People who are "bored" of their jobs please explain what you mean, why not just get a hobby?

This post has been a long time coming. 

I keep seeing people on here and in real life saying they want to be challenged and are bored of their jobs, a friend of mind told me the same thing that he just does his job on autopilot now and he hates it because he is so bored all the time and he barely spends any time actually doing the work. He went on to say he doesn't take PTO as much anymore to challenge himself and not be "feed into himself being idle" (i hope he doesn't see this, he'll figure me out).

I also remember when the queen died and a friend of mine in London was hoping they do not get the rumored 2 weeks time off because according to him "he would have nothing to do", I was flabbergasted and befuddled that he would say this but I kept my cool.

I know a lot of us here are smart and need some stimulation but I am curious why not just try and do more things in your personal life. That might sound rude but i do not know how to phrase it otherwise. 

I could understand if we were low earners but this is usually coming from bankers who earn insane amounts of money and have the means to do damn near anything if they just had more time. 

Wishing to be more preoccupied at work is crazy to me, I love when I can mindlessly do my job and GTFO to my actual life especially since i make so much money, as a matter of fact I HATE BEING CHALLENGED AT WORK. 

I just want to hang out with friends, meet girls, party, make music, travel and get into some other hobbies I don't want to mention here so I don't dox myself. 

When I hear in person or see on WSO that someone is bored with having so much free time or not having their lives occupied with work issues, I always want to ask "do you know you can literally be doing anything else" "do you know you can find a hobby to be interested in on the weekends and being angry your manager isn't pinging you is insane".

So this is my way of asking, unless being bored means something else, if so please explain. 

My guess is going to top schools and studying tough courses leads to people who always feel the need to be "on", but my rebuttal is if thats the case there are better things to preoccupy the mind with. This lifestyle is what leads to some rich workaholic people on their death beds terrified to go because they didn't do anything plus they didn't even have the excuse of poverty to excuse their behavior so their last thoughts end up as "oh fuck no". 

Sorry for the cynical ending

edit: for example 

https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/off-topic/e… 

 
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I have a theory that might be controversial. I am going to be lazy and just caveat up front that this obviously doesn’t apply to everybody who is bored. Some people probably don’t like finance and that is why they are bored, but let’s assume this is describing someone who is bored and who likes the industry.

While it is hard to make it in finance, the path is largely forged. If you get # score on this test you can go to X school, if you can make it to X school you will have access to Y job opportunities, etc. Quite frankly, there are many people who make it in these pre-forged paths that have not been forced to have a real growth mindset as almost all of their adversity and learning have been in relatively kind learning environments. They are not used to a lot of ambiguity, so they follow the prescribed path and when the prescribed path becomes muddied (usually after they get their first job) they get frustrated because they really don’t know how to continue to grow on their own. There are far too many intricacies in each sector and in theoretical finance to get bored. Sure, repeating tasks may be boring, but there is always something to learn. I am not saying it was easy to make it in finance, but I think it’s certainly possible for people to make it without ever graduating from a box checking mentality to a mentality of personal growth. Personally, I don’t think they are bored, I think they are stuck and frustrated.

This is obviously a sweeping generalization from one point of view. This is an incredibly grey area, so everybody will have a different perspective.

 

Agree with everything above. Couple of things I'd add:

1. as cfperson123 stated, for most people, the dream is "getting there". That's in any field. A 12 year old will tell you they want to "open a bakery" not "have a 40 year career as a baker". It's "get to the NBA" not "play 15 years in the NBA". As I always say, school is about how fast you can run, being in the real world is about where to run to, you don't have to be the fastest, you have to know where to go. 

2. Most people don't have constructive hobbies. A lot of people, esp in major cities, their hobbies are drinking and eating. Kind of hard to just do that day after day. 

3. Life is like a movie or a trilogy of movies. Why are most movie trilogies bad, because its hard to figure out what comes next. Same in life. Take that move Will Smith was in, "The Pursuit of Happiness", its about it getting a job and being okay financially, thats where it ends. The movies not about him having a long career or theres no part 2 where he just works on screen for 2 hours. Same with life. 

 

I've always taken this to mean that people are bored with the actual tasks at work, not that they desire more of the same boring stuff to consume their evenings and weekends. At least every time I've said I'm bored at work that's what I've meant. You're right though in that people who feel this way tend to be lacking outside interests (and in my experience are physically and / or mentally unfit and swirling in depression whether they realize it or not). I can't imagine actually not wanting two weeks off if it's a freebie.

 

Whether people want to admit it or not, work takes up a large part of our lives, especially in industries like finance, big law, etc where the hours are very long. It's great to have hobbies and things to look forward to after work ends, but they don't change the fact that we spend a lot of time at work. Thus, if you find the work tedious or inane, you're going to be miserable no matter what. Making a shit ton of money or having a bunch of cool hobbies has no bearing on you feeling miserable sitting in a cubicle from morning to evening doing tasks that you're completely checked out on. It's also why at a certain point, money becomes less and less of an incentive. You look at any successful person, and I can guarantee you that they're at least somewhat interested or engaged in what they're doing

 

This. Even in a 9-5 job, work takes up a LOT of your time and life. If you hate every second and don't find it meaningful, that's a lot of time spent being bored and unhappy. 1 hour of a hobby after work doesn't really change that.

Array
 

It is hard to get a hobby when I am working 80hrs to 90hrs a week coupled with cramming the few morsels of free time I have to keeping a clean place + staying in shape + maintaining existing friendships (1 social exp a week) + prepping for buyside interviews.

So if you don't like your work AND it takes up your entire time, then yes when work is boring / annoying / deeply inefficient, its effects will be 100x amplified due its very presence in my life versus a corporate worker who clocks out at 6pm to enjoy his life

 

I think people fundamentally view their jobs in two ways. One where it's just a means to an end. You clock in, do your work, get paid and get out. Two, it is the end in and of itself. Your job is not only your means to support yourself/your family but also fulfills your sense of identity and meaning. For these people, it's not enough to park their mental stimulation in external hobbies because they want to fully invest themselves in their careers. I'm not here to pass judgement on which is right or wrong, but you're the former and the people you're questioning are the latter.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
 

As a professional you spend anywhere from 40-80 hours a week at your job, at the beginning of a banking career it may be 100 hours a week. That’s a huge chunk of your waking hours to think god I’m sitting here rotting. A hobby at best case is what 10-20 hours a week? That doesn’t make up for hating a huge chunk of your life.

 

OP - think the above posters have all made really good points, would 100% agree with what they've said. To maybe expand on some of it, personally I would divide people (based on my own personal experience) into 2 categories:

- "Work to live" types - these are people who just see a job as a job, they may do it very competently still but as soon as they leave work they immediately forget all about it. They see work as just a requirement to live and nothing more. I have a few friends and family members in this camp, they typically have tons of hobbies outside of work - so in some ways they live quite rich/interesting lives. However I think very few people here on WSO would be in this category (myself included) as we have the mindset/drive that isn't satisfied by a "standard 9-5", even if it means we can rush out at 5:01pm to get to our spin or football class every single week without fail. Now of course there are some jobs that don't justify being thought of outside of work particularly, e.g. I doubt a toilet cleaner is thinking much about how they can do better on their next shift, they're just trying to make enough to survive. So I'm probably talking more generally about jobs here. Equally I don't think this "9-5" mindset is linked to pay - for example I wouldn't say a nurse is a "work to live" type job, as it requires a lot of training and the nurses I have known will frequently work extra hours (often unpaid) or study extra skills/qualifications in their own time.

- "Live to work" types - describes most people on here. Now of course I don't literally mean your career is your entire life - especially as I've gotten older (in my early 30s now) I've realized the importance of making time outside of work for friends/family/relationships/travelling etc, otherwise what on earth is the point of it all? Having said that, especially in your early 20s I did 80-100hr weeks in IB, and I have no regrets about that - I found the work very varied and interesting (I still do in fact!), and I took pride in the fact that I was learning a lot every single day. So it wasn't just the pay that motivated me. And I think if I went into a job where I was still well-paid but offered very little stimulation, I would start to get frustrated - and whilst hobbies outside of work might mitigate that to some extent, they couldn't cure it completely.

Now in reality the above 2 groups are the extreme tail ends of the chart - most people fit somewhere in between these. If someone though is complaining as you described, my guess is if they're a "work to live" personality then they probably just do need to be more proactive and get more hobbies. However for the types of personalities you see here on WSO, it's not quite as simple - a) we may not have the time with work (although arguably there's always a way to carve out some time during the working week), or b) hobbies may not give us what we need.

Finally, as someone above said - most people on here will have been on a very defined path throughout their life up to now - get the best grades = winning, go to the best college = winning, get the best IB analyst job = winning. Life up to that point is quite simple in that regard. However past that point there's no suddenly no simple answer - i.e. is the guy who works 100hrs a week at age 30 in PE making $500k still "winning" even though he has no girlfriend or hobbies/life outside work? Or is it his friend from college in a cushy corporate development job making $150k a year in a LCOL doing 40hrs a week, with a wife and 2 kids? The problem is there's no right answer here - it's purely for the person to decide, unlike their whole life up to now. So my guess is some people may be venting at a frustration they feel over the uncertainty of where their life is going vs. what it's supposed to be like (I've certainly been there myself!)

 

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