The topic of boredom is timely with the school holidays just started or fast approaching. If you have children in your house, or remember yourself as one, I’m sure the musical whine ‘I’m bored’ is not a foreign sound. Even if you’re tempted to help them overcome their boredom, it’s best to let them work through it. Granted, the process of ‘working through it’ isn’t as easy as it sounds - for them or you. However, the benefits of doing so are what I’ll cover here.
Back to basics. What is boredom?
A medical definition says boredom is “a feeling of fatigue, depression, or disinterest caused by a lack of challenging or meaningful work or stimulation”. Another reference sites “unmet arousal” based on factors that can be internal (lack of imagination, motivation or concentration) or external (lack of opportunities or environmental stimuli). Boredom arises when there’s incongruence between the desire to do something stimulating versus the ability to do so. It’s this juxtaposition that creates an internal conflict and can give rise to the ‘I’m bored’ cry – whether it’s vocalised or not.
Being in a bored state is uncomfortable when you have to confront thoughts and feelings that you ordinarily might spend a lot of money on to dull, mask or evade in everyday life. Boredom works to ‘out’ you from your hiding place so you can begin to confront what got you there in the first place. Boredom is on your side if you choose to use it to your advantage. For some, boredom gives rise to a menacing experience, a dark side. I'm more interested in the gift that boredom gives us if we let it rather than the choice to go in the opposite direction.
The science of boredom
The role boredom plays in our life is constantly being researched. Boredom specialists are growing in number and they're clearly not bored studying the topic. You might already know based on your own experience that boredom precedes creativity and innovation. This sequence also applies to pets. There’s nothing like a bored pup to tear up your newspapers, attack your shoes and test their creativity with your belongings! If you don’t believe me, researchers Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman, at the University of Central Lancashire, showed the connection between boredom and heightened creative vigour. Their study showed how people who undertake thoroughly boring activities prior to a creative, innovation session, actually produce outstanding results. They found doing passive activities like reading dry reports or attending dull meetings to elicit boredom was a great way to heighten daydreaming and consequent creative output. This is definitely worth noting if you’re planning a team getaway to brainstorm a new structure, devise new product ideas or new company initiatives. Plan your session with some uttering boring ‘pre-work’ to get the creative juices fired later on. Your company will love you!
The role of boredom
American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald wisely wrote that boredom “can be an alarm bell, motivating us to alter the way we are thinking, living and learning” and “humans have the potential to break through anything that limits our happiness and creativity, boredom included”.
Boredom, if left to be experienced, can produce creative moments and lead to new insights. It can be a catalyst for change and that's a great thing when you use it to guide you to make decisions. Boredom gives you space to figure out what you like and what you don't.
If you allow boredom into your life then make it work for you in these ways:
- · Heighten your self awareness so you can work through what’s important
- · Reduce your stress if you hang in there and move through it
- · Provide you with an opportunity to break through an issue
- · Help you to break out of a situation
- · Detox your mind and leave it free to create
- · Signal you are ready for a change
- · Highlight you need to address a situation you might be avoiding
Being bored is priceless if you’re prepared to entertain the benefits it can deliver you. When you push through it you can achieve things like a clearer mind, a new perspective, a grander vision or fresh result on a project you thought was doomed.
This is echoed by neuroscience findings shared by Brigid Schulte, a reporter forThe Washington Post and author of Overwhelmed: Love, Work and Play When No One Has the Time, that show “when we are idle, when we are bored, when we are not distracted or focused on something else, are brains are most active”. Hence why multi tasking is now out of fashion.
Curse of busyness
It might be tempting to keep busy to keep boredom at bay. The process of keeping busy is a desire to be permanently distracted. There's always something to do, something to attend to or someone who needs you. It’s false to think that being busy totally alleviates boredom. Keeping occupied doing repetitive tasks can still be boring if done long enough and without any satisfaction.
It doesn't make sense that we need our minds active and engaged all the time. I know from firsthand experience, when I was mentally jam packed at work it didn’t stimulate my initiative or produce any creative bursts. Just the opposite. It’s a failing of workplaces and management practices to think that productivity comes from constant busy behaviour. All the busyness does is keep us on treadmills like lab rats. Totally zoned out and just going through the motions until we’re allowed to leave for the day. It's not stimulating, it’s defeating and soul destroying. Keeping busy is an escape from being aware, being aware of what you want, what annoys you or what you want to change. Creating busy work just for the sake of it doesn’t benefit people nor companies. There are no badges being handed out for your busyness.
Awareness raising
When you allow yourself the freedom to be bored, with the knowledge you can work through it, it’s an opportunity to be self aware. It frees you from being too much in your head and opens space for nothing to enter. Meditation is actually a form of boredom. Meditation works to still the mind and create calm where an over active mind can create stress or self defeating thoughts. Calm is the opposite of over stimulation and in our over stimulated world the opportunities to 'buy' calm are rising up through yoga centres, spa retreats, meditation centres, exercise classes, holistic weekends away and even with the rise of crafting. The return of crafting is the return of activities that require us to ‘do’ more than ‘think’. Craft helps us to create, cut, draw, colour, stir and use our hands. It’s more important and more relevant than ever. It’s not about which activity you do, it’s more about making time to participate in simpler activities around the house, garden or in nature, that bring you calm and reduce your stimulation. So first use your boredom to find your inner calm and after that be set to unleash your creative, innovative storm. How good is that?
This quote by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn sums it up well: “When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting”.
The big question though is: Are you prepared to pay attention?
*This article was first published to LinkedIn 11 December 2015
