Boredom is okay!

The word “boredom” doesn’t have particularly positive connotations. It is associated with an unwanted state of weariness and indifference, which makes minutes or hours seem to last forever. We try to offer a bored person engaging activities that are supposed to pull them out of the torment of discouragement and lack of engagement. However, it may be worth taking a closer look at this phenomenon. What causes it? Why do we feel such aversion to it? What could happen if we changed our approach to it? So let’s take a closer look at boredom and what treasures it may hold.

Unwanted emptiness

The 19th-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer believed that boredom was proof of the meaninglessness of existence – if our lives really had meaning, we wouldn’t feel bored by what happens in them. However, Schopenhauer has gone down in the history of philosophy as a radical pessimist (he also became the subject of a series of nihilistic memes last decade), so most of us might consider his approach a bit of an exaggeration. There’s no doubt, however, that boredom is uncomfortable – when we have no particular anchor point, a passage opens up to areas of the psyche that we don’t really want to be in. We pay more attention to what we perceive as negative: lack of satisfaction with our job, a sense of unfulfillment, limited opportunities, personality or appearance traits that we consider to be our shortcomings... We lack the impulse to act that would allow us to achieve greater satisfaction, so we look for external stimuli that will help drown out unwanted thoughts - it would probably be difficult to find a person who has not reached for a magazine, scrolled through social media or watched TV series at least once in such a moment. Sometimes this solution works, but often it is still not enough. Why?

Boredom is not the same as boredom

An international group of scientists, led by Thomas Goetz of the University of Vienna, established that there are several types of boredom. In the course of further research, they also put forward the thesis that in our lives we usually experience only one, at most two of them, consistent with our general disposition – so it turns out that each of us is bored in her own style. The typology is as follows:

• indifferent boredom – associated with fatigue and withdrawal, but a state of specific relaxation is also possible;
• regulatory boredom (ang. calibrating boredom ) – people experiencing this type of boredom feel tired, but do not actively seek to change the situation – they would like to do something, but have no idea what it could be;
• searching boredom – characterized by experiencing anxiety and looking for something to distract attention – such people look for, for example, a hobby that will allow them to fill their time;
• reactant boredom – associated with nervousness, sometimes bordering on aggression, resulting in the need to escape (not necessarily metaphorically).

A few years after their paper was published, the researchers added another type to the list, which they called apathetic boredom . It is associated with, among other things, a sense of helplessness and is associated with the occurrence of depressive states.

The Cure for Boredom? Boredom as a Cure!

What else does research on boredom show? It turns out that it is a much more desirable state than you might think. First, boredom provides us with important information about ourselves. If we feel bored, it is a sign that something is not working as it should. Perhaps a job that was supposed to give us satisfaction is not meeting our expectations? Perhaps a hobby that used to bring us joy has lost its charm? Perhaps another course on a topic that interests us is just repeating what we already know? Each of these situations carries a similar message: we are not in tune with our current needs and aspirations. We are changing and developing all the time, so such moments are inevitable. Boredom is then a helpful signal that it is worth taking a closer look at the boring situation and making modifications (even small ones) that will help us regain lost interest.

Natural motivator

The second advantage of boredom is its ability to motivate action and inspire change. It is a natural reflex that we look for solutions to problems and improvements to things that are not working quite as they should. Many people claim that the best ideas come to mind during routine, repetitive activities, such as driving a car on a well-known route, washing dishes, or vacuuming, and the shower has become an almost symbolic breeding ground for original thoughts. When we do not give our mind something to focus on, our thoughts can "follow their own paths," which allows us to process and combine already known information. This is how we suddenly see a solution to a situation that previously seemed hopeless.

Purifying inaction

Another benefit of boredom is a kind of mind-clearing. This seems particularly important in times when – as Simon Reynolds stated in his book Retromania – boredom is not hunger, but a lack of appetite. It is this state of purification that we strive for during meditation and mindfulness practice – except that they have much better PR than unspectacular boredom. However, the effect is similar. By withdrawing from an environment full of distracting and often tiring stimuli, we calm our nervous system, and our thoughts have a chance to slow down. It is a bit like clearing the computer's cache or airing out a room – we remove what is unnecessarily stuck in us, and we free up space so that we can continue to fill it freely, and the images and information that flow to us will once again arouse genuine interest in us, and not just fatigue from their excess.

Faster, better, bigger!

Experts in psychology and related fields agree that the focus on efficiency and effectiveness, which seem to be the main commandments of our times, is causing great damage to the human psyche. We work too much, we don’t have time to regenerate, work invades our homes, robbing us of our free time. The consequences are a lower mood, susceptibility to illness, apathy, discouragement, and also… a decrease in efficiency, which we fight so hard for, optimizing every aspect of our daily lives. Therefore, there is a growing interest in boredom as a remedy for burnout – although such an approach may bring the expected results, it generates another problem. By reducing boredom to the role of another resource in the fight for greater efficiency, we fall into the same trap of subordinating ourselves to the cult of productivity.

How to find the golden mean?

Sources focused on using boredom in the service of increasing efficiency suggest scheduling time for boredom during the day. This sounds rather paradoxical (or corporate), but it is not entirely devoid of sense. Setting aside time for inactivity (of which boredom may be the effect) will allow us to relieve ourselves and not take on too much. If at such moments we feel tempted to reach for the phone or sit down at the computer, we can help ourselves with technologies that block access to the media we want to take a break from for a specified period of time - popular applications include Freedom, Flipd or WasteNoTime. Over time, the reflex to reach for time fillers should decrease, and inactivity - become increasingly comfortable. Maybe it will also be possible to develop the habit of giving in to "boredom" or "laziness" that comes to us by itself - without planning, without rationalizing and without remorse that we are wasting valuable hours.

It is an interesting sign of the times that we are trying to relearn what we have rejected for centuries as undesirable or worthless. It turns out that optimizing human habits often leads astray, and by giving up what might seem unnecessary, we disrupt the delicate functioning of the ecosystem. So if boredom strikes us, let us make it a priority.

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