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What the mysterious boredom divide teaches us
Five types of boredom
Psychologists now know there are at least five types of boredom.
- Calibrating boredom: You have wandering thoughts and a feeling of not knowing what to do.
- Reactive boredom: You feel aggressive towards your detainer - a teacher or the workplace - and dwell on the things you would rather be doing.
- Searching boredom: You feel restless and search for a way out.
- Indifferent boredom: You feel relaxed and separate from the world around you.
- Apathetic boredom: You feel neither good nor bad, but helpless to avoid the feeling.
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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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Key Ideas
Boredom
It's the state of being weary and restless through lack of interest. Boredom is rooted in the urge for meaningful activity or engagement that finds no satisfying avenues of express...
Boredom And Daydreaming
Where boredom is passive, daydreaming can be an active experience. Allowing ourselves to notice, and to be open to our surroundings, is a way of awakening our curiosity for the world outside ourselves.
Also, boredom is an aversive emotion linked to disgust, whereas lots of people like to daydream.
Daydreaming And Creativity
We should give ourselves the space to daydream. After all, insight comes unannounced and such small epiphanies can constitute clues to our particular predisposition and personalities.
There are strong links between daydreaming and problem-solving and creativity. Neuroscientists have found that during periods of idle daydreaming or sleep, the brain goes into problem-solving mode.
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Go With The ‘Flow’
Flow is the satisfying feeling of absorption we get when we’re wholly focused on an enjoyable, open-ended activity, of which we are in control but which stretches our abilities...
Better Employing Idle Time
- 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.
Embrace Idleness
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.