Is boredom a good thing?

 
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“The moment after we don’t know what to do with ourselves is the moment we find ourselves. Right after itchy boredom is self-discovery. But we have to hang in there long enough without bailing.”

— Glennon Doyle

 

When was the last time you felt bored?

Do you remember the feeling? Did you feel angry? Uncomfortable? Do you remember how you stopped it?

Most likely, these days, you ended up with a screen in front of your face. Checking emails, browse Instagram, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube, or play candy crush. TV, phone, or computer. Even books come on screens.

Well, this happens to me quite often. And it’s not by chance. These fantastic devices are no longer serving us for the sole purpose of facilitating communication. They are here to ensure that we are always entertained, no matter where we are, no matter what time it is. They fill us with infinite amounts of information and stimuli, determined to keep our brains busy.

Are you familiar with the word "daydreaming"? When was the last time you allowed yourself to get lost in your mental space, surfing along with your thoughts until some incredible and unexpected idea came to light up your head? The kind of idea that is so cool that it makes you jump off the couch to tell someone!

Accordingly to Dr. Genevieve Bell, anthropologist and distinguished professor at the Australian National University, as well as a Vice President and Senior Member at Intel, some of our most creative thoughts come up when our mind is disengaged and not receiving information. We are offered with so many stimuli that “there’s less time to think about what we’re consuming, less time to develop our own points of view. We may have traded boredom for being overloaded.”

Recent literature has pointed out "daydreaming" as a favorable state of mind for creativity, insight, and problem-solving. It has been described as a mental space where illogical ideas can be explored in ways that may not be practically possible. Through this exploration, new solutions to problems or unresolved situations can be found. In other words, daydreaming can lead to creative ideas for problem-solving.

I remember being bored as a kid. And, truth be told, this annoying sensation did not always lead to happy endings. Some bruises and scratches were common consequences of pursuing these dreamy ideas.

Anyway, when we were bored, we allowed our minds to explore the limits of our already known experience.

We were evolving.

My purpose in writing these lines is to share with you some valuable information about this natural evolutionary characteristic and to point out how important it is for us to pay more attention to our boring moments.

After reading this, you will probably be bored! But hopefully, motivated enough to put the phone down for a few minutes and start exploring the realm of your creativity.

What is boredom?

Boredom is mostly described as an emotion.

When we pursue a goal, we can obtain different results and, with that, different emotions. For example, if we reach the goal, we can feel happy, or if we miss the goal, we can get sad.

It is well known that emotions fade over time, becoming less intense. After a goal is reached, blocked, or lost, the emotional response begins to fade, and the emotional system signals that it is time to move on to other challenges. Boredom has been suggested to be that sign.

In a study published by the american journal Academy of Management Discoveries, boredom is defined as an affective state composed of unpleasant feelings when an individual feels a lack of stimulus and has difficulty concentrating on the current activity.

It comprehends a situation where none of the possible things that a person can realistically do looks attractive. More than having nothing to do, being bored is more like having nothing to do that we like, described by most people as a negative experience.

But, it is this perception, that the current situation is no longer stimulating, which encourages people to seek alternative goals and new experiences.

Theoretical and experimental studies have proposed that boredom facilitates the search for activities that increase the perception of meaning. It was also set as a precedent for ingenious ideas and creativity. For example, Isaac Newton formulated some of his main discoveries over the two years he spent feeling bored during a country retreat after college.

Other emotions, such as anger, have also been proposed to motivate action, especially when the goal is relatively close to being achieved. However, the environmental conditions that result in boredom and anger are actually quite different, as so the responses to these conditions.

Anger arises then something specific is blocking a recognized goal, but the chance to achieve it remains. For example, I can be angry if I want to arrive at work (my goal) and get stuck in traffic (the block).

To feel bored, we don't need a specific goal or a recognizable block. The only specific goal of getting bored is to move from the current state to a more stimulating one.

For example, while waiting in slow traffic, unable to resolve the situation, my anger may begin to disappear. After a while, I might eventually get bored and my attention will start to move from my previous concern to randomly seek something else. I may start daydreaming and remember that this is the last week to pay the rent, or imagine my next big project or have an idea to solve the plumbing problem in my mother's house.

Some authors argue that boredom triggers curiosity in individuals and facilitates learning and the exploration of new ideas, not always being seen as a negative and counterproductive emotion, but as a potential source of mental balance.

 

Boredom as an evolutive emotion

Like most emotions, boredom has evolutionary value. It is the emotion that addresses an individual’s drive for variety.

There would be no motivation to search for new goals if emotions did not fade over time, allowing for disengagement from that goal. We can say that an emotional state is only functional if it ceases to persist. Always being happy, angry, sad, or afraid about the same thing would have little adaptive value. As the intensity of these (or other) emotions begins to subside, boredom arises to indicate a new goal should be pursued (Bench and Lench, 2013).

If humans didn't get tired of doing the same things, they probably wouldn't have gone from harvesting to hunting. If our ancestors did not get bored and less emotional with each minor task, they might not have been able to develop discoveries and ways to improve protection against life threats.

Signs of boredom are also noticeable in young animals, such as puppies and kittens. They are often observed engaging in constant play, by which they learn to develop the cognitive and physical capacities that are fundamental for survival in later stages of their lives.

Without the innate ability to experience boredom, human beings would be less compelled to move out of their comfort zones and seek differently, and sometimes better, circumstances. They could be less adaptive to ever-changing survival demands.

Apathy VS Boredom

When I asked about what people do when feeling bored, some people answered “nothing”. Well, doing nothing is a great way to achieve the state of boredom but you can only consider you are effectively bored, when you get sick of doing nothing. That’s when you start doing something to change that state. Otherwise you might be feeling apathy.

Both states are sometimes colloquially referred to as boredom, but they have very different effects, especially on the resulting motivation.

APATHY

  • Helplessness

  • Lack of motivation to seek alternatives

Ex.: A person who is unsatisfied with their current romantic relationship, but is not attempting to improve their relationship or seek alternatives because they view the situation as hopeless.

 

BOREDOM

  • Recognition of lost of stimulation

  • Motivation to change the current situation and seek alternatives

Ex.: A person bored with their current romantic relationship would likely to create change in the situation, either by pursuing new goals in the current relationship or ending with it.

Boredom negative associations

Boredom has been associated with a range of negative outcomes in work, school, and often linked to dangerous and devious behaviors. Negative consequences at work include lower work performance, accidents, absenteeism, errors, sleepiness, job dissatisfaction, and property damage. In education, boredom has been linked with poor academic achievement and school dissatisfaction, lower scores, and abandonment.

Some of these consequences might be clear symptoms of the boredom experience. Accidents, mistakes, or sleepiness are the result of being unable to sustain attention. But some others are a result of the ways that individuals try to cope with their boredom by either refocusing attention on the task or seeking additional stimulation.

Students for example, don’t do bad at school because they get annoyed. This is natural. When they get bored with the class, their attention is driven to somewhere else so they can keep developing in some way. Maybe school systems should invest more on ways to recycle motivation.

Therefore, boredom could encourage changes that end up with negative emotions, such as playing with something toxic (when I was 2, I spilled a bottle of superglue on my belly), or breaking the wall while trying to hang a new shelve. Boredom could even motivate goals that result in actual risk, such as high gambling or infidelity. Although it often results in negative emotions, and sometimes, maladaptive ones, they provide opportunities that would otherwise be missed.

So, why is it good to be bored?

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If you are still not quite convinced about the importance of this emotional state and its outcomes, don’t worry. You are not alone! And you still have a few more lines to dive into this subject (and get even more bored)!

Some consider boredom to be as disturbing as pain. In a 2014 study, participants were asked to either do nothing for 15 min or administer painful electric shocks to themselves. Incredibly, 43% of participants shocked themselves at least once. 

The discomfort associated with boredom is probably one of the reasons why people often fail to see its potential benefits. 

Fortunately, scientific evidence has shown that boredom has remarkable positive benefits, not only from an evolutionary perspective but also on mental health and creativity.

1. Mental Health

It helps to balance mental health as a provider of protective time, away from external dopamine hits and Ego conditioning, and allowing us to be with ourselves and change our relationship with time and space. It empowers us to pay more attention to the present moment.

2. Creativity

It is an incredible booster of creativity. Yes, being bored gives us more opportunities to be creative. This strong correlation was highlighted by a 2018 study – “Why being bored might not be a bad thing after all”. In this study, individuals who felt bored were more likely to come up with unique ideas than those who didn’t. In a controlled environment, it was shown that this positive effect came from the state of feeling bored and not from other negative emotions such as anger or frustration.

Boredom stimulates the creation of fantasies and awakening creativeness. For example, it might motivate the need to re-decorate, start a new hobby, or look for a different job.

Boredom is a catalyst for action – it is an indicator of intrinsic motion, serving as a warning that we are not doing what we want to do. This internal focus encourages people to adjust or shift from their current situation, which permits the attainment of opportunities for cognitive and social growth, even if the alternative situations might produce negative emotions.

Consistent with this view, previous studies have demonstrated that the root of creativity is a novelty-seeking process in which individuals generate diverse and unique ideas in their search for highly original solutions.

3. Problem solving

The notion of creativity that arises from discomfort and tension is consistent with a dynamic view of innovation. 

If we speak about organizations, creativity means coming up with fresh or unique ideas for changing processes, products, or services to address the problem at hand. Individuals who are responsible for generating creative solutions must often go beyond common ways of doing things. 

There is a growing trend among organizations, such as Google, to create spaces for employees in which they can nap or spend time without disruption and, in turn, disconnect and get recharged. 

Perhaps the inner tension created by boredom activates one's desire to explore and develop different strategies, some of which will give us an edge in survival or competition—and justify the important role boredom plays in our psychological repertoire (Park, Lim and Oh, 2018).

 How to improve your boredom?

So, if after reading this, you realize you are already getting benefits from your boring states, excellent! If not, here are some tips on how to potentiate them: 

  • Once in a while, pick up activities that don’t require much attention, like walking through some park or venue that you are super familiar with, or just stand sit on your garden doing nothing;

  • Phone-free time - choose one moment when you typically turn to your smartphone to kill time, such as when you are on the train or your lunch break and designate that as phone-free time;

  • Establish particular times of the day to check your emails and social media. If like me, you follow the same sequence every time you pick up your phone (like Instagram, email, and Facebook), this is particularly useful;

  • Try not to over-schedule your days - keep space free of commitments and go outdoors, work around the house, or go for a walk and let your mind wander.

I am currently putting this to practice on my way to work. I used to pick up my phone to check on social media, listen to a podcast, or read a book. Now, I try not to engage with anything in particular and free my mind of any focus. It has been very liberating and surprising to observe the thoughts that my wandering mind can create. Some nice ideas to my blog have come this way.

Another example was when last week, I was feeling truly bored at home, struggling with time passing by and having nothing to do. My pull was, again, to pick up my phone. But, by being conscious of my emotions, I decided to stay a little more in that annoying space. I ended up feeling inspired to prepare a special meal and open a bottle of wine to share with my boyfriend a pleasant evening.

Vedic meditation may also be useful in this matter. Likewise, it allows the wandering mine to ride free but it requires some training. I will address this topic in another publication.

I suppose by this time, you are already at the point of sleeping, so I'll stay here!

Before I go, I'd like to remember to not mistake relaxation with boredom.

To be bored, you need to not have any goal or focus point. Otherwise, the brain will already be working.

Most important, pay more attention to what’s happening on your mind. When that uncomfortable tension arises (while doing something or nothing), allow your mind to fly.

I find it very helpful to write down the ideas that come to my mind while I’m daydreaming, even the ones that seem less realistic.

By doing this, I can check on them later. Our brain is magical but our memory has limitations.

I would be delighted read your thoughts on this topic, so we can grow and evolve together. You can comment on my Instagram page or contact me through the “About” page.

If you enjoyed this info, please share with others!

 

“Time tends to slow down when we’re bored, which can create discomfort or tension, but that’s when your brain kicks in to entertain itself, unless the entertainment is being done by ourselves.

Then it’s a missed opportunity.”

— Bell, 2012

Some useful links that supported this publication: