工作“闷爆”会危害身心健康

大家都知道，工作过度会生病，但是你可知道，工作太无聊也会生病？研究人员指出，对工作提不起精神、觉得工作毫无意义的“闷爆”现象和过度疲劳一样会危害你的身心健康，甚至会引发抑郁症。

Being chronically bored at work can have damaging consequences – and we need to talk about it more, say experts.

专家指出，长期对工作感到厌倦会带来有害后果，需要我们更多地进行探讨。

We all know what burnout is and why it's bad. But fewer of us have heard of 'boreout' – a related phenomenon that's arguably just as pernicious.

我们都知道什么是过度疲劳以及过度疲劳的危害性，但是了解“闷爆”的人就没那么多。“闷爆”是一种同样有害的职场现象。

While burnout is linked to long hours, poor work-life balance and our glamourisation of overwork, boreout happens when we are bored by our work to the point that we feel it is totally meaningless.

过度疲劳与工作时间过长、工作和生活失去平衡以及社会对工作过度的美化有关，而闷爆则是对工作厌倦至极，甚至觉得工作毫无意义。

Boreout doesn't get as much attention as its workaholic cousin, but experts say that this phenomenon – which occurs across industries – can result in some of the same health problems for workers. It's also bad for companies, because a workforce with boreout can lead to high staff turnover.

闷爆得到的关注没有过度疲劳那么多，但是专家表示，这一发生在多个行业的现象可以和过度疲劳一样导致员工产生一些类似的健康问题。员工闷爆对公司也有害，因为闷爆的劳动力队伍会引发较高的员工流动率。

何为“闷爆”？

"Boreout is chronic boredom. That sums it up," says Lotta Harju, an assistant professor of organisational behaviour at EM Lyon Business School, France, who has studied boreout for years.

研究“闷爆”现象长达数年的法国里昂商学院组织行为学副教授洛塔·哈留指出：“一言以蔽之，闷爆是长期的厌倦。”

A number of factors can cause chronic boredom, including working in a demoralising physical environment like a cubicle farm, or feeling under-challenged over a prolonged period. But Harju says the fundamental experience of boreout is meaninglessness – “the experience that the work doesn't really have any purpose, that there's no point”.

多种因素都可能导致长期厌倦，包括在一个让人泄气的实体环境下工作，比如办公小隔间，或者长时间干缺乏挑战性的工作。但是哈留表示，闷爆的基本体验就是无意义感，“感觉工作没有任何目的，也没有意义”。

Ruth Stock-Homburg, a professor of human resources management at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, says she's witnessed the phenomenon across multiple industries. "I started observing people in quiet hours in retail stores, and people are just standing there bored. Or taxi drivers that have to wait sometimes for hours in quiet times in the countryside." Tech workers in Silicon Valley have also told her they feel the same way, she says.

德国达姆施塔特工业大学人力资源管理学教授露丝·斯托克-洪堡格称，她在许多行业都目睹了这一现象：“我观察到，在零售店生意冷清的时候，店员们无聊地站在那里。还有出租车司机有时候在乡下趴活，一等就是好几个小时。”她表示，硅谷的技术人员告诉她，他们也有同样的感觉。

Stock-Homburg and her colleagues have identified three main aspects of the boreout phenomenon: "being terribly bored, having a crisis of growth and having a crisis of meaning".

斯托克-洪堡格和她的同事们指出“闷爆”现象的三个主要方面：“感到非常无聊、陷入成长危机和意义危机。”

Although it's normal for everyone to get bored at work occasionally, being chronically bored for days on end may indicate that you need to address the issue, says Harju, because failing to do so can have consequences. In 2014, she worked on a study, looking at more than 11,000 workers at 87 Finnish organisations. She found that chronic boredom "increased the likelihood of employees' turnover and early retirement intentions, poor self-rated health and stress symptoms".

哈留称，尽管每个人在工作当中偶尔都会感到无聊，但是连续多日的长期厌倦感意味着你需要解决这个问题，因为如果不重视起来就会产生不良后果。2014年，哈留在一项研究中调查了87个芬兰机构的1.1万名员工。她发现，长期厌倦感会“增加员工流动和提前退休的意愿，并且更有可能导致自我评估健康不良的情况和应激症状。”

Other research backs this up. A 2021 study showed that 186 government workers in Turkey who suffered from boreout also dealt with depression, and high rates of stress and anxiety. Studies show depression from boreout can follow workers outside the office, and lead to physical ailments from insomnia to headaches.

其他研究也证实了这一观点。2021年的一项研究显示，土耳其的186名“闷爆”的政府职员大多遭受着压力和焦虑的困扰，还有人患上了抑郁症。研究显示，闷爆引发的抑郁症在工作之余会继续困扰着职员，并会引发失眠、头痛等身体不适。