As an educator, I spend a lot of time with teenagers. This has many benefits, such as exposure to ideas, music, opinions, and even vocabulary one might otherwise miss. It also results in some drawbacks, such as exposure to a generation’s worth of bad habits and germs. Most consistent of all, though, is the amount of interesting observation it can provide.
One notable example occurs each Monday when students sit for a weekly reading quiz. The quiz is hand-written and untimed. This means that whereas some students finish quickly, others take their time, and a majority of the class is left with anywhere from ten to twenty minutes of unstructured time to use as they please. There are two rules, though – they can’t use any of their electronic devices. And they can’t sleep.
Though brief, this weekly ritual inadvertently places the students in a pre-Information Age era – one that pre-dates the intersection of publicly accessible WiFi, affordable data, and the proliferation of handheld, “smart” technology – and returns them to a time and place in which passing time in and of itself was a pastime.
It reminds them, briefly, that without the burden of their devices, they can be left to their own.
Some teachers might consider this an epic waste of time – how could one waste nearly a third of a class on such boredom?
This reaction, though natural and understandable, is both misinformed and shortsighted. It places visible business and productivity at the top of an artificial pyramid of human existence, while failing to appreciate the ancient value of a mind at rest.
This reaction, shared by the majority of our society, underestimates the benefits of boredom.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
-Blaise Pascal, French inventor and physicist, 17th century
Boredom has been defined in a variety of ways over time. Tolstoy described boredom as a “desire for desires.”[1] Sebastien de Grazia wrote that to be bored, “a person must believe that something both interesting to do and permissible exists elsewhere.”[2]
And James Danckert, a neuroscientist who’s studied boredom for the past two decades, describes it as similar to the “tip-of-the-tongue” syndrome – the familiar sensation that something is missing, coupled with an inability to say just what it is.[3]
Boredom is often associated with a lack of meaning: we can’t maintain interest in an action when we don’t fundamentally care about it. Others point to a lack of attention: if an action is too hard, or too easy, our concentration evaporates and our attention moves elsewhere. Danckert, the neuroscientist, summarizes it as follows: “boredom occurs we are caught in a desire conundrum, wanting to do something but not wanting to do anything,” and “when our mental capacities, our skills and talents, lay idle – when we are mentally unoccupied.”
Ironically, this feeling is a byproduct of modernity. As Margot Talbot pointed out in her 2020 New Yorker piece on boredom, leisure was a key precondition – a sufficient number of our fellow humans had to be “free of the demands of subsistence” to experience the notion of time in need of filling.[4] It’s hard to be bored when you are constantly in need of food, shelter, or safety, and our condition as a species didn’t stabilize these needs until relatively recently on the grand scale of time.
In fact, though the adjective to be a bore was in use since at least the 18th century, it wasn’t until the 1852 that the word boredom, a noun describing the subjective feeling, became a part of our collective vocabulary.
Historians shouldn’t be surprised. 1852 is more or less when America began to transition from the Market to the Industrial Revolution, a period of massive innovation and change which, among other things, fundamentally altered our relationship with time, work, and leisure. With the advent of factories and clocks and the division of labor, our work became more monotonous. And with the complete separation of our once blended work/life model into separate spheres of work days, work weeks, weekends, and commutes to work locations, we found ourselves with predictable yet increasingly limited blocks of “free time”, or time in which we weren’t required to work. This “free time” was hardly free, though, and more often led not to flourishing leisure, but a feeling of “uselessness”, or a restless languishing, similar to the “desire conundrum” described by Danckert.
Though a massive entertainment industry was created in response to this lifestyle shift (movie theaters, sporting events, amusement parks, and the like), it was all transactional in nature and available only to those with a sufficient income. As a result, when provided with nothing but small pockets of free time, the utility of heading in a new direction – such as with a new skill, a new hobby, or a new lifestyle – could feel quite futile. We felt bored when we were “off the clock”, and created the word boredom to summarize how we felt.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and though our post-Industrial work model hasn’t changed very much (most of us still have standardized, clock- and wage-based work days, work weeks, weekends, and the like), we now have access to the most convenient and addictive alternatives to boredom our species have ever encountered.
Which begs the question – do we really need boredom in our lives?
*****
Most of us touch or look at our phone 2,617 times per day and spend over 2 hours and 30 minutes using it.[5] This, surprisingly, is merely a fraction of the 11 hours and 6 minutes of daily digital media overall, with includes other inputs like TVs, computers, and audio. Many teenagers report much higher numbers.
Much of this time with digital technology is a deliberate component of our modern lives – using a computer or tablet at school or on the job, for example, is simply the way many of us now learn and work. However, the rest now seems to fill what this series has dubbed our “in-between time”: time waiting for something or someone, time on public transportation, and so on.
Worse, it also seems to creep into other previously unthinkable social rituals and spaces. For example, it is quite normal now to see parents at the playground alone on a bench scrolling on their phone, glancing up every few minutes to check on their children. In one study, 44% of surveyed parents admitted to feeling guilt over this. The peace and tranquility of our ski lifts, beach chairs, and camp fire circles – long untouched by the tentacles of digital inputs – is now broken by tapping fingers, streaming multimedia, audible notifications, and ambient light from screens. And though there aren’t any studies to prove it, your author’s hunch is that a majority of parents would admit in an anonymous survey to using their phone during their toddler’s bath time.
We aren’t suddenly more important or more needed than we used to be. And these environments and contexts are not our preferred spaces for work or study.
Rather, we are voluntarily replacing the mindful activities that once filled our time – things like conversation with strangers, observation, contemplation, or simply zoning out and day dreaming (even if somewhat boring) – with the mindless, instantaneous pleasures of our most addictive streaming subscriptions and smartphone applications.
Luckily, we are now learning what impacts this can have on our mental well-being.
The neuroscience on boredom and “mind-wandering” is relatively new – most of the formal studies have just been completed in the past 10-20 years. The results, in essence, identify two modes of brain activity, both of which are equally important to our overall mental health.
When we are engaged in an activity, we’re using the “executive attention network”, which involves the portions of the brain requiring the focus and attention needed to process information for external or goal-oriented tasks, such as cooking a complex meal, studying a foreign language, or practicing a sport. Michael Easter, in his book “The Comfort Crisis”, describes this as the “focused mode.”
Alternatively, when we are bored and our minds begin to wander, we activate the part of our brain called the “default mode network”, which encompasses activities in which the brain is at rest, such as laying in a hammock, staring out a bus window, or waiting in line at the DMV. (Easter describes this as the “unfocused mode”.) We may be accustomed to thinking of these moments as wasteful with regards to modern expectations of productivity, however this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
According to Lybi Ma of Psychology Today, “when we lose focus on the outside world and drift inward, we’re not shutting down. We’re tapping into a vast trove of memories, imagining future possibilities, dissecting our interactions with other people, and reflecting on who we are.”
In fact, this state of mind is proven to be essential for rejuvenation, imagination and creativity. It helps us process complex information subconsciously so that we can be sharper when we snap back into focused mode. Most of us can relate to stories of creative, “ah-ha” moments occurring in the shower, while walking the dog, or even while fishing, moments in which we are most likely to allow our minds to wander and remain in an unfocused mode uninterrupted by digital inputs.
Yet when we bury our boredom with digital distractions for several hours each day, we are robbing ourselves of essential time previously spent in unfocused mode. We are depriving our brains of necessary recovery time, like an athlete who never rests between sets.
There are several explanations for these habits, despite the growing evidence on their negative consequences. First, we can all acknowledge that there are many risks inherently associated with boredom and an unoccupied mind, which explains why so many try to avoid it. Those of us with poor attention or thought control may often allow our mind to drift into negative places through rumination on past pain or anxious anticipation of an uncertain future.
This is one of the many reasons that mindful focus on and appreciation for the present has been a goal of humanity for thousands of years – it is extremely challenging to master. As a result, most humans would rather distract themselves rather than meditate when given the choice. For example, according to a 2014 study, two thirds of men and a quarter of women would rather shock themselves than do nothing at all alone in a room for fifteen minutes, even when given the opportunity to preview the strength of the shock.
Second, our menu of potential distractions is more accessible, available, and addictive than ever before, particularly for our youth. Streaming entertainment is designed to encourage “binging”, with cliffhanger scripts coupled with auto-play functions meant to keep subscribers in front of the screen. Applications harness the addictive power of the cue, routine and reward, with notifications as the cue, the routine in using the app, and the rewards arriving via likes, comments and shares. These simple rewards cause surges in dopamine, resulting in the fleeting, emotional highs similar to gambling and drug addiction. And this doesn’t even begin to explore the power of the “endless scroll”.
The combination of these factors is a recipe for mental un-wellness, as we may lose the ability to control our thoughts altogether. As Danckert, the neurologist, concluded: “It seems plausible that our capacity to willfully control our attention just might wither in response to underuse.”
*****
At the start of the academic year, the students seemed shocked by their weekly dose of post-quiz boredom: they fidget in their seats, tap or roll their fingers on their desks, pat the empty pockets where they normally keep their phone, or anxiously look around the room. They seem to wonder, non-verbally, how this could possibly be a part of the day’s agenda.
As the weeks progress, though, it’s almost as if their minds instinctually recall what to do with this sort of time. Some create magnificent doodles or sketches on the back of the quiz. Some gaze out the window, motionless, looking at everything and nothing. Some even play intense, speechless matches of Hangman.
By the end of the year, when I eventually break the silence and get on with the class, there is almost a hushed, collective sigh, possibly because they dread reviewing the quiz, but perhaps also because they’ve come to value this time in-between.
Maybe they’ve come to value a break in the long academic day. Maybe they like how they feel with just fifteen minutes of zoning out. Maybe, just maybe, they’ve come to appreciate – again and for the first time – the true benefits of boredom.
Although I did read this on my cell phone, I tried to give the good executive focus. Enjoyable and kept my focused attention. I do fear the pitfalls of our technology and work culture, especially for my children. This reinforces my efforts to have phone free times in my personal life.
Thanks for sharing – recently started trying to take clarity breaks to let my mind wander. I learned about something in Japan called “Ma” which I think translates to negative space. Hoping that inspiration comes through us when we pause and make space for it.