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Burnout and boredom are the two dreaded b-words of the modern workplace. We fear one, dismiss the other, and often fail to see how easily they trade places. Too often, boredom masquerades as burnout. To the untrained eye, exhaustion and disengagement can look identical. Boredom is typically a form of cognitive under-stimulation, while burnout is emotional and physical overextension. Both can leave people feeling unmotivated and fatigued. But heres the twist: in cultures that tend to glamorize busyness, many employees feel safer saying theyre burned out than bored. Burnout signals you worked “too hard.” Bored, on the other hand, signals the opposite. Recent reports show 82% of knowledge workers across North America, Asia, and Europe have varying degrees of burnout. And if youre in Australia, welcome to the burnout capital of the world. Burnout has a costly link to organizational issues such as attrition, absenteeism, lower engagement, and decreased productivity. But dont underestimate the grim impact of a bored workforce either. When you dont address it, it metastasizes into cynicism and passive sabotage. Given the higher prevalence of bored employees than burned-out ones, the distinction between burnout and boredom is too important to ignore. Why does this matter? Because when we mistake boredom for burnout, we prescribe rest, when what we really need is challenge. We pull the wrong levers. We give rest to those who crave renewal and pressure to those who need pause. If you cant figure out whether youre experiencing burnout or boredom in disguise, the following are five signs to be aware of: 1. Youre feeling fatigued, but not stressed Feeling constantly fatigued, even when sleeping and eating well? Irritated but not exactly stressed? Thats a boredom clue. If your fatigue is tinged by feelings of resentment or dread, you might be experiencing burnout. But if its laced with numbness, clock-watching, or a nagging wish for a fire drill just to break the monotony, thats boredom. Both are crises of connection that are likely related to purpose, people, or growth. 2. Busy yet unfulfilled Your calendar is filled to the brim with meetings, and the emails never end. Even when sleeping, your remit seems to increase exponentially, and there are endless deliverables. You keep going because everyone needs you, and you dont want to let people down. But none of it lands anymore. You dont experience meaning and satisfaction, and you feel somehow hollow. Youre on a track to burning out. Boredom, on the other hand, may see you doing “busy work” but choosing less critical tasks. The challenge-reward loop fueling motivation has broken down, which leaves you mentally checked out. Boredom can become problematic when its rooted in a deeper sense of purposelessness. And if you’re easily distracted and are distracting others, thats also boredom. 3. You crave escape (any escape) With burnout, you fantasize about quitting and disappearing. All you want is some peace and quiet. No emails, pingszero contact. Just some silence. Even a trip to the dentist for a root canal becomes appealing if only for the escape and genuine, “out of office” experience. When youre bored, the escape looks different. You want a thrill. You scroll job ads, online shopping, airline specials, anything just to feel a flicker of excitement. Either way, youre forming an exit strategy. 4. Quality of work slips Maybe youre noticing that your quality of work is slipping. With constantly increasing workloads and being overwhelmed for prolonged periods, its inevitable. Thats a clear sign of burnout, especially if its not your normal state of play. What if the decreased quality of work is due to procrastination? Maybe its a missed deadline here and there. Its not quite enough effort to make it a killer presentation, but it was passable. Thats boredom. Its also a precursor to quiet-quitting, doing the bare minimum of ones job and putting in no more time, effort, or enthusiasm than necessary. 5. Emotionally flatlined You used to get excited, be passionate, even push back. Now its just neutral, no irritation and no excitement. The highs dont lift you, and the lows dont move you. You stop reacting because it takes energy that you no longer have. It feels a bit like emotional autopilot. In burnout, that numbness is self-protection. When you are bored, its detachment, not from energy depletion, but lack of stimulation. There is no challenge to rise to, no cause to push for, so you quietly disconnect. When disconnection feels better than engagement, that is a sign that something deeper needs your attention. The key to distinguishing between burnout and boredom lies in tuning into the disengagement and understanding its source. For bored employees, its about restoring agency, novelty, inspiration, and purpose: Ask better questions: What parts of the job feel under-stimulating or misaligned with their skills? Curate challenge: Provide opportunities for responsibility and problem–solving, not just task execution. Reinforce relevance: Help them see the impact of their work. Strong leadership modeling: It always comes back to who manages and leads. Purpose–driven leaders and relatable managers engage, connect, and inspire. Burnout says, “I gave too much.” Boredom says, “I stopped giving at all.” One makes you feel overdone, while the other makes you feel underwhelmed. Either way, its a signal that we’ve drifted from meaning, and it’s time to get back to being
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E-Commerce
I was taught to use a so-called feedback sandwich to give constructive feedback: lead with a positive, share the negative, finish with a positive. The idea was . . . well, I dont know what the idea was. I guess to soften the room for improvement blow? All I know is that the feedback sandwich rarely worked. Especially on me. Take the time a boss told me, I really appreciate how you always come prepared to the supervisor meetings. But you sometimes run over people with all your facts, and figures, and productivity results. Even so, youre a valuable member of the team. The meat of the sandwich, the you sometimes run over people with your facts and figures, was admittedly true. But the bread, the two positives, didnt soften the blow. In fact, the bread made me feel manipulated. And kind of pissed me off. Thats because a sandwich in effect says, I need to give you negative feedback . . . but first Ill say something nice so you wont think I hate you. And then Ill say something nice so you wont be mad at me when you leave. Thats the problem with the feedback sandwich. The recipients feel manipulated. And even if at first they dont, give it time: Since our positive qualities tend to stay consistent, the same bread eventually starts to taste stale. And as for the likelihood of positive change? According to research published in Learning and Motivation, the feedback sandwich almost always fails to correct negative or subpar behaviors if only becauseas in my caseI focused more on how the feedback was delivered, than on the quality and accuracy of the feedback itself. The better approach is what the authors of a study published in Management Review Quarterly call benevolent honesty. As the researchers write: We propose that that a better approach is benevolent honesty, in which communicators focus on delivering negative information truthfully and directly, but also employ additional strategies to ensure that their words actually lead to long-term improvement. For example, a professor might emphasize that a student is capable of achieving high standards when giving critical feedback. Though this strategy might seem intuitive, communicators often fail to make their benevolent intentions clear they seem to forget (at least in the moment) that (others) do not have access to that same information. Their findings dovetail nicely with a Journal of Experimental Psychology study that shows including one sentence can make feedback up to 40% more effective: Im giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them. According to Culture Code author Daniel Coyle, that phrase contains three distinct signals: You are part of this group. This group is special; we have higher standards here. I believe you can reach those standards. Instead of a feedback sandwich, the result is more like a relationship sandwich. No manipulation. No platitudes. Not irrelevant compliments. No false hope. Just clear, direct feedback, delivered inside a message of connection, belonging, and trust. Thats the real difference between a feedback sandwich and benevolent honesty. The feedback sandwich theoretically helps the feedback giver reduce the likelihood of conflict during a tough conversation. (If I throw in a few compliments, maybe he wont get mad.) But how a difficult conversation might feel to the person giving feedback doesnt matter. The only thing that matters is whether the feedback helps the recipient improve his or her performance. And thats something a feedback sandwich is terrible at producing. The next time you need to have a difficult conversation with an employee, or with anyone, forget the feedback sandwich. Forget leading and closing with a compliment. Instead, just be direct and truthful, while showing that you care about that persons performance or well-being because you care about them: that you want things to be better for them as a result of the conversation. Not just to be easier for you. Jeff Haden This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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E-Commerce
If youre planning on buying a PC, laptop, or cell phone in the coming months, a word of advice for you before Christmas: Buy now, not later. Prices are likely set to spike in the new yeardue to a shortage of memory chips. Memory and storage for DRAM and NAND, two major types of computer memory, have seen costs rise between 30 and 40%, year-on-yearin some cases, theyre even doubling. This impacts the bill of materials (BOMs), or the cost of individual items to make, PCs, and especially low-end smartphones, where margins are thin and the proportional cost increase is more severe. The sudden spike in memory prices is part of a decades-long pattern of semiconductor supply cyclesbut this one is coming unusually fast, driven by unexpected demand from big tech companies building data centers for AI training and inference. There is an occasional cycle of supply shortages or some high demand bridges coming in once or twice a decadeit goes about 40 years back, says Runar Bjrhovde, research analyst at Canalys. He estimates that we’ve experienced seven “steep” cycles so far. What’s different now, he says, is the speed and the cause. This has developed really, really quickly. As a result, the foundries manufacturing chips and memory are prioritizing the high-performance compute chips needed for data centers, as well as higher-paying customers like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon Web Services, because scarce raw materials and limited capacity force them to funnel resources to the most profitable segments. As memory components become more limited and more expensive, manufacturers face increasing pressure to raise prices, says Anthony Scarsella, research director at IDC, which tracks cell phone shipments and sales. While some OEMs will inevitably be forced to raise prices, others will adjust their portfolio towards pricier models with higher margins to absorb some of the memory impact on BOM, he says. Next year will be a challenging time for the industry. Because of that, the average price of a smartphone will rise to around $465 next year, up from $457 in 2025 according to IDC data, even as total shipments in 2026 dip slightly because some buyers are priced out or delayed by component shortages. The biggest squeeze is expected in the low-to-mid range Android segment, where customers are most sensitive to price rises and vendors have the least room to absorb higher memory costs. On PCs, the picture is similar. A PC makes up about 15 to 18% of the bill of materials that goes in putting together a PC, says Bjrhovde of the memory and storage share. It entirely seems to be driven by the extreme data center demand that’s happening currently, says Runar Bjrhovde, research analyst at Canalys. So a lot of Nvidia investments are really pushing a lot of companies doing semiconductors forward. Bjrhovde isnt convinced that therell be ludicrous price rises, estimating that costs to end users could rise by 10% or 20%. Nevertheless, on a several-hundred-dollar device, that can make an impact. Some of that could be mitigated by smartphone companies stomaching some of the rise and reducing their margins, Bjrhovde says. That shift could also change what you actually get when you unbox a device. In some categories, especially budget phones, vendors are more likely to hold the price and trade down the quality of other parts outside of the memory, such as their camera, display, or processor. But theres only so much they can trim before the device becomes so outmoded that its not worth buying. The list of components that can be downgraded is extensive, Scarsella reckons. Most buyers may not notice the trade-offs. I think the average smartphone is upgraded every three years or so, Bjrhovde says. He suggests that at the point of upgrade, you might well have forgotten what you paid for your last device. But if youre the kind of customer who buys the latest iPhone Pro or top-end Android, youre likely to end up paying a little more, or getting slightly less storage for the same sticker price. For now, prices have held steady, with the cost increase not yet feeding through to end-user pricing. But that will soon change, warn the experts. So if youre looking to upgrade your PC or phone, bringing that purchase forward could save money. Industry executives are warning the memory crunch has only just started.
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