- People more prone to boredom → more likely to break social distancing rules, can lead to destructive coping mechanisms
- Boredom often cast as good (sparking creativity) or bad (encouraging risk-taking)... what if it's just a signal that what you're doing isn't meaningful?
- Boredom = motivation for action
- Like experience of pain
- More religious belief → more sense of meaning → less boredom
- Meaning-and-attentional-components (MAC) model: lack of meaning OR ability to pay attention → boredom
- The desire bind— "It's when a bored person desperately wants to do something, but doesn't want to do anything in particular."
- If you're particularly disposed to avoiding harm OR to seeking pleasure, boredom can arise more easily— either because you can't let yourself do anything, or nothing's fun enough.
- Also somewhat dependent on environment, what activities/opportunities are available
- No evidence that boredom sparks creativity, but having creative interest can give you tools to mitigate boredom.
- Not a feeling to try to cultivate, necessarily (ex. for the sake of productivity)— more to work through
- Suggestions for what to do when bored?
- Calm down to avoid agitation, negative rumination; can use mindfulness
- Be patient with yourself, curious about what's leading to the feeling (internally or in the environment)
- Think about happy moments in the past, people you value (nostalgic memories) → cultivate meaning
- "To talk in terms of 'good' or 'bad' responds to a process of moralization through history. Boredom simply is. Boredom is going to happen since it is one tool we have to reevaluate ourselves and the context thanks to its reactive component. What we have to do is to learn to live with it, to deal with it, not to promote it naively or avoid it at all costs, but to listen to it." — Ros Velasco
- From Chris Bailey's 5 fascinating things I discovered by making myself bored for a month:
- See also: Where my mind wanders