Bored Out Of Your Mind At Work? Your Brain Is Trying To Tell You Something. | Dan Cable | Big Think

Two years ago, in the vast landscape of neuroscience, I stumbled upon a mind-boggling revelation. Picture this: a part of our brain known as the ventral striatum, or as I affectionately call it, the "seeking system." This neuro-gem, this hidden treasure, is the force propelling us to explore the limits of our knowledge. It's the brain's own cheerleader for curiosity, beckoning us to venture beyond the known.

As a psychologist, this discovery hit me like a wave of inspiration. It shed light on the profound reasons behind our tendency to disengage from mundane tasks. Imagine, in the 2015-2016 Gallup polls, a whopping 70 percent of individuals weren't just unengaged; they were practically throwing a disengagement party! Another 18 percent were actively repulsed by their daily grind. Now, hold on to your curiosity hats because what if I told you that this might not be a bug but a feature?

The Curious Case of Boring Work: A Deep Dive

Let's talk about the 'epidemic' of disengagement, shall we? Work, that four-letter word we spend the majority of our waking hours on. The 9 to 5 grind, the daily hustle — call it what you may, but is it possible that our perception of work needs a makeover? Work shouldn't be the thing we endure, the tedious path to the weekend. It's time to reframe our perspective, to see work not as a taskmaster but as an opportunity for our seeking systems to dance.

Historically, work wasn't always this disenchanted chore. Back in the 1850s, buying shoes wasn't a soulless transaction. Each pair was crafted with care by a cobbler, a small team of artisans who witnessed the birth of a shoe from start to finish. Fast forward to the 1890s, and our species got ambitious. We decided to trade the intimacy of craftsmanship for efficiency, opting to sell not two pairs but two million pairs of shoes daily. But at what cost?

Unraveling the Efficiency Paradox

Scaling up came with consequences. The assembly line mentality meant breaking down tasks into bite-sized chunks. Most workers became detached from the final product, creating a void of meaning in their labor. Curiosity became the unwelcome guest at this efficiency party. Henry Ford, the pioneer of assembly line thinking, considered curiosity a bug, a nuisance that needed eradication for the sake of reliability and quality.

Now, we're not stuck in the 1900s, but the echoes of those management practices still resonate. Control systems, punishments, and extrinsic rewards were the tools of the trade, shaping the way we approached work. But is this still the narrative we want for our professional lives?

Rediscovering Curiosity in the Modern Workscape

In the infancy of small organizations, roles were fluid, job titles were more like gentle suggestions, and curiosity was not just allowed; it was celebrated. A delivery person could morph into a corporate spy, contributing to strategic innovations. It was a dynamic dance of skills and ideas, unrestrained by the tight grip of job descriptions.

However, as organizations grew, so did the rigidity. Stay in your lane, they said. Key Performance Indices (KPIs) became the holy grail, leaving little room for the once-prized trait of curiosity. Whether selling toner cartridges, fruits, or shoes, the size of the organization mattered less than the culture it embraced. It's not about the industry; it's about the expectations and the freedom given to employees to bring their unique flavors to the organizational feast.

So, here's the challenge: can we revive the spirit of curiosity in our work? Can we let the seeking system run wild, pushing us to explore, learn, and infuse meaning back into the daily grind? Let's reimagine work as the canvas for our curiosity masterpiece, where predictability takes a backseat, and the unknown becomes our playground. After all, the seeking system in our brains is cheering us on — urging us to be not just workers but curious explorers in the grand journey of knowledge and fulfillment.