The Upside of Boredom

Title: The Upside of Boredom

Amina Srna: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Amina Srna, a producer for the show, filling in for Brian today. These days, we have more ways than ever to keep ourselves entertained. Endless scrolling, streaming, podcasts, games. Yet boredom still finds a way in. When it does, we often treat it like a problem to solve, something to escape as quickly as possible. What if boredom isn't the enemy? Vox senior reporter, Allie Volpe, explores this idea in her essay How to Be Less Afraid of Boredom, arguing that those moments of restlessness aren't just empty time, they're full of potential.

What happens when we stop resisting boredom and start paying attention to it? Can it make us more creative, more present, maybe even happier? Allie's bio page on Vox's website lists her many beats, which include mental health, relationships, wellness, money, home life, and work. She joins us to talk about the science of boredom, why we fear it, and how we might use it to our advantage. Allie, welcome to WNYC.

Allie Volpe: Thank you so much for having me.

Amina Srna: Thanks for being here. Listeners, we want to hear from you. What's your relationship with boredom? Do you embrace it, avoid it, fight against it? Maybe you're someone who never gets bored, or maybe you find yourself bored all the time. If you're a parent, how do you handle your child's boredom? If you've tried cutting back on digital distractions, has it changed how you experience boredom? Give us a call now or send us a text at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Allie, your essay begins with a question. When was the last time you felt utterly, stupefyingly mind-numbingly bored? Let me turn that back on you. When was that for you?

Allie Volpe: Probably a recent weekend when I was trying to have some downtime, but I just found myself getting that itchy feeling of I'd watched too much TV. This is not engaging me anymore. I was lucky that I had this research at the top of my mind. I was like, "Oh, yes, I'm bored." It's trying to tell me something. It's trying to tell me to do something different.

Amina Srna: You write that boredom isn't just about having nothing to do, but more about feeling restless or unengaged. Can you talk a little bit about that distinction?

Allie Volpe: Yes. A researcher told me that people often conflate boredom with not having anything to do, but actually you could the busiest person ever and still feel bored. It's not so much about lacking things to do. It's just that the things that you're doing are maybe not meaningful, or they're not hard enough, or maybe they're too hard. The feeling is telling you to go find something else to do. Maybe someone who's super busy, they have a jam packed schedule, a really demanding job, they find all these things really difficult, and they maybe are wishing for a moment of boredom, but actually what they're wishing for are moments of downtime.

Amina Srna: Some people claim they never get bored, while others are bored constantly. Whenever I think about boredom, I think about the line in one of John Berryman's poems, ever to confess you're bored means you have no inner resources, AKA boring. Interesting people are never bored. How true do you think that is? What makes some of us better at handling boredom than others?

Allie Volpe: I think every researcher I talked to for this story brought up that line of interesting people are never bored. That's just not the case. Everyone feels bored at some point. Some people are just better at dealing with it. It's a sort of universal experience. Waiting in line at the DMV, I think a lot of people would not find that particularly engaging. Or if, again, you're reading a really difficult book, and you just can't focus, that is a sign of boredom.

We experience these things pretty regularly. Again, a movie that you find really interesting, another person could find really boring. It's all very personal. It happens a lot. Some people are just better at taking those cues and find something else to do. They can adjust pretty quickly. Other people might find it frustrating. That is, again, the frustrating thing about boredom. It tells you that this is not meaningful. You need to find something else to do, but it doesn't tell you what else to do.

Amina Srna: Here is a new line I'm going to put in my back pocket. It comes via text. As a first grade NYC public school teacher, when a student says, "I'm bored," I always say, "You're so lucky. Now you get to choose what to get fascinated in."

Allie Volpe: I love that. I definitely was one of those kids growing up. I was always bored to the point where my grandmother, who often babysat me frequently, bought me a book about boredom, about being bored. I just was not one of those kids who was very good at problem-solving and figuring out what to do next until I got really into reading and discovered this is a great way to keep my attention.

Amina Srna: We're getting a bunch of calls in, but I want to extend one more shout out for our listeners to call or text at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. We often hear about boredom-induced creativity, but you cite research suggesting that moderate engagement, like taking a walk, I think you even said showering in your piece, is more likely to spark ideas than deep boredom. Why is that?

Allie Volpe: Because boredom, you're kind of stuck in it. You're not exactly engaging your mind. Creativity actually comes from a place of being moderately engaged, showering or walking. It's not so engrossing or boring that it distracts you. Boringness, being bored, can be so distracting that you're not exactly thinking of great things. People who have these sort of epiphanies are giving themselves time to think.

That's what researchers wanted to point out, the difference between being alone with your thoughts, deep thinking, and boredom. They're not the same thing. Actually, that time to think is an activity itself. Being bored is you're just like, "I wish I was doing something different." You need to give yourself that space to do-- Again, you're doing a mindless activity. You are doing something. You are thinking. That's where the creativity comes from.

Amina Srna: You point out that being busy doesn't prevent boredom. Sometimes it just masks it. How can people tell the difference between being meaningfully engaged and just filling time?

Allie Volpe: I think if you're constantly looking for a bit of comfort at any moment of your day, like pulling out your phone at the first time that you take a chance to pause, or putting on a podcast because you can't stand to be in a quiet room, you might want to reconsider what are your motivations for doing that? Is it because you find being alone with yourself to be incredibly boring?

Maybe you can become more comfortable exploring your thoughts, doing deep thinking, or creating dedicated spaces in your home where you're not pulling out your phone because that stuff can creep. Experts told me that if you're constantly reaching for your phone to entertain yourself at all times, you're probably going to end up doing it during meaningful times, like spending time with your family or dangerous times, when you're driving.

We need to get a little bit better at not using the phone as a crutch. You can play games with yourself. You could make a task seem more difficult or more easy or you could even just talk to the people around you. It really is important to not use some of those things as crutches.

Amina Srna: Here's a caller echoing what you are saying. Something similar. Roger on Staten island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Roger.

Roger: Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. Just several years back, the brilliant, wonderful Manoush Zomorodi was featured regularly on WNYC.

Amina Srna: Manoush Zomorodi, yes, our former colleague.

Roger: She had a series called Bored and Brilliant. She talked about how we've lost the time to daydream, the time to people watch, even the time to pick up-- writers pick up little bits of dialogue that they overhear in a restaurant or on the train, and they say, "Oh, I could use that later." I think Ira Gershwin got half his lyrics that way. Now we just go to our phones immediately we get glommed into the screen. We don't really use the time, the kind of space we have to daydream and be more creative. That kind of addictive behavior actually shuts own creativity.

Amina Srna: Thanks, Roger.

Roger: That's my comment.

Amina Srna: Thank you so much, Roger. Allie, to what Roger was saying, here's a text. Kim from Brooklyn writes, "I used to read and write when I was bored as a child, and it was into a possible career for me for a while, but I recently noticed that web surfing cut into my reading and writing time, and my thoughts were way more disjointed, and my writing has suffered. I've started analog reading again. It's starting to come back." Do you want to talk about using boredom as a meanful tool for some of these life changes?

Allie Volpe: Yes. Again, meaning is such a big word. A reason that we feel bored is because the thing that we're doing lacks meaning. The advice that some researchers gave me was to try to make things feel more meaningful. Again, that's not to say we have to totally write off technology at all. They gave the example of looking up a YouTube video to look up instructions on how to bake bread. As long as the thing is meaningful to you, you can use technology as a tool, but the key is to find something meaningful to you. Maybe the stuff that she was surfing online actually wasn't that meaningful, which is sort of a distraction. Therefore, the books were something meaningful. That's where you can find that creativity and fill that time more effectively.

Amina Srna: Here's another text. Boredom in the '80s is how I learned to become an artist. I used to have to find things to do in my room as a kid while I pretended to do homework. Little did I know it was a training ground for developing ideas toward a creative life. I now make a living as a fine artist. Today I'm never bored because I carry a sketchbook which has become a playground for my mind. Allie, I want to talk about how you write that boredom can also lead-- It's a bit of a double edged sword, right? It can also lead to impulsivity, self harm, or even substance abuse. Can you talk about the darker side of boredom and what happens when people try to escape it in unhealthy ways?

Allie Volpe: Yes. There's a whole host of negative consequences of boredom, like self harm, impulsivity, depression, anxiety, alcohol abuse, substance abuse, attention problems, low motivation. The list goes on and on. One study, in particular, when it came to self harm, participants administering electric shocks when they're bored, it's basically to disrupt the monotony. It's like they're looking for something to do. Again, boredom is that signal of like, find something else to do. When you don't know what that thing is, you'll take any opportunity you can. I think that can be said for any number of vices or substances in our world. You're just looking to break up that monotony.

Amina Srna: Your essay suggests small shifts, like reframing a boring job as a means to support fulfilling activities outside of work. Can you give more examples of how people can rethink boredom in their daily lives?

Allie Volpe: Yes. The work example is really interesting because, of course, you could find a job that's more meaningful, brings more value, but that's really hard. Experts were saying find a part of your work that maybe does give you meaning or to reframe it as, "This job is giving me money so I can do things that are meaningful to me outside of work." You could also try to make your job more challenging if it's easy. Play little games, like I want to get this amount of stuff done by this time, or if it is too hard, break it down into little chunks to make it easier.

For more everyday kind of things, like you're on a long road trip, again, trying to find challenges or ways to make the situation more stimulating. I'm not saying like race your car [unintelligible 00:13:33] engage in risky driving, but the car games that exist, like I Spy. It sounds all so basic, but it's things that just break up the monotony in a way that's context appropriate.

Amina Srna: We've talked about screens generally, but I wanted to get your take on social media apps in particular. You write that scrolling through TikTok, for example, can actually increase boredom over time. Why is that?

Allie Volpe: I thought that study was so, so interesting. One of the authors told me that scrolling on TikTok, it reduces attention capacity, it reduces perceptions of meaning in the activity, and it increases boredom, the attention capacity. I can totally understand. When you're only watching clips that are 20 seconds long, you start to lose your ability to watch anything longer than that. When there's an endless stream of content, you're not really finding meaning in that.

It's the junk food of engagement. As that scrolling continues, you're not really engaged, you're not finding it meaningful, it's not challenging you in any way. Even though you might think like, oh, I'm bored, let me look at TikTok, the opposite is actually happening.

Amina Srna: We just have a few seconds left, but do you have any ways to break it up on our devices? Do you leave your device at home or something like that?

Allie Volpe: I would say create phone-free spaces. Again, a big point of contention for people is bringing their phones in the bathroom and using it as entertainment.

Amina Srna: I love that. Allie, we're going to leave it there. Allie Volpe, senior reporter at Vox. Allie, thank you so much for doing this. Hopefully you didn't find it boring.

Allie Volpe: Not at all.

 

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