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Not to burst your bubble or anything...

Is Your Job Boring You To Death?
Tuesday June 24, 2003


By MICHAEL CHIRON

HOUSTON, Texas -- Warning: That boring, humdrum job of yours could actually kill you, a chilling new scientific study reveals.

Researchers from the University of Texas School of Public Health have found that workers who drift through the day in undemanding jobs with little control over what they do are 35 percent more likely to drop dead in a given 10-year period than workers in more challenging positions.

The results fly in the face of conventional wisdom, which holds that people with exciting but high-stress jobs such as CEO, espionage agent or nuclear sub commander are more likely to keel over dead from heart attacks.

Instead, the university experts now say it's clock-watching drones -- like comic-strip wage-slave Dilbert or Drew Carey's character in his popular TV sitcom -- who are headed for an early grave.

In other words, you really can die of boredom.

The experts, whose stunning findings were published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine, warn that folks in mind-numbingly boring jobs tend to feel increasingly useless and detached from events around them.

This often leads to "adopting of high-risk behaviors that can lead to a higher risk of death," such as boozing heavily, writes professor Benjamin C. Amick III, lead author of the eye-opening study.

Amick and his team based their conclusions on surveys and other data collected from 7,500 adults nationwide in a variety of occupations.

The most deadly jobs, they found, were those that the subjects found dull as dishwater -- ho-hum positions such as night janitor that "are largely lacking in meaningful content," according to Amick.

The dullsville-equals-deadville study suggests that doing something you find rewarding is essential for a long and healthy life.

"The meaningfulness of work may be an important contributor," says Amick.


ARE YOU AT RISK?
Forget about the so-called "risky" jobs like firefighter, bomb-defuser, fighter pilot or transporting nitroglycerin over mountainous backroads by truck. Experts say you're most likely to die in the next 10 years if you have a snooze-worthy job like one of these:

Tollbooth operator
Doorman
Assembly-line worker
Lighthouse keeper
Screw inspector
Exterminator
Proofreader
Night watchman
Gravedigger
Thumbtack salesman