory notebook that allows him to distance everything he experiences on a daily basis once the day is over. In short, Joseph Ponthus said it himself, it was literature that saved his life.
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Par Assistant Professor, Montpellier Business School
Names have been changed
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