Reaction: Boredom is the new burnout, and it's quietly killing motivation at work
This article nails something most leaders miss: we’ve made burnout socially acceptable while boredom feels like confession of inadequacy.
But here’s what matters more. The real problem isn’t that people mistake one for the other. It’s that both signal the same failure: we’ve stopped designing work that demands human judgment. When AI handles the routine and leaders don’t redesign roles around what actually requires thinking, you get cognitive underload dressed up as exhaustion.
The fix isn’t better diagnosis. It’s better work. Give people problems worth solving, decisions that matter, ambiguity they have to navigate. Boredom disappears when the work requires you to be human.
Boredom is the new burnout, and it’s quietly killing motivation at work
Featured writing
Why customer tools are organized wrong
This article reveals a fundamental flaw in how customer support tools are designed—organizing by interaction type instead of by customer—and explains why this fragmentation wastes time and obscures the full picture you need to help users effectively.
Infrastructure shapes thought
The tools you build determine what kinds of thinking become possible. On infrastructure, friction, and building deliberately for thought rather than just throughput.
Server-Side Dashboard Architecture: Why Moving Data Fetching Off the Browser Changes Everything
How choosing server-side rendering solved security, CORS, and credential management problems I didn't know I had.
Books
The Work of Being (in progress)
A book on AI, judgment, and staying human at work.
The Practice of Work (in progress)
Practical essays on how work actually gets done.
Recent writing
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Every time a new tool emerges for making or manipulating symbols, we panic. The pattern is so consistent it's almost embarrassing. Here's what happened each time.
Dev reflection - February 03, 2026
I've been thinking about constraints today. Not the kind that block you—the kind that clarify. There's a difference, and most people miss it.
When execution becomes cheap, ideas become expensive
This article reveals a fundamental shift in how organizations operate: as AI makes execution nearly instantaneous, the bottleneck has moved from implementation to decision-making. Understanding this transition is critical for anyone leading teams or making strategic choices in an AI-enabled world.
Notes and related thinking
Is Automation the Key to Organizational Resilience?
Discover how automation enhances organizational resilience while emphasizing the vital role of human creativity in driving true innovation.
ARTIFICIAL intelligence could hit three in five workers — possibly replacing their jobs. The warning comes in a new International Monetary Fund report on the future of work. It warned of lower sala…
AI could replace three in five workers, warns an IMF report, signaling potential job loss and lower salaries. Discover the implications for the future of work.
Atlassians choose where they work, every single day. Download our free report to see what we’ve learned as a result.
Explore Atlassian's insights on flexible work policies and employee satisfaction. Download the free report to learn from their distributed work experience.