The Benefits Of Boredom
One of the most powerful tools we have is our attention. Our attention can be employed to significant effect, working on our goals or priorities, broadening our knowledge and fueling our curiosity. Or it can be frittered away on superfluous things, passive things of little lasting value. Our attention is a neutral tool; we can use it to build things in our lives or let it languish amidst shallow pursuits.
Do you find yourself easily distracted? The problem with distractions is that they start to become like a drug; we desire a consistent “hit” of them to keep us moving throughout the day. Our daily world and interactions begin to look drab in comparison; they start to look like inconveniences along the way that we must endure in between spells of pleasantly entertaining distractions. It’s not a healthy cycle and certainly does not build us up as either individuals or communities. The first step in a countermeasure against this initially appears counter-intuitive: embrace boredom.
Boredom Is Clarifying
We need to be willing to be bored. And we need to approach this is two ways:
- We need to become comfortable amidst boredom (defined as: a lack of apparent distraction or entertainment)
- We need to graduate to accurately seeing the things which should be boring as actually be boring.
Our definition of boring will alter when we attempt this; what we previously saw as desirable and entertaining we will now start to see as trivial and boring. The positive requirement is that we identify those subjects, activities, hobbies, items that grab our attention, and will fill our mind with interest and curiosity, not merely with entertainment. And then we fill up our time with those subjects and activities. When we do that, when we are actively pursuing topics and activities that intrigue us, the lure of binge-watching old episodes of “The Office” becomes a lot less attractive. As the distractions loosen their hold on us, we start to clarify the things that are of interest to us, not merely the things that are available to fill up our time.
Boredom Is Freeing
One of the most significant challenges in our modern world is to be comfortable in our heads. We are increasingly afraid of what we might find there so we stay out as much as possible. In his classic work of satire, “Welcome To The Monkey House”, Kurt Vonnegut describes how in the future individuals will go about their day with specially outfitted headpieces, which produce distracting noises into the wearer’s ears any time they are on the verge of creating an original thought.
We live in Vonnegut’s reality now and do not understand how constraining it truly is. If we are momentarily bored in any circumstance of the day, we can quickly take out our phone and voila! At least the act of mindlessly scrolling on a digital screen will keep our original thoughts or observations at bay, even if we don’t make it to the text, call, or Internet icon. There is a multi-billion dollar industry merely based upon one premise: distraction.
Instead of being avoided, we should embrace boredom. As we practice it and become more comfortable with it, boredom becomes freeing. It allows our minds room to dream. It allows our creative juices to start flowing. It allows us time and room for observation, reflection, and introspection (aren’t these the same traits we rigorously exhort our distractible children to cultivate?) We do not need entertainment all the time. It’s the shallow end of the pool. Boredom is the start of working our way into the deep end, where the professionals tackle their daily workouts.
How We Avoid Boredom
Productive procrastination and productive distraction are two terms for the same activity: avoiding boredom. We can be amazingly productive tackling non-value added tasks, spending an inordinate amount of time and energy on questions and choices that do not matter. Spend some time eavesdropping or people watching in a grocery or department store. The ideas that grab our attention, and that we discuss with one another in these venues, are classic:
“What kind of dish soap should we get: the red bottle or the green one?”
“Which socks should I buy: the grey or the light grey?”
“Should we get mild cheddar cheese or medium?”
The questions and concerns which we should find boring (i.e. what color bottle of dish soap to buy) we spend precious time and attention answering. It’s an insult to ourselves that we allow such useless questions any room in our mind, which remains our most powerful tool. Preoccupation with mundane things is a sure sign that one is avoiding boredom; there’s no possible way that mundane things can (or should) take that much energy.
What Really Happens
By allowing ourselves the option of being bored, a strange thing happens: over time boredom approaches us less and less. We begin to take greater, more detailed, and nuanced notes of the world and people around us. We even begin to understand ourselves better. And what we realize is how truly fascinating our daily world and the people we meet in it are. We rekindle our curiosity.
We start to find the former passive and persistent distractions themselves to be boring. The Netflix series that was critical for us to watch and finish all seven seasons is now viewed in a different light. The twelfth game in a row of Saturday sports-ball is no longer as appealing.
How Can This Be Applied?
There’s nothing inherently wrong with entertainment or the occasional innocent distractions, but the sheer volume of distractions now available works to overwhelm us. Much of our entertainment is no longer a treat or special occasion (as it was in previous generations); it’s now considered a necessity and employed as such. Like Vonnegut’s character, we are in danger of losing our ability to craft original thoughts, think logically and objectively, or express ourselves to one another. We have not invested the effort in training ourselves to do these things. We need to make a decisive effort to recover space in our heads, to train ourselves to be comfortable with a lack of passive entertainment.
How can this training be accomplished?
How can we utilize a bit of boredom as a tool to refocus ourselves?
* Take a walk, but leave the digital devices at home. Observe the world around you as you walk, say hello to other folks you meet (uncomfortable, I know). Let your mind wander and think through a problem or idea. The solutions or insights that come to mind might surprise you.
* Pencil in time for a mental break each day, ten to fifteen minutes of sitting or lying down, and letting your mind empty. It’s a reset and renewal for further concentrated effort.
* Find a subject that intrigues you and start researching it, preferably offline to avoid tempting distractions offering 6-minute abs and Ponzi schemes. The incessant distractions will start to pale in comparison to your new area of study.
As we work on this, it’s as if we are rediscovering our own worlds again. We become reminded of how exciting people indeed are, how wonderfully and fearfully we are all made, and how much about our lives and the surrounding world we still need to discover. We cannot live in the shallows of life or our own minds and expect to pursue a life well lived. We need to head for deeper water.
Moving Forward:
Do you struggle with the urge to remain consistently entertained throughout the day?
Do you ever set aside periods to allow yourself to be bored?
Originally published at https://fjwriting.com on January 15, 2019.
