Words to describe boredom without sounding negative

Question

I work as a developer and currently in my department, we do not have any projects going on. Therefore my supervisor asked me to do some training on X. I personally like learning X. However I have been learning X for about few weeks and I started to feel bored and sick of X. I want to tell my supervisor about it and then change my training subject to Y, or Z, etc.

Basically, what I want to say is:

I am bored learning X for so long. Can I learn something else like Y or Z?

Of course, 'bored' looks really negative in a work environment, but I could not find better words for it.

I found these words but it looks negative as well:

fed up, tired, weary, exhausted, have had enough

What words can I use to describe 'bored' without sounding so negative?

Answer 1

You can describe yourself as being burned out (also "burnt out"), or suffering from burnout:

the condition of someone who has become very physically and emotionally tired after doing a difficult job for a long time
_{from m-w.com}

To express your feeling and desire for something new to do, you might say something like "I'm feeling a little burnt out working exclusively on X. Can I do some Y/Z for a change of pace?"

Answer 2

Boredom is inherently seen as negative. It sounds like what you are asking is not how to express your boredom but how to request doing something different without expressing that boredom. In that case, you might consider:

I need a break from this subject.

or...

I think I've reached my limit on this subject for a while.

...or both.

Answer 3

To put a positive spin on this, to use euphemism and a touch of irony if you like, you could divert attention from boredom to saying that you have satisfied or satiated your curiosity learning X.

satiate

verb [ T often passive ] FORMAL

to completely satisfy yourself or a need, especially with food or pleasure, so that you could not have any more:

'In locations that have inherent dangers and would not normally be accessible to the public, viewing areas provide a way to satiate the public curiosity without exposing inordinate risk.'

satiate in Cambridge English Dictionary.

'he folded up his newspaper, his curiosity satiated'

'Her curiosity satiated, she walked away without a backwards glance.'

'Her curiosity was soon satiated when the door opened to reveal a handsome young man of about twenty with bright red hair and the palest blue eyes she had ever seen.'

satiate in Oxford Living Dictionaries.

To satisfy (in combination with the same curiosity) is a more pedestrian synonym.

'Come on, satisfy my curiosity (= tell me what I want to know) - what happened last night?'

satisfy in Cambridge English Dictionary.

Answer 4

In the theory of learning there's the concept of "varied practice". Wikipedia describes this as:

the use of a training schedule that includes frequent changes of task so that the performer is constantly confronting novel instantiations of the to-be-learned information.

As mentioned in the Wikipedia article under 'Theory', you could say that you'd benefit from contextual interference:

Contextual interference refers to a learning benefit observed when the items to be learned are randomly intermixed across training blocks rather than repeated in blocks