In recent years (last 10-ish) access to entertainment has increased by a lot, largely because of smartphones, fast internet & social media applications making use of this.
Because of this I cannot imagine just sitting somewhere waiting for a train or a bus being bored, that is just not a thing that happens anymore. When I’m waiting I just pull out my phone open Instagram or twitter and start scrolling.
How amazing is this, we have this solution from boredom available 24/7 we never have to feel this unpleasant thing, I don’t think so. Boredom is unpleasant for a reason, boredom is the internal scream that tells you that there are better things to do.
It is also a time where you actually give your brain breathing room to think, our brains are single threaded and are half decent at concurrency but that is about it. You cannot really have thoughts when you are actively processing something.
When you are bored, it’s just you sitting with your thoughts. Neurologically your default mode network is activated, which is heavily responsible for thinking about the past, future and self-reflection which can be good or bad, but for most people it is often good.
You ever wonder why the sudden burst of motivation only comes at night, that’s because it is often the only time when you are not stimulated and your DMN (default mode network) is doing it’s thing. Now add to this the fact that your brain is hungry for some stimuli-any stimuli, this can lead you to take action towards your desired future.
It is actually an excellent evolutionary trait that helped humanity reach where we are, it’s just a bunch of people bored and not wanting to do something that has lead to this amazing progress.
Existence of short form content and social media is grave danger to the very well working mechanism of boredom. Never in history was it so easy to get dopamine, this kills boredom instantly and also kills all the benefits that it comes with.
Boredom is meant to be killed, that is why it is unpleasant just like pain is unpleasant as it is an indication that something hurt and needs fixing in our body, boredom the pain indicating the very thing that makes you human your curiosity & creativity are hurt, if this mechanism of boredom wasn’t in it’s place how are you any different from a worker ant just slogging away at it’s mundane job.
We must not lose boredom because losing that would mean we lost what made us truly human and differentiated us from intelligent insects. So next time when you’re bored don’t pick up your phone and just sit with your boredom, you will find something better to do, like countless humans always have.