Chronic Boredom? Yes... It's a Thing!

What is boredom?

Boredom is an everyday experience. You feel this while waiting in traffic or watching something on television or twiddling on your phone or surfing the internet. Of all the psychological phenomena known to mankind, boredom perhaps has the least consensus on what really defines this experience (Eastwood et al., 2012). One view of boredom is that it is a state of longing for activity but at the same time being unaware of what is that one desires. The existential school of thought regards boredom as an unpleasant experience of inaction, emptiness, paralysis of will, and a sense of meaninglessness. Another take on boredom is that it results from the mismatch between one’s need for arousal and the availability of environmental stimulation. Finally, the cognitive model of boredom emphasizes that a bored individual perceives the environment as lacking opportunities for satisfying activity and themselves suffers from an impaired ability to concentrate. The common thread between all the definitions is that the bored individual wishes to, but is unable to, become engrossed in a satisfying activity (Eastwood et al., 2012).

What boredom is not?

Boredom and loneliness may share a common basis in terms of the cognitive processes involved but are different concepts (Conroy et al., 2010). In boredom, there is an inability to focus and maintain attention on object or activities, whereas in loneliness, there is an inability to focus and maintain attention on social relationships. Interestingly, both boredom and loneliness are correlated to cognitive decline in older people (Conroy et al., 2010). Boredom is different from leisure; in the latter one is absorbed in the activity and the sense of time disappears, while in boredom, one wishes to quit, and time appears to flow slowly (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Boredom and apathy are not the same. Apathy is characterized by helplessness, lack of motivation, lack of initiative, and loss of goal-directedness leading to a failure to seek alternatives (Clarke et al., 2011). In contrast, boredom results from recognizing that the current goal is no longer stimulating and is characterized by motivation to change the current situation and seek alternatives (Bench & Lench, 2013).

 

Consequences of boredom

While temporary boredom may motivate you to change your behavior or change your environment, chronic boredom or elevated proneness for boredom is associated with several social, psychological, and physical health problems. These are as below (see Eastwood et al., 2012; Fahlman et al., 2013; Sommers & Vodanovich, 2000):

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Hostility and anger
• Somatization complaints
• Overeating and binge eating
• Drug and alcohol abuse
• Problem gambling
• Serious accidents at work
• Dropping out of school
• Lowered levels of meaning of life and life satisfaction
• Job dissatisfaction
• Low achievement in school
• Cognitive decline

Thus, boredom, when it becomes chronic and pervasive, is no longer a benign state of mind. The adage “bored to death” is lent some credence by a study that followed-up people aged 35-55 years and found out that those who reported a “great deal of boredom” were more likely to die during follow-up than those that didn’t report any boredom (Britton & Shipley, 2009). Authors in this study postulated that the most likely cause of early death in these individuals was due to the association of boredom with harmful physical and mental health consequences as listed before.

 

How do people experience boredom?

Both boredom and proneness for boredom can be measured by rating scales (Fahlman et al., 2013; Farmer & Sundberg, 1986). People use the following statements to describe their experience of boredom:

• “I tend to get bored easily.”
• “I seldom get excited about my work.”
• “I am often trapped in situations where I have to do meaningless things.”
• “I often feel that time is passing by slower than usual.”
• “I feel stuck in situations that I feel are irrelevant.”
• “I am easily distracted.”
• “I am lonely.”
• “I feel empty.”
• “I am indecisive or unsure of what to do next.”
• “I feel agitated.”
• “I want to do something fun but nothing appeals me.”
• “I wish I was doing something more exciting.”
• “I am wasting my time that would be better spent on something else.”
• “I often feel impatient.”
• “My attention span is shorter than usual.”
• “I feel cut off from the rest of the world.”
• “It takes me more stimulation to get me going than most people.”
• “It takes a lot of change and variety to keep me really happy.”
• “Unless I do something exciting, even dangerous, I feel half-dead and dull.”
• “I would like more challenging things to do in life.”
• “My mind often wanders.”
• “I want something to happen but I am not sure what.”
• “I wish time would go faster.”
• “Everything seems repetitive and routine to me.”

If you have identified with several of these statements, then you possibly may be having a propensity towards boredom.

 

Strategies to overcome boredom

While you cannot eliminate boredom from your everyday life, here are some strategies to make your life less boring!

1. Add pleasurable activities to your daily schedule: If you don’t want to suffer the emotional and physical consequences of boredom, then intersperse those unavoidable boring daily chores with activities that give you a sense of pleasure. Engaging in your hobbies, social activities, working in your garden, learning a new skill, spiritual pursuits, etc. will break the monotony of your daily life. Besides pleasurable things, engage in activities that give you a sense of mastery, achievement, satisfaction, or control. These things are not necessarily pleasurable (e.g., doing things that you have been putting off), but they give you a sense that you are doing something meaningful.
2. Use your creativity to eliminate sameness: Rigid routines and sameness are precursors of boredom. Use your creative skills to make routine activities more interesting. Try a different recipe for your favorite dish, involve your family in chores with each member being a character of an imaginary tale, listen to music or talk to others over the phone while you do your chores, imagine you are a comic character and talk and behave the way the character does while doing the chores.
3. Use “beginner’s mind”: In “beginner’s mind,” you pay attention to things or tasks around you as if they are new and unique moments. This overcomes the tendency of your mind to play the recording in your head that says, “same old, same old.”
4. Do volunteer work or help others: This helps you increase your social network and adds meaning to your life.
5. Avoid impulsive and unhealthy behaviors: People experiencing boredom seek situations with high levels of arousal to get unstuck from their internal low levels of arousal. Thus, they get trapped in impulsive and sometimes risky behaviors such as binge eating, pathological gambling, drug and alcohol use, and sex addiction.
6. Practice mindfulness to appreciate the moment and the environment: Boredom and mindfulness are incompatible psychological states (Koval & Todman, 2015). Mindfulness has two components: (a) orienting one’s attention purposefully to the present moment, and (b) approaching one’s experience in the present moment with curiosity, openness, and acceptance. Given that boredom is characterized by an inability to maintain attention and the tendency of the mind to wander, it is postulated that mindfulness is incompatible with boredom. This is also supported by effective use of mindfulness in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in which boredom, distractibility, and impulsiveness are not uncommon (Mitchell et al., 2015).

On the face of it, boredom may appear to be a trivial and inconsequential phenomenon. But it is real. Chronic and pervasive boredom can have adverse effects on your physical and mental health and it may also impair your work and school performance. Time to get a trip on your boredom!

To learn more about evidence-based self-management techniques that promote mental health and well-being, check out Dr. Duggal's Author Page.

HARPREET S. DUGGAL, MD, FAPA

REFERENCES

Bench, S. W., & Lench, H. C. (2013). On the function of boredom. Behavioral Sciences, 3, 459-472.

Britton, A., & Shipley, M. J. (2010). Bored to death? International Journal of Epidemiology, 39, 370-371.  

Clarke, D. E., Ko, J. Y., Kuhl, E. A., van Reekum, R., Salvador, R., & Marin, R. S. (2011). Are the available apathy measures reliable and valid? A review of the psychometric evidence. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 70(1), 73-97.

Conroy, R. M., Golden, J., Jeffares, I., O’Neill, D., & McGee, H. (2010). Boredom-proneness, loneliness, social engagement and depression and their association with cognitive function in older people: a population study. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 15(4), 463-473.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York, NY: Harper and Row.

Eastwood, J. D., Frischen, A., Fenske, M. J., & Smilek, D. (2012). The unengaged mind: defining boredom in terms of attention. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(5), 482-495.

Fahlman, S. A., Mercer-Lynn, K. B., Flora, D. B., & Eastwood, J. D. (2013). Development and validation of the multidimensional state boredom scale. Assessment, 20(1), 68-85.

Farmer, R. & Sundberg, N. D. (1986). Boredom proneness – the development and correlates of a new scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 50(1), 4-17.

Mitchell, J. T., Zylowska, L., & Kollins, S. H. (2015). Mindfulness meditation training for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in adulthood: current empirical support, treatment overview, and future directions. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 22(2), 172-191.

Sommers, J., & Vodanovich, S. J. (2000). Boredom proneness: its relationship to psychological-and physical-health symptoms. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 56(1), 149-155.