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shadowkat1. Wales texted the following item to me today:
Don't Try - The Philosophy of Charles Bukowski
Me: It makes me want to go home right now, and write.
Wales: I bet. (Pause). Sorry.
ME: No worries.
Bukowski weirdly reminds me of Robert Frost. Also, I never heard of him (not Frost, Bukowski). I don't know what that says about me or Bukowski or writing as a profession.
But it is kind of reassuring. I keep writing. It's the one thing I don't try at it, I just do. It's something I just have to do. Whether people read it or not, isn't the point.
Too many writers write for the wrong reasons. They want to get famous or they want to get rich or they want to get laid by the girls with bluebells in their hair. (Maybe that last ain't a bad idea).
When everything works best it's not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It's when you're mad with it, it's when it's stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It's when there's no hope but that.
Once in Atlanta, starving in a tar paper shack, freezing. There were only newspapers for a floor. And I found a pencil stub and I wrote on the white margins of the edges of those newspapers with the pencil stub, knowing that nobody would ever see it. It was a cancer madness. And it was never work or planned or part of a school. It was. That's all.
And why do we fail? It's the age, something about the age, our Age. For half a century there has been nothing., No real breakthrough, no newness, no blazing energy, no gamble.
What? Who? Lowell? That grasshopper? Don't sing me crap songs.
We do what we can and we don't do very well.
Strictured. Locked. We pose at it.
We work too hard. We try too hard.
Don't try. Don't work. It's there. It's been looking right at us, aching to kick out of the closed womb.
There's been too much direction. It's all free, we needn't be told.
Classes? Classes are for asses.
Writing a poem is as easy as beating your meat or drinking a bottle of beer.
- Letter that Charles Bukwarski wrote to William Packard.
I would agree with that. Writing creatively is something you either do or you don't. It's like singing, playing a instrument, knitting, pottery, running, boxing, climbing, swimming, or roller skating. You do it because you want to. No other reason.
Well, okay, to communicate. But half the time, it feels as if I'm communicating to an inattentive listener who would rather play games on their iphone.
2. Been thinking about the word boredom lately and how I define it. It occurs to me that I do not define it the same as a lot of folks do -- or I wasn't taught it that way? Because if I mention that I'm bored at work - they immediately equate that with not being busy enough. No. That's not it. It's usually feeling apathetic about work and not sure what to do, and this overwhelming feeling of frustration.
Or if I mention it online, someone assumes that I have nothing to do or I can't entertain myself or I'm unself aware. Again not quite it. I can be reading a book that is for some reason or other boring me on the subway. Or I can be watching a television show that I'm bored with. Or I can be doing an assigned task that bores me. Or a song that I'm listening to that is boring. Or in many cases, watching a sporting event can feel boring. Usually boredom for me results in "monkey mind" - ie. negative thoughts inducing depressive or anxious feelings of inadequacy or worry or frustration. Meditation gets me out of that. And meditation is basically just sitting and listening to a nice Australian monk talk every few minutes, while focusing on my breath.
Anyhow here's some interesting and diverse takes on Boredom, what it means, what causes it, and how folks handle it. Also if it is a good thing, and if we should embrace it. Depending on how you define it? The gist is everyone gets boredom, some people just get through it faster than others.
* There are 5 Types of Boredom Which You Are Feeling
Boredom can be a destructive feeling, leading people to zone out in meetings and classes–and in some cases, even to alcohol or drugs. But in certain circumstances, boredom can also be a force for good, becoming the spark that starts a creative process or leading to greater self-reflection.
Essentially, boredom is an emotion that’s a lot more nuanced than we give it credit for. It’s also especially common in today’s society.
Only in the last decade has there been much scientific research looking into the nature of boredom. In 2006, a study classified boredom into four different types, with a follow-up study published this month in the journal Motivation and Emotion adding a fifth kind of boredom, called apathetic boredom, to the list. The researchers involved in the study had 63 university students and 80 high school students answer smartphone-based surveys about their activities and experiences over the course of two weeks.
[Apparently they've done studies about it?]
* Why Being Bored Can be a Good Thing
Remember when you were a kid and you used to say, “Mom, I’m booored,” and she’d tell you to go entertain yourself? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you weren’t as whiny as me. Or maybe you were born sometime in the last two decades(ish), and had a childhood that perpetually involved a screen. But there was a time before the iPhone (and after the Industrial Revolution, which, really, gave birth to leisure time) when we humans desperately tried to avoid the dark embrace of boredom. Having nothing to do meant spending time alone with your own thoughts. Which: Ew.
Then? Phones got smart, and so did we, with easy access to more information and entertainment than we’d ever had before. Now, every moment you spend being bored—while riding an elevator, or waiting at the doctor’s office, or biding time until your date returns from the restroom—is a moment you don’t spend reading a book, skimming the news, or catching up on social media. Basically, being bored in 2018 is a slap in the face of technology. Never again will we have nothing to do. This is a good thing… right?
Not so fast, says Manoush Zomorodi, whose New York Public Radio tech podcast "Note to Self" turned into a project called “Bored and Brilliant” that was designed to get listeners to spend less time on their phones. That then turned into a book of the same name, a deep dive into the neuroscience of boredom, and the discovery of an important new insight: it’s actually when we are bored that we’re able to quiet the part of our brain that talks all day and turn up the part that’s more creative. The unthinking mind wandering that happens when you’re bored takes all the information you’ve entered and makes use of it in innovative ways. In other words: being bored is the difference between being good at Jeopardy! and being someone who actually uses the knowledge that you've learned to come up with solutions to fix problems (both of the personal and societal kind).
In a culture obsessed with productivity, boredom seems like a sin. (Not to mention impossible when so much of the everyday stimuli we take for granted—email, ads, Facebook—is bent on robbing us of our attention.) But sometimes sitting back and doing nothing is, ironically, exactly what you need to do in order to get more done. We were so scared of being bored at all that we failed to appreciate the frightening repercussions of not being bored enough.
[Interesting.]
GQ: Could you put some guardrails on what we mean when we say boredom?
Manoush Zomorodi: For our purposes, I think we should call it that moment when you're like, "I'm not doing anything. I don't have a focused activity for my brain and my mind is beginning to wander and I'm just going to look at my phone." For those of us of a certain age, we remember waiting for the subway to come, and then you realize you forgot to put The New Yorker in your bag. That was back in the day. Now, we have our phones to take that space. For me it was like, "Well, that seems like a good thing that we never have to be bored anymore." Everyone says only boring people get bored. We inherently think boredom is to be avoided at all costs. But then it made me think, well, there must be a reason why we got bored. What's going on in our brains when we get bored? And what, more importantly, would go on in our brains if we never got bored?
Then I learned this really amazing thing that actually when you get bored and you're not focused on an activity but you're either lounging—fucking off—or you're folding socks—something super repetitive that doesn't need your brain to be engaged—that's when you ignite this network in your brain called the default mode. Now neuroscientists know that the default mode is when you do your most original thinking. You do your problem-solving. It's where you have imagination, where you have empathy. Your mind does something that's kind of like time traveling. You go back and you think of things that happened and you make sense of them and then you extract lessons from them. They call it autobiographical planning. Then you can imagine yourself in the future, and set goals and all those things that the type A freak show that I am wanted to do.
Did you find that explanation for why we do get bored? Was there some evolutionary reason?
Nobody knows the real reason. But the way I like to think of it is: boredom is the gateway to mind wandering. If every time that your mind might wander, you look at your phone, you've interrupted the process. It's like a muscle. That makes sense because that's what the technology has been designed to do. It's been designed to exploit that split second where you decide, "Should I look at my phone? Yeah. You should check Facebook. You should retweet something." That, we're told, is how you build a personal brand. It's how you stay connected to friends and family.
"One young teenager said to me, 'What you're describing is scary to me. I don't want to be alone with my thoughts.' Well, that worries me, because you're gonna be with you for a very long time."
It's almost like we're confusing productivity with reactivity: the more reactive you are and the more output there is, that is productive. But actually to do the deeper work—as Cal Newport calls it, the deep work—or to find solutions to problems that're in your life, your community and society, it's harder. And especially since we're going into this automated era where: what will humans be good for? We'll be good for the bigger problem-solving. We'll have so much access to information, but it's how we put that information together to find new solutions to bigger problems—that's where the real work is.
[This is actually true. If it weren't for boredom, we'd never have met. I was so bored at the evil library company that I started writing Buffy Meta to entertain myself. I was also pissed off at the company and this was in 2002 before they could figure out how to track what I was doing on the computer -- not that they ever would, they were kind of stupid in that department. Boredom led to me publishing my book. And writing posts on the internet.]
I heard from numerous people who were like, "Oh, I never get bored." And I was like, "What do you mean? Do you mean because you're always busy?" And what I think they meant, my interpretation, is that they knew how to pass through the uncomfortable part of being bored more quickly. A guy said, “I guess you could say it's super boring to mow my lawn every week for an hour, you can't listen to anything because it's so loud. But I kind of love it and I don't find it boring.” It's how you reframe it: he lets his mind do whatever it wants to do while he mows the lawn.
For me, I started running without listening to anything, which is torturous for the first minutes. Then I start to think about my day, and then I'll notice that I'll replay a bunch of different things that have happened to me in the previous days, and I start to actually process what happened in a meeting instead of just going to the next thing. I also find that I start to imagine myself delivering a talk. Like, what's it going to be like when I walk up on stage? What shoes am I wearing? Are my feet going to hurt? Is that going to distract me? It's like working out your shit so that you're not feeling anxious and freaked out all the time.
Running, mowing the lawn, folding laundry—these are all really good options. There's so much literature about how the best writers in the world were always fans of constitutional walks. [Being bored is like] the stuff that feels super uncomfortable if you're not used to it, like going to the gym. It really hurts [at first]. But then you start going maybe three, four times a week and it gets a little easier and maybe you get the little high and the sweat starts to feel good and it just suddenly becomes part of your life.
I heard from my 20,000 who did the [Bored and Brilliant] project that amazing stuff happened. They figured out ways to confront big problems with co-workers, or they came up with a new idea for a business, or they finally understood what they needed to do to finish their thesis. Lots of big things that make not incremental, but big changes in their life. Your brain needs time to get weird. Otherwise, you're just posting cute pictures of your dog.
Someone who's playing devil's advocate might be like, okay, but if I'm folding laundry and getting in touch with myself, how is that better than folding laundry and listening to "The Daily"? I'm getting laundry done, but I'm also learning about the news and that seems a little bit more advantageous than folding laundry and getting to a place of personal revelation.
I don't think there's anything wrong with folding laundry and listening to The New York Times. What I do think is—I find that a lot of people tell me they do [this], and I certainly do—this idea of feeding ourselves more and more and more information and then never actually doing anything with it. Not ever taking a moment to think about it or to synthesize it or to connect it to something you might be doing at work. “Climate change is a disaster.” Well, okay, yes. But then what? Does that mean that you are going to make a donation? Does that mean that you are going to start an initiative at work? Does that mean that you are going to talk to your kids about it?
When you think through how you want to respond to something, that cuts down on what a lot of people do on social media, which is have a knee jerk reaction. I'm outraged. I'm angry. I'm pissed. Go cool down or go sleep on it or whatever. Think it over a little bit before you respond. We want hot takes in this society, right? I think there should be a version of slow Twitter… some way of having messages and conversations, but slowing it down just a little bit, [being] a little more thoughtful and less angry or pissed or whatever. Nobody does well when they freak out.
If you can figure out some way to make it so you succeed—whether that's by crafting a response, or thinking through how you are going to tackle a problem, or making a plan to woo your boss or get them to see your side—that to me is not just about getting in touch with yourself, but improving your life, too. Basically, boiling it down, you're telling people to think. I feel like that's where we’ve sadly gotten to in this society. What I’m talking about is not rocket science.
It's almost like you have to put “Do nothing” on your to-do list. We've just slipped priorities in our society. When things move slower, and there is less connectivity, you had to work harder to get it all done and then the day was over. Now, it all happens instantaneously. I think for those of us who love to get shit done, this is awesome. But then, [we’ve got to] realize that other stuff is missing in our lives, and we have to acknowledge that it's just as important and build it back into our life.
* 8 Reasons Why We Get Bored
Boredom can be viewed as a crisis of desire.
I like the article above this one better, it's less condemning of the bored.
Psychologists like to judge and label folks, don't they?
Although, I do somewhat identify with these four causes...
1. Monotony in the Mind
Boredom is similar to mental fatigue and is caused by repetition and lack of interest in the details of our tasks (such as tasks that require continuous attention, waiting at the airport, prisoners locked in cells). Any experience that is predictable and repetitive becomes boring. In general, too much of the same thing and too little stimulation can cause in its victim an absence of desire and a feeling of entrapment (Toohey, 2012).
2. Lack of Flow
Flow is a state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one’s abilities, akin to “being in the zone.” Flow occurs when a person’s skills match the level of challenge presented by the environment and when a task includes clear goals and immediate feedback. Tasks that are too easy are boring. In contrast, tasks that people perceive to be too difficult lead to anxiety.
3. Need for Novelty
Some individuals are more likely to be bored than others. People with a strong need for novelty, excitement, and variety are at risk of boredom. These sensation seekers (e.g., skydivers) are likely to find that the world moves too slowly. The need for external stimulation may explain why extroverts tend to be particularly prone to boredom. Novelty seeking and risk-taking is the way that these people self-medicate to cure their boredom.
4. Paying Attention
Boredom is linked to problems with attention. What bores us never fully engages our attention. After all, it is hard to be interested in something when you cannot concentrate on it. People with chronic attention problems, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, have a high tendency for boredom.
I can't read medical journals, my eyes haze over and the words blur. Struggle with academic text as well. My job is tough because I have to read a lot of technical stuff and legal stuff. I have a form of dyslexia -- which makes reading more difficult for me than those without it. Dyslexics tend to get frustrated with reading certain types of texts. I have to go back over sentences. I do it naturally now, without knowing I'm doing it. But I also figure stuff out in context. The more interested or engaged I am in the subject matter - the better the flow, the less likely I'll get bored or lose focus.
If the material isn't engaging to the brain, the brain gets frustrated which equals boredom.
* Make Time for Boredom or The Surprising Benefits of Boredom
[Apparently academics have become fascinated with Boredom and are doing studies on it. This amuses me to no end.]
Boredom has, paradoxically, become quite interesting to academics lately. The International Interdisciplinary Boredom Conference gathered humanities scholars in Warsaw for the fifth time in April. In early May, its less scholarly forerunner, London’s Boring Conference, celebrated seven years of delighting in tedium. At this event, people flock to talks about toast, double yellow lines, sneezing, and vending-machine sounds, among other snooze-inducing topics.
What, exactly, is everybody studying? One widely accepted psychological definition of boredom is “the aversive experience of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity.” [1] But how can you quantify a person’s boredom level and compare it with someone else’s? In 1986, psychologists introduced the Boredom Proneness Scale, [2] designed to measure an individual’s overall propensity to feel bored (what’s known as “trait boredom”). By contrast, the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale, [3] developed in 2008, measures a person’s feelings of boredom in a given situation (“state boredom”). A German-led team has since identified five types of state boredom: indifferent, calibrating, searching, reactant, and apathetic (indifferent boredom—characterized by low arousal—was the mellowest, least unpleasant kind; reactant—high arousal—was the most aggressive and unpleasant.) [4] Boredom may be miserable, but let no one call it simple.
Boredom has been linked to behavior issues including bad driving, [5] mindless snacking, [6] binge-drinking, [7] risky sex, [8] and problem gambling. [9] In fact, many of us would 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. [10] Probing this phenomenon, another team asked volunteers to watch boring, sad, or neutral films, during which they could self-administer electric shocks. The bored volunteers shocked themselves more and harder than the sad or neutral ones did. [11]
But boredom isn’t all bad. By encouraging contemplation and daydreaming, it can spur creativity. An early, much-cited study gave participants abundant time to complete problem-solving and word-association exer-cises. Once all the obvious answers were exhausted, participants gave more and more inventive answers to fend off boredom. [12] A British study took these findings one step further, asking subjects to complete a creative challenge (coming up with a list of alternative uses for a household item). One group of subjects did a boring activity first, while the others went straight to the creative task. Those whose boredom pumps had been primed were more prolific. [13]
In our always-connected world, boredom may be an elusive state, but it is a fertile one. Watch paint dry or water boil, or at least put away your smartphone for a while. You might unlock your next big idea.
[Go to the article to see the endnotes.]
* Ah, I finally found the frigging definition. I was looking for that, and got all the above links instead.
Boredom defined by Merriam Webster Dictionary (if you don't like Merriam Webster? Go find your own definition.)
" the state of being weary and restless through lack of interest "
I grew bored of the baseball game.
Or..."Jamie was bored of Miles, and wished Miles would stop talking."
or .."the boredom of a long car trip" - particularly if it is across Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado during the summer, when everything is brown, and you get motion sickness if you try to do anything. Hell, is driving across the plains states in the mid-west.
Yes, the plains can be beautiful but after two or three days...not so much.
Synonyms for boredom
blahs, doldrums, ennui, listlessness, restlessness, tedium, weariness
Verb
1768, in the meaning defined above
History and Etymology for bore
Verb (1)
Middle English boren, going back to Old English borian, going back to Germanic *bur-ō- (whence Old High German borōn "to pierce," Old Norse bora), probably verbal derivative of a noun base bur- "tool for piercing" (whence Old English bor "chiseling instrument," Old High German bora); akin to Latin forāre "to bore," ferīre to strike"
Noun (1)
Middle English, "hole, perforation," in part noun derivative of boren "to bore entry 1," in part borrowed from Old Norse bora "borehole," derivative of bora "to bore"
Noun (2)
Middle English *bore wave, from Old Norse bāra
Noun (3)
of uncertain origin
Note: Plausibly a derivative of the verb bore entry 6, if this was a sense development of bore entry 1 ("to drill, wear at" & "to induce ennui"); however, the noun, a vogue word among London political and cultural figures in the 1760's, appears to predate the verb.
front a dangerous bore at the mouth of the Amazon
bore noun (3)
Definition of bore (Entry 5 of 6)
: one that causes weariness and restlessness through lack of interest : one that causes boredom: such as
a : a dull or tiresome person His friends are a bunch of bores.
b : something that is devoid of interest The lecture was a total bore.
bore verb
bored; boring
Definition of bore (Entry 6 of 6)
transitive verb
: to cause to feel weariness and restlessness through lack of interest : to cause to feel boredom trying not to bore your audience got bored by the party and left
Don't Try - The Philosophy of Charles Bukowski
Me: It makes me want to go home right now, and write.
Wales: I bet. (Pause). Sorry.
ME: No worries.
Bukowski weirdly reminds me of Robert Frost. Also, I never heard of him (not Frost, Bukowski). I don't know what that says about me or Bukowski or writing as a profession.
But it is kind of reassuring. I keep writing. It's the one thing I don't try at it, I just do. It's something I just have to do. Whether people read it or not, isn't the point.
Too many writers write for the wrong reasons. They want to get famous or they want to get rich or they want to get laid by the girls with bluebells in their hair. (Maybe that last ain't a bad idea).
When everything works best it's not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It's when you're mad with it, it's when it's stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It's when there's no hope but that.
Once in Atlanta, starving in a tar paper shack, freezing. There were only newspapers for a floor. And I found a pencil stub and I wrote on the white margins of the edges of those newspapers with the pencil stub, knowing that nobody would ever see it. It was a cancer madness. And it was never work or planned or part of a school. It was. That's all.
And why do we fail? It's the age, something about the age, our Age. For half a century there has been nothing., No real breakthrough, no newness, no blazing energy, no gamble.
What? Who? Lowell? That grasshopper? Don't sing me crap songs.
We do what we can and we don't do very well.
Strictured. Locked. We pose at it.
We work too hard. We try too hard.
Don't try. Don't work. It's there. It's been looking right at us, aching to kick out of the closed womb.
There's been too much direction. It's all free, we needn't be told.
Classes? Classes are for asses.
Writing a poem is as easy as beating your meat or drinking a bottle of beer.
- Letter that Charles Bukwarski wrote to William Packard.
I would agree with that. Writing creatively is something you either do or you don't. It's like singing, playing a instrument, knitting, pottery, running, boxing, climbing, swimming, or roller skating. You do it because you want to. No other reason.
Well, okay, to communicate. But half the time, it feels as if I'm communicating to an inattentive listener who would rather play games on their iphone.
2. Been thinking about the word boredom lately and how I define it. It occurs to me that I do not define it the same as a lot of folks do -- or I wasn't taught it that way? Because if I mention that I'm bored at work - they immediately equate that with not being busy enough. No. That's not it. It's usually feeling apathetic about work and not sure what to do, and this overwhelming feeling of frustration.
Or if I mention it online, someone assumes that I have nothing to do or I can't entertain myself or I'm unself aware. Again not quite it. I can be reading a book that is for some reason or other boring me on the subway. Or I can be watching a television show that I'm bored with. Or I can be doing an assigned task that bores me. Or a song that I'm listening to that is boring. Or in many cases, watching a sporting event can feel boring. Usually boredom for me results in "monkey mind" - ie. negative thoughts inducing depressive or anxious feelings of inadequacy or worry or frustration. Meditation gets me out of that. And meditation is basically just sitting and listening to a nice Australian monk talk every few minutes, while focusing on my breath.
Anyhow here's some interesting and diverse takes on Boredom, what it means, what causes it, and how folks handle it. Also if it is a good thing, and if we should embrace it. Depending on how you define it? The gist is everyone gets boredom, some people just get through it faster than others.
* There are 5 Types of Boredom Which You Are Feeling
Boredom can be a destructive feeling, leading people to zone out in meetings and classes–and in some cases, even to alcohol or drugs. But in certain circumstances, boredom can also be a force for good, becoming the spark that starts a creative process or leading to greater self-reflection.
Essentially, boredom is an emotion that’s a lot more nuanced than we give it credit for. It’s also especially common in today’s society.
Only in the last decade has there been much scientific research looking into the nature of boredom. In 2006, a study classified boredom into four different types, with a follow-up study published this month in the journal Motivation and Emotion adding a fifth kind of boredom, called apathetic boredom, to the list. The researchers involved in the study had 63 university students and 80 high school students answer smartphone-based surveys about their activities and experiences over the course of two weeks.
[Apparently they've done studies about it?]
* Why Being Bored Can be a Good Thing
Remember when you were a kid and you used to say, “Mom, I’m booored,” and she’d tell you to go entertain yourself? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you weren’t as whiny as me. Or maybe you were born sometime in the last two decades(ish), and had a childhood that perpetually involved a screen. But there was a time before the iPhone (and after the Industrial Revolution, which, really, gave birth to leisure time) when we humans desperately tried to avoid the dark embrace of boredom. Having nothing to do meant spending time alone with your own thoughts. Which: Ew.
Then? Phones got smart, and so did we, with easy access to more information and entertainment than we’d ever had before. Now, every moment you spend being bored—while riding an elevator, or waiting at the doctor’s office, or biding time until your date returns from the restroom—is a moment you don’t spend reading a book, skimming the news, or catching up on social media. Basically, being bored in 2018 is a slap in the face of technology. Never again will we have nothing to do. This is a good thing… right?
Not so fast, says Manoush Zomorodi, whose New York Public Radio tech podcast "Note to Self" turned into a project called “Bored and Brilliant” that was designed to get listeners to spend less time on their phones. That then turned into a book of the same name, a deep dive into the neuroscience of boredom, and the discovery of an important new insight: it’s actually when we are bored that we’re able to quiet the part of our brain that talks all day and turn up the part that’s more creative. The unthinking mind wandering that happens when you’re bored takes all the information you’ve entered and makes use of it in innovative ways. In other words: being bored is the difference between being good at Jeopardy! and being someone who actually uses the knowledge that you've learned to come up with solutions to fix problems (both of the personal and societal kind).
In a culture obsessed with productivity, boredom seems like a sin. (Not to mention impossible when so much of the everyday stimuli we take for granted—email, ads, Facebook—is bent on robbing us of our attention.) But sometimes sitting back and doing nothing is, ironically, exactly what you need to do in order to get more done. We were so scared of being bored at all that we failed to appreciate the frightening repercussions of not being bored enough.
[Interesting.]
GQ: Could you put some guardrails on what we mean when we say boredom?
Manoush Zomorodi: For our purposes, I think we should call it that moment when you're like, "I'm not doing anything. I don't have a focused activity for my brain and my mind is beginning to wander and I'm just going to look at my phone." For those of us of a certain age, we remember waiting for the subway to come, and then you realize you forgot to put The New Yorker in your bag. That was back in the day. Now, we have our phones to take that space. For me it was like, "Well, that seems like a good thing that we never have to be bored anymore." Everyone says only boring people get bored. We inherently think boredom is to be avoided at all costs. But then it made me think, well, there must be a reason why we got bored. What's going on in our brains when we get bored? And what, more importantly, would go on in our brains if we never got bored?
Then I learned this really amazing thing that actually when you get bored and you're not focused on an activity but you're either lounging—fucking off—or you're folding socks—something super repetitive that doesn't need your brain to be engaged—that's when you ignite this network in your brain called the default mode. Now neuroscientists know that the default mode is when you do your most original thinking. You do your problem-solving. It's where you have imagination, where you have empathy. Your mind does something that's kind of like time traveling. You go back and you think of things that happened and you make sense of them and then you extract lessons from them. They call it autobiographical planning. Then you can imagine yourself in the future, and set goals and all those things that the type A freak show that I am wanted to do.
Did you find that explanation for why we do get bored? Was there some evolutionary reason?
Nobody knows the real reason. But the way I like to think of it is: boredom is the gateway to mind wandering. If every time that your mind might wander, you look at your phone, you've interrupted the process. It's like a muscle. That makes sense because that's what the technology has been designed to do. It's been designed to exploit that split second where you decide, "Should I look at my phone? Yeah. You should check Facebook. You should retweet something." That, we're told, is how you build a personal brand. It's how you stay connected to friends and family.
"One young teenager said to me, 'What you're describing is scary to me. I don't want to be alone with my thoughts.' Well, that worries me, because you're gonna be with you for a very long time."
It's almost like we're confusing productivity with reactivity: the more reactive you are and the more output there is, that is productive. But actually to do the deeper work—as Cal Newport calls it, the deep work—or to find solutions to problems that're in your life, your community and society, it's harder. And especially since we're going into this automated era where: what will humans be good for? We'll be good for the bigger problem-solving. We'll have so much access to information, but it's how we put that information together to find new solutions to bigger problems—that's where the real work is.
[This is actually true. If it weren't for boredom, we'd never have met. I was so bored at the evil library company that I started writing Buffy Meta to entertain myself. I was also pissed off at the company and this was in 2002 before they could figure out how to track what I was doing on the computer -- not that they ever would, they were kind of stupid in that department. Boredom led to me publishing my book. And writing posts on the internet.]
I heard from numerous people who were like, "Oh, I never get bored." And I was like, "What do you mean? Do you mean because you're always busy?" And what I think they meant, my interpretation, is that they knew how to pass through the uncomfortable part of being bored more quickly. A guy said, “I guess you could say it's super boring to mow my lawn every week for an hour, you can't listen to anything because it's so loud. But I kind of love it and I don't find it boring.” It's how you reframe it: he lets his mind do whatever it wants to do while he mows the lawn.
For me, I started running without listening to anything, which is torturous for the first minutes. Then I start to think about my day, and then I'll notice that I'll replay a bunch of different things that have happened to me in the previous days, and I start to actually process what happened in a meeting instead of just going to the next thing. I also find that I start to imagine myself delivering a talk. Like, what's it going to be like when I walk up on stage? What shoes am I wearing? Are my feet going to hurt? Is that going to distract me? It's like working out your shit so that you're not feeling anxious and freaked out all the time.
Running, mowing the lawn, folding laundry—these are all really good options. There's so much literature about how the best writers in the world were always fans of constitutional walks. [Being bored is like] the stuff that feels super uncomfortable if you're not used to it, like going to the gym. It really hurts [at first]. But then you start going maybe three, four times a week and it gets a little easier and maybe you get the little high and the sweat starts to feel good and it just suddenly becomes part of your life.
I heard from my 20,000 who did the [Bored and Brilliant] project that amazing stuff happened. They figured out ways to confront big problems with co-workers, or they came up with a new idea for a business, or they finally understood what they needed to do to finish their thesis. Lots of big things that make not incremental, but big changes in their life. Your brain needs time to get weird. Otherwise, you're just posting cute pictures of your dog.
Someone who's playing devil's advocate might be like, okay, but if I'm folding laundry and getting in touch with myself, how is that better than folding laundry and listening to "The Daily"? I'm getting laundry done, but I'm also learning about the news and that seems a little bit more advantageous than folding laundry and getting to a place of personal revelation.
I don't think there's anything wrong with folding laundry and listening to The New York Times. What I do think is—I find that a lot of people tell me they do [this], and I certainly do—this idea of feeding ourselves more and more and more information and then never actually doing anything with it. Not ever taking a moment to think about it or to synthesize it or to connect it to something you might be doing at work. “Climate change is a disaster.” Well, okay, yes. But then what? Does that mean that you are going to make a donation? Does that mean that you are going to start an initiative at work? Does that mean that you are going to talk to your kids about it?
When you think through how you want to respond to something, that cuts down on what a lot of people do on social media, which is have a knee jerk reaction. I'm outraged. I'm angry. I'm pissed. Go cool down or go sleep on it or whatever. Think it over a little bit before you respond. We want hot takes in this society, right? I think there should be a version of slow Twitter… some way of having messages and conversations, but slowing it down just a little bit, [being] a little more thoughtful and less angry or pissed or whatever. Nobody does well when they freak out.
If you can figure out some way to make it so you succeed—whether that's by crafting a response, or thinking through how you are going to tackle a problem, or making a plan to woo your boss or get them to see your side—that to me is not just about getting in touch with yourself, but improving your life, too. Basically, boiling it down, you're telling people to think. I feel like that's where we’ve sadly gotten to in this society. What I’m talking about is not rocket science.
It's almost like you have to put “Do nothing” on your to-do list. We've just slipped priorities in our society. When things move slower, and there is less connectivity, you had to work harder to get it all done and then the day was over. Now, it all happens instantaneously. I think for those of us who love to get shit done, this is awesome. But then, [we’ve got to] realize that other stuff is missing in our lives, and we have to acknowledge that it's just as important and build it back into our life.
* 8 Reasons Why We Get Bored
Boredom can be viewed as a crisis of desire.
I like the article above this one better, it's less condemning of the bored.
Psychologists like to judge and label folks, don't they?
Although, I do somewhat identify with these four causes...
1. Monotony in the Mind
Boredom is similar to mental fatigue and is caused by repetition and lack of interest in the details of our tasks (such as tasks that require continuous attention, waiting at the airport, prisoners locked in cells). Any experience that is predictable and repetitive becomes boring. In general, too much of the same thing and too little stimulation can cause in its victim an absence of desire and a feeling of entrapment (Toohey, 2012).
2. Lack of Flow
Flow is a state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one’s abilities, akin to “being in the zone.” Flow occurs when a person’s skills match the level of challenge presented by the environment and when a task includes clear goals and immediate feedback. Tasks that are too easy are boring. In contrast, tasks that people perceive to be too difficult lead to anxiety.
3. Need for Novelty
Some individuals are more likely to be bored than others. People with a strong need for novelty, excitement, and variety are at risk of boredom. These sensation seekers (e.g., skydivers) are likely to find that the world moves too slowly. The need for external stimulation may explain why extroverts tend to be particularly prone to boredom. Novelty seeking and risk-taking is the way that these people self-medicate to cure their boredom.
4. Paying Attention
Boredom is linked to problems with attention. What bores us never fully engages our attention. After all, it is hard to be interested in something when you cannot concentrate on it. People with chronic attention problems, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, have a high tendency for boredom.
I can't read medical journals, my eyes haze over and the words blur. Struggle with academic text as well. My job is tough because I have to read a lot of technical stuff and legal stuff. I have a form of dyslexia -- which makes reading more difficult for me than those without it. Dyslexics tend to get frustrated with reading certain types of texts. I have to go back over sentences. I do it naturally now, without knowing I'm doing it. But I also figure stuff out in context. The more interested or engaged I am in the subject matter - the better the flow, the less likely I'll get bored or lose focus.
If the material isn't engaging to the brain, the brain gets frustrated which equals boredom.
* Make Time for Boredom or The Surprising Benefits of Boredom
[Apparently academics have become fascinated with Boredom and are doing studies on it. This amuses me to no end.]
Boredom has, paradoxically, become quite interesting to academics lately. The International Interdisciplinary Boredom Conference gathered humanities scholars in Warsaw for the fifth time in April. In early May, its less scholarly forerunner, London’s Boring Conference, celebrated seven years of delighting in tedium. At this event, people flock to talks about toast, double yellow lines, sneezing, and vending-machine sounds, among other snooze-inducing topics.
What, exactly, is everybody studying? One widely accepted psychological definition of boredom is “the aversive experience of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity.” [1] But how can you quantify a person’s boredom level and compare it with someone else’s? In 1986, psychologists introduced the Boredom Proneness Scale, [2] designed to measure an individual’s overall propensity to feel bored (what’s known as “trait boredom”). By contrast, the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale, [3] developed in 2008, measures a person’s feelings of boredom in a given situation (“state boredom”). A German-led team has since identified five types of state boredom: indifferent, calibrating, searching, reactant, and apathetic (indifferent boredom—characterized by low arousal—was the mellowest, least unpleasant kind; reactant—high arousal—was the most aggressive and unpleasant.) [4] Boredom may be miserable, but let no one call it simple.
Boredom has been linked to behavior issues including bad driving, [5] mindless snacking, [6] binge-drinking, [7] risky sex, [8] and problem gambling. [9] In fact, many of us would 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. [10] Probing this phenomenon, another team asked volunteers to watch boring, sad, or neutral films, during which they could self-administer electric shocks. The bored volunteers shocked themselves more and harder than the sad or neutral ones did. [11]
But boredom isn’t all bad. By encouraging contemplation and daydreaming, it can spur creativity. An early, much-cited study gave participants abundant time to complete problem-solving and word-association exer-cises. Once all the obvious answers were exhausted, participants gave more and more inventive answers to fend off boredom. [12] A British study took these findings one step further, asking subjects to complete a creative challenge (coming up with a list of alternative uses for a household item). One group of subjects did a boring activity first, while the others went straight to the creative task. Those whose boredom pumps had been primed were more prolific. [13]
In our always-connected world, boredom may be an elusive state, but it is a fertile one. Watch paint dry or water boil, or at least put away your smartphone for a while. You might unlock your next big idea.
[Go to the article to see the endnotes.]
* Ah, I finally found the frigging definition. I was looking for that, and got all the above links instead.
Boredom defined by Merriam Webster Dictionary (if you don't like Merriam Webster? Go find your own definition.)
" the state of being weary and restless through lack of interest "
I grew bored of the baseball game.
Or..."Jamie was bored of Miles, and wished Miles would stop talking."
or .."the boredom of a long car trip" - particularly if it is across Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado during the summer, when everything is brown, and you get motion sickness if you try to do anything. Hell, is driving across the plains states in the mid-west.
Yes, the plains can be beautiful but after two or three days...not so much.
Synonyms for boredom
blahs, doldrums, ennui, listlessness, restlessness, tedium, weariness
Verb
1768, in the meaning defined above
History and Etymology for bore
Verb (1)
Middle English boren, going back to Old English borian, going back to Germanic *bur-ō- (whence Old High German borōn "to pierce," Old Norse bora), probably verbal derivative of a noun base bur- "tool for piercing" (whence Old English bor "chiseling instrument," Old High German bora); akin to Latin forāre "to bore," ferīre to strike"
Noun (1)
Middle English, "hole, perforation," in part noun derivative of boren "to bore entry 1," in part borrowed from Old Norse bora "borehole," derivative of bora "to bore"
Noun (2)
Middle English *bore wave, from Old Norse bāra
Noun (3)
of uncertain origin
Note: Plausibly a derivative of the verb bore entry 6, if this was a sense development of bore entry 1 ("to drill, wear at" & "to induce ennui"); however, the noun, a vogue word among London political and cultural figures in the 1760's, appears to predate the verb.
front a dangerous bore at the mouth of the Amazon
bore noun (3)
Definition of bore (Entry 5 of 6)
: one that causes weariness and restlessness through lack of interest : one that causes boredom: such as
a : a dull or tiresome person His friends are a bunch of bores.
b : something that is devoid of interest The lecture was a total bore.
bore verb
bored; boring
Definition of bore (Entry 6 of 6)
transitive verb
: to cause to feel weariness and restlessness through lack of interest : to cause to feel boredom trying not to bore your audience got bored by the party and left
no subject
Date: 2020-03-06 02:41 pm (UTC)My particular weakness is philosophy. I was fortunate to have an excellent lecturer when I took philosophy in college. (I know not everyone with reading problems is blessed with a more eclectic auditory memory!) I really liked going to the class and thinking about the ideas presented. The reading, however, was like trying to make sense out of the random squiggles of a three-year-old with a crayon.