Feb 9
Turns out boredom is good for your brain…
I’m bored
Everything that technology has done so far has been in some way to reduce boredom.
It turns out, however, that boredom does in fact have scientific advantages as well as some logical ones.
Boredom induces goal setting
It seems weird but if you think about it, it makes sense. If your brain constantly responds to different cues, it does not have time to ponder on the important questions.
So, when you are bored and alone with your thoughts you think about such questions. You try to get your act together and come up with rational goals you want to achieve. What you’re ambitions are and how you can meet them.
People always having fun tend to not have their future thought. Where they want to go and what their journey should look like.
Constantly responding to present cues makes you more present-oriented. You can’t look much further because every minute something new is happening. When you are bored, you are forced to look ahead because at that moment you can not do anything else.
Boredom improves creativity
This is quite understandable considering the response to being bored is to be entertained.
You think of stuff to keep you occupied, this causes you to use the imaginative part of your brain.
Inventions must be closely related to boredom too. If you are bored you seek a way to disrupt that. Similarly, inventors weren’t very entertained with inventions at that time which propelled them to feed their boredom by addressing them. Thus they ended up making creative things we still use today.
This has practical application too. If you are bored for a while, your following thoughts tend to be more creative and imaginative. A study was done that showed positive results.
Boredom gives you self-control
Every second you don’t seek novelty and comply with the boredom is another second you improve your self-control. Every time you don’t pluck your phone out is another second you learn to live without it.
Boredom relaxes your mind
The information age is upon us and with gazillions of bags of information dropping every second, our brains need to relax. We relax our mind by letting it wander about.
Sitting alone with your thoughts may seem boring as it is to most people but is very important. This is when your mind can actually shut down and not wonder whether to save that bit of information or delete it.
We have short attention spans, unsurprisingly, and boredom can help improve that. While novelty is entertaining and all that, boredom turns out, is something no one craves but everyone needs!
So next time let’s try to delay pulling out our phones and swiping down through our news feeds. Let’s learn to be entertained by boredom.
