O job can you return my mojo? Improving human engagement and enjoyment in routine activities

Unlike machines, we humans are prone to boredom when we perform routine activities for long periods of time. Workers' mental engagement in boring tasks diminishes, which eventually, compromises their performance. The result is a double-whammy because the workers do not get job satisfaction and their employers do not receive optimal return on investment. This paper proposes a novel way for improving workers' mental engagement and hence, enjoyment, in routine activities. Specifically, we propose to blend in routine tasks mild mental/physical challenges. To test our hypothesis, we chose to experiment on a monitoring task typical of security guard operations. We combined this routine task with an iPhone-based game to make it more enjoyable. The results from 10 participants show that their mental engagement and enjoyment were significantly higher during the combined task.