Making the Best of Boredom
When’s the last time you felt bored? Maybe it’s when you were listening to a presentation that failed to keep you even mildly engaged, or when you plastered a smile on your face to play the same game with your kids for the tenth time in a row? Or maybe it was in the waiting room of your doctor’s office, where the clock on the wall ticked off the minutes as if they were hours? Or maybe it’s due to home confinement to control the spread of virus during a pandemic?
Boredom is a momentary condition characterized by lack of stimulation — a fleeting nothingness. Our minds despise it. Boredom often feels like a wasted opportunity, and we seek immediate deliverance from this discomfort, ready for our next dopamine fix. You know the feeling.
Psychologists William Mikulas and Stephen Vodanovich characterize boredom as “a state of relatively low arousal and dissatisfaction which is attributed to an inadequately stimulating environment.” Within seconds, we’re triple-tapping the screens of our smartphones, searching for anything to get relief.
As adults, when we feel like we’ve reached our thresholds for boredom within one of these inadequately stimulating environments, we make lifestyle changes. We may switch jobs, move to a new neighborhood or relocate out of state, find ourselves suddenly interested in a new hobby, seek out new friends, or even change life partners. Sometimes these shifts in our day-to-day lives provide enough stimulation that we’re able to stave off boredom — for a little while, anyway.
Children and teenagers aren’t quite as lucky, since their options for creating a brand-new environment are more limited. This is compounded, too, by the fact that feelings of boredom peak in adolescence, when individuals are waiting to engage in meaningful, productive work. One study from Baylor University in 2014 found that college students are, as we already suspected, glued to their electronic gadgets, spending 8–10 hours each day on their cell phones. 60 percent of students surveyed admitted that they were potentially addicted to their phones, with some even reporting agitation when their phone was out of sight. But who wouldn’t find themselves a little irritated upon discovering that their cure-all for boredom had suddenly disappeared?
Boredom gets a bad rap as idle, wasted time that we should dread. Boredom is the enemy, and we all have a knee-jerk reaction to it: we attempt to fill every mundane moment with activity. But boredom also creates space for our minds to wander, allowing imagination and intuition to emerge. This is especially true in children and teenagers. There’s a lesson there to take from them — as adults, most of the time, our rational thoughts overpower our ability to be intuitive.
We tend to assume that by vigorously pursuing exciting things, moving from idea to idea, place to place, we are chasing away boredom. But it’s worth asking — with our constant preoccupations, are we giving up a good thing?
We are most human when we introspect. To be bored could mean a chance to shut down the noise of the outside and explore our internal world. It is in these periods of reflection that people often discover something new, whether an epiphany about a relationship or a new theory about the way the universe works.
Boredom allows our instinctive minds to emerge, encouraging us to seek new experiences. When our minds are allowed to roam, the task-oriented centers in our brains power down and the subconscious engages freely. We’re given permission to take a breath and refocus. As the poet Joseph Brodsky writes, “For boredom is time’s invasion of your world system. It puts your life into perspective, and the net result is precisely insight and humility.”
Boredom creeps up in quiet moments, inviting us to listen to our own thoughts. The temptation to drown out our internal voices can be overwhelming, but it’s also important sometimes to force ourselves into that lonely abyss, to let perspective and insight flourish without interruption.
As Sociologist Jack Barbalet suggests, boredom might be our mind’s way of signaling to us that it’s time to change the status quo, acting as a type of motivator. Here, the road diverges and boredom leaves us with two choices: We can decide that our boredom is an indication of life’s meaninglessness and subsequently cultivate purposeless or even dangerous preoccupations. These might include indulging in aggressive, risky, or otherwise negative behavior, like turning to drugs and alcohol, developing pathological gambling tendencies, or becoming a narcissist. Alternately, we can engage in more meaningful behaviors, such as nurturing our inner artists, becoming involved in a socially useful innovation, or nourishing relationship-strengthening activities.
When you think your mind is not stimulated enough, rather than viscerally indulging in screen-time or mindless unproductivity, see if there’s a chance for introspection. If you are experiencing boredom during a pandemic, hearing about the pandemic repeatedly can be upsetting and even detrimental. Take breaks from watching, reading, or listening to news stories, including social media. Make the best use of the down-time. Connect with others. Talk with people you trust about your concerns and how you are feeling.
A chronically stimulated mind becomes immensely exhausted. Boredom isn’t something to dread — all fulfilling lives have uninteresting stretches of boredom. It is this range of stimulation that creates the a completely whole and fulfilling picture. If you’re patient enough, maybe something beautiful, something creative, or something new is waiting for you to find it.
