November 4, 2016.
Are you suffering from brown-outs? If your job no longer interests you, if the tasks you perform are repetitive and uninteresting, you could be affected by this ailment which could lead to a form of depression.
Bullshit jobs that can lead to depression
After the burn-out, or overwork, and the bore-out, which on the contrary defines professional boredom, here is the brown-out. This last term was recently born in the mouth of an American anthropologist, which thus qualifies the functions which have no real utility and which imply a total disinterest of those who fulfill them. Disinterest which can lead, like burnout or bore-out, to a form of depression.
These “bullshit jobs” or “stupid jobs”, as the anthropologist calls them, are found in many trades, from the public service to the medical world. All have in common that they provide the worker with a ” feeling of absurdity, worthlessness, or worse, nuisance “, explain André Spicer and Mats Alveson, who have dedicated a book on the subject, The Stupidity Paradox.
40% of workers suffer from brownouts
In addition to trades, it is the organization of work in today’s world that is at issue, according to another specialist in the issue, Alain Deneault, Canadian philosopher. ” We say to employees: ‘there you go, you are going to comply with a strategy aimed at satisfying shareholders with very harsh strategies’, and we find ourselves doing anything, absolutely absurd tasks. You have an engineer who’s going to make a material that’s bound to break, pharmacologists who are going to design drugs for imaginary diseases., but not for real patients who cannot afford », He explains for France Televisions.
The brown-out is a subject that deserves to be taken seriously by companies and institutions. An American business coaching company recently conducted a study on the subject. Of the 1,000 executives who were interviewed during this study, 5% showed signs of burnout, while no less than 40% were diagnosed with brownout.
To read also: Burn out: a social phenomenon?
