Boredom is a normal human emotion that we all experience at times. It is also purposeful. It signifies to us a need to increase challenge level / and or meaning in the context of the activity which is resulting in the feeling of boredom. Learning how to acknowledge and respond to these signals can increase your effectiveness in completing the boredom provoking task. It can also enable you to use boredom as a tool to support reflection, and to make positive changes in your life and increase your happiness.

 About boredom…

Boredom has a very bad reputation. For a start it is not a pleasant experience. From a psychological perspective it is associated with increased risk taking and anti-social behaviour. Like all emotions it is purposeful. I will explore boredom further in this article to uncover the benefits of boredom, and enable you to capitalise  on these.

Boredom is a normal human emotion and like all emotions its primary purpose is to provide a signal to us that action is required.  As an emotion it is a negative one, but considered not as unpleasant  as say  sadness or anger. It  can be experienced with other emotions such as sadness and frustration. Research suggests that’s its points of  difference are a feeling of not being challenged, and that of current activities lacking meaning. An aspect of boredom is  often an inability to stay focused on the current activity.  So the purpose of boredom is to signal to  us to take action around lack of challenge or meaning. I could be argued that our attention wandering  can be the starting point of this process.

Is being bored useful?

You may be thinking that as part of my job there is this really boring administration task  which I hate doing, but if I refuse to do it I could lose my job. If I wasn’t so bored it would be easy to do this, so how is being bored beneficial ?

I would agree in the current moment it can seem less useful, although it is a sign that action needs to be taken to increase the likelihood of completing the task. There may be a need to either modify the task  or to as least connect with the broader meaning of the task. Sometimes just varying the sequence of component tasks constitutes a variation to your brain, and in response to this it will refocus attention to the task  The ability to build these skills will enable you to undertake tasks of this nature in the future.

TIP: Vary tasks that you consider boring in a minor way. This will force your brain to re-engage attention in response to the change. 

Outside of the current moment, it can be a signal to review your goals and activities. An opportunity to consider what meaning is to you and / or what challenges you.  Research supports  the benefit of boredom in respect to pro-social behaviour. This benefit could equally be extended to being a motivator to many other positive behaviours. Boredom can inspire innovation, creativity and major life achievements.

If part of the experience of being human is to have a sense of purpose and meaning, then boredom can be a very useful, albeit uncomfortable, stimulation to  find meaning in your life and to see  what it is you wish to achieve. It might mean a change of activity, but it may also mean a change of perspective. If you can find meaning in the “boring” activities required to achieve a bigger goal then you are better able to complete them.

A related concept to boredom is boredom proneness. This term was created to acknowledge and measure individual difference in becoming bored in various situations. Not everyone will be bored in a given situation or performing a given task. Things that affect boredom proneness include self-regulation and your relationship with goal setting and achievement.  If  we have a sense and a track record of finding meaning and taking action, then boredom is less likely to be a problem. If you think this is a challenge for you then I suggest reviewing my previous articles on hope, procrastination and realistic goal planning.

In Finishing….

So let’s say you find yourself at work tomorrow feeling bored and starting to have associated feelings of fear and dread as you struggle to finish a time bound activity. Respond to your boredom by acknowledging it and considering it purposeful. This might enable you to redesign or vary the task, or even to contextualize it in terms of a bigger goal.  It may even motivate you to reflect further later, and to come up other ways of redesigning the task,, and to find additional meaning in the task. Or to make other changes in your life in terms of direction and / or goals, which increase your life satisfaction and happiness.