I worked in a factory once. There was a guy near me assembling two small metal components. It took no more than a minute each time. Then he did it all over again. I asked him, ‘How can you stand doing something so boring?’. He told me that the job suited him because he ‘couldn’t get into trouble’.

I quit a couple of months later, I couldn’t stand the repetition.

Two entirely different personalities – but note that the world needs both types!

i just discovered your blog:-) you are so witty and amusing! Talking about boredom, this is how I feel right now trying to find a purpose – except for passing a course – for sustaining my vacillant attention while reading a bunch of boring articles. Isn´t it demoralizing that after a lot of hard work – that Victor summarized well – to craft a publishable paper, the outcome can be, well, embarrassingly boring??

I am a PhD candidate – a mid-career graduate student who started academic work for twists of life but – and I like studying and do research but I have already learnt that the academic system rewards papers and not ideas, even more so now that research assessment is largely dependent on publications in reputable journals.

I just visited your startup (http://www.mendeley.com/) and I think you guys have the potential to alleviate some of the boring tasks I mentioned

By the way, I have my own startup too. I’ll post some more about it soon.

Good luck!

I’d acknowledge that all my papers and my understanding of my research subjects have/has been improved through the process required to publish, because it forced me to be more meticulous, methodical and succint than I’d otherwise go about my research.

And still, the need to publish – i.e. having to go through the publishing process – was one of the reasons why I decided to leave academia (at least temporarily) to start a company instead. Haven’t had a boring day since, but sometimes I miss having the time to fully think things through like in academia.