Feeling bored is fine; everyone gets bored sometimes, whether it’s at home or work.
Your workday is boring, and you want to do something productive. What should you do? Watch Netflix? Noo!! If you were at your house, you could. But at work? You will probably be scrolling down your Instagram feed to kill your boredom. I’ve seen many employees spend time playing mobile games or making videos and stories on how boring work is.
But, you know what? You can pass your boring work hours in a fun way. You can do a lot of productive and interesting things when you feel bored at your workplace.
10 Most Productive Things to Do When You Are Bored at Work
Check Your Daily Tasks and Review Your Schedule
When you don’t have anything to do at work, you should consider looking at your daily routine. In what activities do you spend the majority of your time?
You may find that some of the activities you perform every day are not helping and that you could replace them with more productive ones. Changing some habits periodically will reduce the amount of repetitiveness and boredom in the workday.
Keep an eye on your schedule so you don’t miss upcoming projects or activities at work. You will be able to improve your performance by avoiding hasty decisions by following this strategy.
Review Your Progress and List Your Achievements
Reminding yourself that you are progressing and growing will give you a sense of pride, and a sense of achievement will encourage you to feel motivated and set ambiguous goals. When you are free, you should also consider thinking about your abilities and your interests. Is there anything you are good at but aren’t considering working on it?
Planning your tasks, deliveries, and projects well in advance is imperative when you have some spare time. Start planning your week and next month by looking at your schedule and calendar. Regular employees and excellent employees differ by their proactivity. A proactive approach will also reduce your stress at work – you will be ahead of schedule, not behind.
Clean Your Desk and Organize Your Space
The environment in which you work has a significant impact on your mood. When there is better harmony in your workspace, you will feel energized.
When did you last clean your desk? Is your work-desk dirty? If yes, start by clearing out the garbage. After that, wipe and disinfect your desk and your computer. Arrange everything in order. I’ve seen a lot of people keeping a photo of their family and loved ones on their work desk. If you love the concept, you can do that too.
Organize Your Emails
When you feel lazy at the office, read your emails. It might seem like this should be part of your workflow, and for the most part, it is, but if you want to keep your email records up to date, then it never hurts to go back through them. Make sure you haven’t missed any important emails by checking your spam folder. Filter out all the random emails. Keep the important ones and delete the rest.
What else can you do? For some specific reasons, we often miss some emails even though we want to read them. So, during your downtime, you should quickly read the emails or keep them in a separate folder. When you have a moment, you can get to them quickly.
Take Time to Consider Professional Growth
In your career, milestones work a lot like career goals, and it takes some planning and struggles to the top. So, it would help if you always took some time to think about your personal and professional growth. When you can spare some time from work, you should reflect upon yourself to see if your professional growth is happening.
When bored, most of the employees open YouTube. YouTube can indeed be overwhelming at times, but you can find plenty of effective channels to help you improve your work if you limit your viewing. It would help if you did some research before using a project management or time tracking tool online to determine whether the tool suits your needs.
Relax Your Body and Mind
Taking rest and relaxing may not seem productive, but in fact, you need some time to recharge yourself. Monotonous schedules of work can make it boring and can drain your energy to work.
So, when you feel bored, get some coffee, stretch or exercise or get some snacks to refresh your mood. If you watch a screen for too long, your eyes may feel tired. So, it would help if you also rest your eyes for a while. You should also know this: hydration can refresh us. Lack of water can make your body tired and sluggish.
Help Out Your Colleagues If They Need It
I know this concept is a little bizarre, so please stick with me. Whether you have finished your work for now or you have a few minutes on your hands, you could help your colleagues if they need help.
You can also have a short work-related discussion with your colleague. It is fine to talk about personal matters, the short trip that you’ve had on your weekend, or some fun stuff.
Connect With Professionals You Admire
Another effective way of killing boredom while improving your productivity is to become inspired by your role model.
Almost everyone admires someone who performs well professionally. This person can teach you a lot. Identify a way to connect on a deeper level with them:
- Follow the person on LinkedIn or Twitter if they are active on those platforms.
- Get involved with their public posts, share your opinions and insight, and start a conversation! You might want to check out their recent articles or posts if you are an introvert.
- Let them inspire you!
Practice Gratitude
Gratefulness is a skill, and there’s much to be grateful for. Different ways can be used to exercise it, and one method is to express it to someone else directly. Further, you can also take the time to think about and write down the good things that have happened to you, give more attention to the little things that are going right, or do something noble for someone.
If you practice gratitude in the workplace or anywhere else, practicing a positive mentality will benefit your performance and health the most.
Update Your CV and Your LinkedIn Profile
When did you last update your CV? Have you thought about stepping up your game so you don’t miss out on amazing opportunities in the future? Adding new skills and work experience, polishing your summary text, or simply upgrading the design of your CV can help you stand out. Thank goodness, there are many helpful tools and templates available to help take your resume to the next level!
It is just as important to have a complete LinkedIn profile as your CV in many fields of expertise. But maintaining such a profile takes time and effort. As you’re bored and want to do something productive, check out the LinkedIn profiles of industry leaders you admire and try to match those!
Conclusion
Here are ten ideas on what to do when you’re boring at work. We hope they will be helpful. We hope these ideas fill in those empty hours at work. The last option we have will be the most helpful unless, of course, you actually have work to do but cannot find the motivation to do it.
Watching your phone isn’t the only thing you can do when bored at the office. There are more productive things, I swear. Next time, you can check out these fun, productive things you can do when you are bored at work.
In addition to improving your abilities, successful people improve collaborative and teamwork skills.
Great time management involves all of these things. Boost your productivity at work in your downtime as well. When there is nothing to do, it is the best time to accomplish something.