The Benefits of Being Bored

"If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experiences. A rustling in the leaves drives it away." (Benjamin, The Story Teller, 2002, p. 149)

Growing up before the internet and smartphone age, school holidays involved playing sport and hanging around with friends. During these times, I would become bored. Free of a daily rhythm, isolated from 24x7 contact with other people, my mind would wander. Ideas and dreams would develop independent of any obvious stimulus.

Fast forward to today, and now - unlike many contemporaries in Silicon Valley, for whom relaxation involves continually planning their next exciting activity - I like to be bored. At the busiest times of my career, I have craved non-activities: to pause all flights, stop racing to the next location, cease the constant planning.

So … I find boredom interesting. As a mature PhD student, I appreciated the gift of reading widely and perusing new fields. Papers in psychology and philosophy got me thinking. 

Psychologist View

First, some psychologists seem to regard boredom as a bad thing to be cured or eliminated. 'Boredom—the unfulfilled desire for satisfying activity … is related to a host of difficulties.' (6). There is strong research here, covering multiple perspectives on boredom arising from both the individual and the situation (6).

• Definition of boredom: Boredom results from a "prolonged exposure to monotonous stimulation". (6).
• Boredom arises from situations: "Boredom results from a lack of engaging activity. ... a situation with the requisite characteristics will elicit boredom in all or most people and, thus, to understand boredom we should focus on the boredom-producing situation." (6).
• Boredom arises from the individual: "Instead of the situation, maybe it’s the person who is … boring. Existentialists like Frankl (3) suggest that boredom occurs when an individual is unable to find meaning in his or her life."
• Psychoanalytical perspective: "Boredom stems from the individual, and more specifically from the individual’s inability to consciously access his or her desires. The bored individual looks to the external world to provide satisfaction, but—without knowing what to look for—fails to find it." (8)
• Ability of the individual to pay attention is important: Fisher (2) argues that individual differences in attention ability interact with the cognitive demands of the situation to produce boredom. 

Van Tilburg (7) states the obvious: “Boredom is a common experience that affects people on multiple levels, including their thoughts, feelings, motivations, and actions”. He cites research from Klapp (5) that “between 18 and 50% of the population often feels bored” (less than I would have guessed).

Philosophers' View

Although the analysis is interesting, psychology tends to regard boredom as a problem to be fixed. However, delve into philosophy and the focus shifts from diagnosis and cure, to a fuller understanding of a human condition. Paul Gibbs (4) agrees that “we become bored in our post-modern, consumerist Western world”, but he sees potential for boredom to result in leaps of imagination and vision. “Instead of chasing away boredom through busyness, a moment of vision could produce creative and authentic ways of being. “(4).

Gibbs quotes the story at the start of this article: “If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experiences. A rustling in the leaves drives it away.” (4). I appreciate this story, especially how boredom can be seen as a necessary part of creativity, as relevant to relaxation as sleep.

Gibbs' conclusion may be relevant for entrepreneurship and innovative transformation too: "it is through a moment of vision that opportunities to see occur, and transformation is made possible. In Heideggerian terms, a moment of vision offers a glimpse of how we might transform ourselves from being in a state of falling (inauthentically busying ourselves in our world) to one of resoluteness (taking a personal stance and being open to a life with no intrinsic meaning, but only relative meaning)."

My View

I prefer the philosophers' view. Gibbs' paper (4) is a worthwhile read and presents boredom as a state that may be required to make certain leaps and experience moments of vision. While we strive to optimize and transform our personal and business lives, give some thought to the value of boredom. It might be more useful than ever.

Dr. Keith Cotterill is an Innovation Lab Fellow and adjunct lecturer in Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University and a successful executive, entrepreneur and investor in enterprise technology. He graduated in Philosophy from Oxford and Engineering from Cambridge.

References

(1)    Benjamin, W. (2002). The Arcades project. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 

(2)    Fisher, C. D. (1993). Boredom at work: A neglected concept. Human Relations, 46, 395–417. 

(3)    Frankl, V. E. (1984). Man’s search for meaning: An introduction to logotherapy. New York: Pocket Books. 

(4)    Gibbs, P. (2011). The Concept of Profound Boredom: Learning from Moments of Vision. Studies in Philosophy and Education.

(5)    Klapp, O. E. (1986). Overload and boredom: Essays on the quality of life in the information society. New York: Greenwood Press. 

(6)    Mercer-Lynn, K. B., Bar, R. J., & Eastwood, J. D. (2014). Causes of boredom: The person, the situation, or both? Personality and Individual Differences, 56(Supplement C), 122–126.

(7)    van Tilburg, W. A. P., & Igou, E. R. (2012). On boredom: Lack of challenge and meaning as distinct boredom experiences. Motivation and Emotion. 

(8)    Wangh, M. (1975). Boredom in psychoanalytic perspective. Sociological Research, 42, 538–550.