Most of us begin a new position with energy and a desire to impress. Our effort is high. Our passion is infectious. Our enthusiasm helps us to excel quickly.
But for some, work becomes mundane and repetitive. They lose some of their passion, and their work can begin to feel like a chore. Eventually, some of those executives who had initially loved their careers enter the dimension we call the “day prison.” As they enter their workspace, they feel the metaphorical bars close around them in a zone where they are unmotivated, dissatisfied, and much less productive than they could be.
To better understand this phenomenon we examined data from 970 such people in a single organization. They were between 35 and 44 years old (the typical range for the onset of a mid-career crisis), and they all rated their engagement at work in the bottom 10%.
