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Why Boredom Is So Powerful in Your Life
Boredom is a social disease
Ages ago, when people were busy trying to survive, boredom wasn’t a choice. They spent all their time securing food or shelter.
We are now overstimulated — easy access to infinite entertainment options is feeding boredom rather than discouraging it.
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Boredom is unused potential
Boredom is a disconnection to everything we can offer the world and vice versa. It's not influenced by external simulation, it's actually an indicator of how you engage with the world.
Boredom is a social disease
Ages ago, when people were busy trying to survive, boredom wasn’t a choice. They spent all their time securing food or shelter.
We are now overstimulated — easy access to infinite entertainment options is feeding boredom rather than discouraging it.
Embracing busyness to escape boredom
People embrace busyness because they are having a hard time being alone and enjoying it.
Being busy is a tricky form of entertainment however — we don’t feel the boredom, but it isn’t fun either.
Boredom and addictions
Boredom is responsible for increased risk of overeating, gambling, alcohol, drug abuse.
Individuals with high boredom-proneness are more likely to suffer from anxiety, OCD depression.
3 kinds of boredom
- A form of anxiety. We search for external antidote to boredom: Netflix, a device, company to rescue us.
- Rooted in fear. We are afraid of being alone with ourselves and paying attention to who we are.
- The realization that what really makes us feel bored is our thoughts, not reality itself - the world is predictable, our thoughts about it are repetitive.
Embracing boredom as a positive force
- Meditate: Once you stop resisting boredom, it’s no longer threatening;
- Boredom feeds creativity: Mind wandering invites creativity.
- Avoid technology: Entertainment snacks will make you crave for more.
- Recover the joy in performing mundane tasks: Recovering the pleasure of performing small duties builds a sense of pride and achievement.
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Boredom Sparks Creativity
Boredom is an unsatisfied search for neural stimulation. But, there is scientific evidence that boredom prompts the mind to entertain itself and can enable creativity and problem-solving ...
Boredom Is Good
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.
How To Be Bored The Right Way
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.
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The Importance Of Boredom
It drives us to engage in activities that we find more meaningful than those at hand. Without it, we’d be perpetually excited by everything.
Research shows that people who are bored...
Focus And The Brain
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.
Types Of Daydreaming
- 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.
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Procrastination is an emotion management problem
The #1 skill to overcome procrastination
Facing a task, experiencing the uncomfortable emotions associated with it and doing the task despite those emotions.
Our mind is a reason-giving machine
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.
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