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Thousands of spectators line up at Churchill Downs to watch the Kentucky Derby, but not everyone's as willing to clean the stables and feed the horses.

Content maintenance -- adding, filing, archiving, and filtering information -- is one of those intranet housekeeping activities considered crucial, but those holding the position often regard their job with disdain. A reader once admitted to me in an email that, after three years as a content manager, her most challenging part of the day was staying awake long enough to go to lunch. Doesn't sound like a very fulfilling job, does it?

Why is it so many content managers who contact me describe being "trapped" in their profession? Simple: No one else wants to do it.

An intranet needs to be fed with content, and that content needs to be regularly maintained. Someone's got to do it. Once suitable content managers are found, they're locked up in that role because everyone's thinking the same thing, "If our content manager leaves, I might have to do it." So everything is done to keep content managers in their position while limiting their exposure to other intranet-related duties.

But doing the same job for any length of time can become tedious -- especially when it doesn't vary all that much from day to day. Dedicated intranet content managers find it hard enough to maintain system quality and consistency, much less their own enthusiasm, when they have been wrangling content for X number of years. It's only a matter of time before lethargy sets in.

Depending on a person's tolerance to repetitious work, it can happen in months or years, but it will happen. The life of a content manager usually unfolds in three stages:

Stage 1: The Happy Years

Things are new and exciting, and you're given an important role in an important company-wide system. These early years are marked with enthusiastic determination, resulting in carefully vetted and filed content.

Stage 2: The Humdrum Years

The novelty wears out and repetitive stress and mental fatigue set in. This often results in the quick skimming and random filing of content.

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