I just graduated from college and have been on my new job for a month. I think I made a huge mistake! I’m really bored. I think I should look for a new job. – Kristi

Dale: Odds are, a new job won’t help. Here’s the hard truth, and I’m calling it Dauten’s Law: “Jobs are designed to be boring.” There are exceptions, of course, like an emergency room : although let’s face it, after a while most emergencies are routine. The reason jobs are boring is that they are created with the expectation that someone could reliably do them; that is, the company intentionally removes the suspense.

J.T.: My company did an informal survey and concluded that the average college grad today is bored with a new job within three weeks. While most students are ready to throw away their textbooks, many are shocked to find that life on the job can make them long for school. The first step is to take a deep breath. It takes time to adjust to a new job/company, so give it a chance. Next, when it comes to the boring tasks you are responsible for, ask yourself, “Why does the company actually need to have this work done?” Look at this from a larger perspective. There’s a book called “The Fred Factor,” by Mark Sanborn, that does a nice job of explaining how to love what you do, no matter what it is. It comes down to perspective – and this book gives some great advice in that area. Besides, Dale is quoted in it, so you know it must be good!

Dale: Thank you, and thanks to Mark. But back to Kristi – there’s an art to making a job more interesting. If you tell people you’re capable of doing more, they’re likely to dump additional boring tasks on you. However, if you spot pieces of the job that are exciting, you usually can get more of them. Shortly after college, I got one of my new company’s executives interested in an area of market research that I was fascinated by. Within a year, I was called Manager of Special Projects, a job doing mostly the sort of research I found enlivening. The job got me around Dauten’s Law because it wasn’t a job designed by the company, but by me, for me.