Boredom is a social disease

Daydreaming can be “quite a respite” and provide a brief escape from day-to-day life. But it’s also beneficial to simply step away from distractions, obligations, and stressors long enough to feel bored and let your mind recharge. 

Don’t conflate boredom with relaxation. A purposefully tranquil activity, such as yoga or meditation, likely doesn’t meet the definition of trying and failing to find stimulation.

To tap into true boredom, unplug, pick an activity that requires little or no concentration and simply let your mind wander, without music or stimulation to guide it.

When we’re consciously doing things we’re using the “executive attention network, ” the parts of the brain that control and inhibit our attention. The attention network makes it possible for us to relate directly to the world presently around us.

By contrast, when our minds wander, we activate the brain’s “default mode network, ” which is the brain “at rest”; not focused on an external, goal-oriented task. In this mode, we still tap about 95% of the energy we use when our brains are engaged in focused thinking. 

• Poor attention control: when people with poor attention control drift into daydreaming. These people are anxious, easily distracted, and have difficulty concentrating, even on their daydreams.
• Guilty-dysphoric: when our thoughts drift to unproductive and negative places. We berate ourselves for perceived mistakes or flaws and feel emotions like guilt, anxiety, and anger.
• Positive-constructive: when our thoughts veer toward the imaginative; it reflects our drive to explore ideas and feelings, plan, and problem-solve. 

• Revisit past experiences, enjoy or reevaluate them.
• Rethink future plans.
• Be fully present in the moment.
• Look around and notice new details to better familiarize yourself with your environment and increase your sense of belonging.
• Challenge yourself to be still and see it as a form of adventurous living
• Do things light on engagement to help the mind to disengage from purposeful thought and wander.

While boredom signifies a lack of stimulus, pauses in engagement can be of great value. Being able to appreciate this means you won’t get bored and will be able to find things of interest to think or find contentment in simply being.

Instead of trying to monetize or avoid idle time, use it to develop inner resources, such as curiosity, playfulness, imagination, perseverance and agency. From that all sorts of fulfilling activities can emerge.

Boredom is sometimes described as the plague of modern society.

• Back in 2016, a French worker sued his former employer for "bore-out." He won.
• Many people, especially those born between mid -1990s and late 2010s, scrolls aimlessly through apps and find nothing of interest.
• People are even diagnosing their pets with boredom.

Psychologists differ in their definition of boredom.

• In the 1960s and 1970s, boredom was defined as the feeling generated by a repetitive task. Researchers found that boredom increased alertness to the things happening around you (distractions).
• From 1986, the opposite was found. A study found that boredom caused less concentration.

Facing a task, experiencing the uncomfortable emotions associated with it and doing the task despite those  emotions.

It rationalizes the shit out of anything that’s just a little bit uncomfortable and create excuses as to why we shouldn’t do something now. Those excuses are irrational, but sound superficially reasonable. 

To get better results in life you need to learn constantly. And the best way to learn is to read effectively and a lot.

A new idea, outlook on life, mental model, is all it takes for something to click inside your brain.

Your brain will start making connections between books that seemed to be on different topics. The more you read, the more links you form and the richer your understanding becomes.

Acknowledge what you want to change, observe and wonder why you are the way you are.

When you catch yourself repeating an unwanted habit, stop, remember you’re doing it out of habit and that it isn’t the right thing to do. 

Label your negative habit as a symptom of something deeper. Get to know your false beliefs. Ask, “Why do I behave or think this way? ”.

Once you notice yourself engaging in the habit, refocus on a positive, wholesome, ideally pleasure-giving activity.

If you have any doubts in what the multiple benefits that idleness can provide you with, just note down the fact that being lazy from time to time leads to increased creativity, productivity as well as developing problem-solving skills, as it allows you to take time to see the things more clearly.

In order to keep your effectiveness high while doing nothing, you might want to consider the following tips: 

• Find the good moments to take breaks throughout your day, in order to later be more productive.
• Own the very fact of doing nothing.
• Take your time getting used to doing nothing.
• Adjust your environment so that it favors Niksen.
• Get bored in original ways. All in all, figure out what works for you and make sure you do nothing once in a while, as it is so beneficial for your health.

The experience of Affect is the 'sense data' we automatically collect from our surroundings.

The emotions we feel, like sadness, joy or anger, are all experiences of Affect.

Before our modern life, before supermarkets, cities and our predictable routines, we just were. We weren't aware of our feelings but were just reacting/responding to our immediate environment and the situations.

Life was uncertain and immediate in the old times, but now it is more towards the future.

From the telegram to the phone to the mobile to the internet, all major cultural inventions have served the same purpose: to bring us closer together.

Today, we’ve reached peak hyper-connectivity. We can cross oceans at the touch of the button, speak to someone, anywhere, 24/7. And yet, statistics report that we’ve never felt so lonely. The technologies connecting us are isolating us.

You can be surrounded by people, at a party, or in the office, and still feel lonely to your core.

And you can be alone, millions of miles away from any human contact, and still feel joyfully connected to the world.

It’s less about our circumstances, more about how we react to them.