Halfway between misery and sleepiness

Automation may make boredom - inside and outside the workplace - an increasingly significant issue. This is not a recent observation. At the dawn of the industrial revolution, Nietzsche warned of ‘machine culture’ causing boredom for workers.

There are many definitions of boredom, but recent descriptions characterise it as a subjective state of low arousal and dissatisfaction, likely caused by a lack of interest, coupled with an inadequately stimulating environment. A study from 1980 put it more succinctly, placing boredom halfway between misery and sleepiness.

While automation may decrease workload and effort for employees, it has been implicated as a source of increasing boredom in some jobs. The risks of boredom are often highlighted in safety critical environments, in which automated systems have increased tedium. In 2009, two pilots were reportedly distracted by their laptops and consequently overflew their destination airport by 90 minutes. However, boredom is already pervasive in more benign office work environments and has been recognised as an important area for further study.

Boredom may be more fatiguing than effort

In 2017, researchers set out to use electroencephalography (EEG) to monitor the effect of effort and boredom on subjects’ brains. They formulated a number of hypotheses, predicting that boredom would have a similar effect on the brain to effort. As anticipated, participants exerted greater cognitive effort in an effort condition, and felt more bored in the boredom condition. However, while participants in the bored condition initially reported levels of fatigue similar to the effort condition, they reported more fatigue as time went on. Boring tasks can be experienced as effortful and the findings of this study suggest that remaining bored may be more fatiguing than continuously exerting cognitive effort.

Individual susceptibility to boredom varies. Some people can report extreme boredom and others satisfactory interest, even if the environment is identical. Also, workers appear to adopt an array of techniques to avoid or reduce boredom. More research is needed to determine the most effective means, but approaches to alleviate boredom could be grouped into three categories:

Stimulate: Introduce a secondary, more stimulating task. If 30% of your work is carried out by a machine, perhaps this creates more time for more creative, non-routine work.

Rest: Schedule tasks so that workers get enough breaks to recover from boredom.

Reconsider: Just because something can be automated, should we automate it?

Reconsidering automation

Increasing automation is the end-goal for many designers. There are many worthy and logical reasons for this, including enhanced safety, improved accuracy and decreased costs. However, we should consider the impact on people’s wellbeing and performance. Not only because it is likely that automation will displace human jobs, but because the downstream effects of increasing boredom could be serious.

Boredom has been implicated in significant health problems:

- Premature death due to cardiovascular disease

- Increasing risk of anxiety and depression

- A reason for recreational drug use in some populations

Recent studies have also highlighted the potential for automation to reduce rather than increase system performance, in certain conditions.

Exponential change

It’s likely that the following three trends will become more dominant:

Automation: What can be automated, probably will be. What cannot will become increasingly valuable.

Augmentation: Those in high-income, cognitively demanding roles will be differentiated by their capacity to work with automated systems that assist and augment their complex work. However, workers in low to middle-income jobs may find that their roles are less effortful but more tedious.

Agility: We are likely to live and work for longer than ever, while the world changes around us. We must care for our bodies and minds in a proactive, intelligent way so that we can adapt, continue to learn new skills, and maintain our wellbeing and performance for as long as possible.

While previous transformations have impacted technology, the economy and society in a linear manner, the digital technologies we have created are accelerating development at an exponential rate. It took more than a century for the use of spindles – straight wooden spikes used for spinning fibres such as wool and cotton – to spread beyond Europe. It took just seven years for the Internet to cover the planet.

Every revolution in technology has brought challenges and opportunities, requiring humans to make difficult decisions and complex judgements. Are feasibility, efficiency, effort and cost savings the most important metrics when considering automation? A less effortful, more efficient life may not be a better life. Particularly if you are bored.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/automation-automated-job-risk-robot-bored-boredom-effort-fourth-industrial-revolution/