Seems like we’ll do anything to avoid being bored. We view it as an annoying feeling to be avoided at all costs. Plus some of us feel pressure to always be engaged with something for fear of appearing lazy.

And with our ever-growing to-do lists and so much technology at our finger tips to amuse ourselves with, boredom rarely seems like an option any more.

Some would even take pain over boredom. One team of psychologists discovered that two-thirds of men and a quarter of women would rather self-administer electric shocks than sit alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes (Wilson et al “Just Think: The Challenges of the Disengaged Mind” (Science, July 2014)). Even when novelty is not very pleasant, evidently some prefer it to monotony.

Boredom has recently become of increasing interest to academics. In May 2017, London’s Boring Conference celebrated seven years of delighting in tedium, as people flocked to talks about toast, double yellow lines, sneezing, vending-machine sounds and the shipping forecast.

There is no universally accepted definition of boredom but one widely accepted psychological definition is “the aversive experience of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity.” (Eastwood et al “The Unengaged Mind” (Perspectives on Psychological Science, Sept 2012)).

The scientific study of boredom dates back to at least 1885, when Francis Galton published a short note in Nature on ‘The Measure of Fidget’. In 1986, Sundberg and Farmer published their Boredom Proneness Scale, which was followed by the development of the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale in 2008. The first scale was designed to measure an individual’s overall propensity to feel bored (“trait boredom”) and the second scale measures a person’s feelings of boredom in a given situation (“state boredom”).

In June 2014 a German-led team (Goetz et al “Types of Boredom” (Motivation and Emotion, June 2014)) identified five types of state boredom: indifferent, calibrating, searching, reactant and apathetic.

Being bored may sometimes be miserable, but it is not simple.

Boredom (especially chronic boredom) has been linked to a number of negative behavioural issues including bad driving, binge-eating, binge-drinking, substance misuse, problem gambling and risky sex.

However, boredom isn’t all bad.

Research also suggests that we could be missing out on a lot by never allowing ourselves to be bored.

A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow process of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers as though they were cut flowers in a vase.”

Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness)

So what are some of the surprising benefits of boredom (in moderation)?

In my own experience, the overwhelming benefit of boredom is creativity. Boredom allows our minds to wander, which may lead to our most original and creative thought. Being bored can promote day dreaming, allowing us to make new, innovative connections and conceptualise creative ideas. Newton was purportedly just sitting under an apple tree when he discovered gravity.

And some other possible benefits of boredom are that it can:

  • Inspire deliberate action
  • Let you know when something’s amiss
  • Make you more goal-oriented
  • Allow you to see things you never noticed before
  • Make you more productive
  • Make you a better person (and cause you to be more altruistic)
  • Be an essential key to happiness
  • Allow you to revel in natural entertainment rather than fixate on something artificial
  • Lead you to reconnect with people around you

So do not fear occasional boredom, or the “tedium of reality”. In fact, don’t let it be elusive to you. View a good bout of boredom as an opportunity.

A certain power of enduring boredom is therefore essential to a happy life, and is one of the things that ought to be taught to the young.”

Bertrand Russell (again)

 

December 2017