Boredom is an emotion that constantly fluctuates in employees of all ages and occupations. Here, we draw on functional theories of boredom and theories of emotion regulation to develop an episodic model of how boredom shapes employee attention and productivity over time. We argue that employees often suppress boredom at work to "power through" boring tasks and objectives, resulting in residual bouts of mind-wandering-and thus productivity deficits-during future performance episodes. However, following boredom on an initial task, the commencement of a subsequent task that employees perceive to be meaningful creates an attentional pull that breaks the link between boredom and future mind-wandering, preventing the effects of boredom from spilling over to inhibit future productivity. Study 1 draws on archival experience sampling data to test our hypotheses and examine whether boredom exhibits reciprocal relationships with mind-wandering and productivity over time. Study 2 uses an experimental design to determine whether boredom and task meaningfulness interact to exert a causal effect on future mind-wandering. Study 3 uses a time-separated single-day design to replicate Studies 1 and 2 and examine our contention that employees often suppress boredom at work which, rather than preventing the effects of boredom, puts them "on hold" until a later point in time. Our findings provide insight into how to mitigate the far-reaching effects of boredom at work; they also advance episodic accounts of emotions, attention, and performance in organizations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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打破无聊：中断状态无聊对未来生产力的残余影响。


无聊是一种在所有年龄段和职业的员工中不断波动的情绪。在这里，我们利用无聊的功能理论和情绪调节理论来开发一个情景模型，说明无聊如何随着时间的推移影响员工的注意力和生产力。我们认为，员工经常压抑工作中的无聊感，以“完成”无聊的任务和目标，从而导致在未来的绩效期间出现残留的走神现象，从而导致生产力下降。然而，在对初始任务感到无聊之后，员工认为有意义的后续任务的开始会产生一种注意力拉动，打破无聊与未来走神之间的联系，防止无聊的影响蔓延到抑制未来的生产力。研究 1 利用档案经验抽样数据来检验我们的假设，并检验随着时间的推移，无聊是否与走神和生产力之间存在相互关系。研究 2 使用实验设计来确定无聊和任务意义是否相互作用，从而对未来的走神产生因果影响。研究 3 使用时间间隔的单日设计来复制研究 1 和 2，并检验我们的论点，即员工经常抑制工作中的无聊感，这并没有阻止无聊的影响，而是让他们“搁置”直到稍后的某个时间点。我们的研究结果让我们深入了解如何减轻工作中无聊的深远影响；他们还对组织中的情绪、注意力和绩效进行了情景描述。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。