"These include times when we are prevented from engaging in wanted activity, when we are forced to engage in unwanted activity, or when we are simply unable for no apparent reason to maintain engagement in any activity or spectacle. Boredom proneness is a tendency to experience boredom of all types. This is typically assessed by the
Boredom Proneness Scale.... People ranked low on a boredom-proneness scale were found to have better performance in a wide variety of aspects of their lives, including career, education, and autonomy.... Some recent studies have suggested that boredom may have some positive effects. A low-stimulus environment may lead to increased creativity and may set the stage for a 'eureka moment.'"
From the Wikipedia article
"Boredom."
Here's an article on the supposed positive effects of boredom.
Here you can test where you go on the Boredom Proneness Scale. I came out as not likely to be bored, but I believe I have a strong power of boredom. This makes sense, because I avoid or extract myself from situations that bore me, and it's easy for me to be interested in the things I'm doing when I've maximized my ability to do what interests me.
The Wikipedia article is funny — in part because
it's boring and in part because it has illustrations of various people (and one cat) being bored. This is my favorite:
That's "The Unsmiling Tsarevna" by
Viktor Vasnetsov.
Posts
52 comments:
This is typically assessed by the Boredom Proneness Scale.... People ranked low on a boredom-proneness scale...
The "boredom proneness scale" is funny all by itself. I think of people who are bored...and prone. But the scale ranks low proneness as not boring. Standing up is boring. Naps are exciting!
Boring is a theme on Althouse.
I took the test. It said I was about average. But my takeaway was that the test was very boring.
I don’t bore easily for the same reasons. I am perfectly content as long as my attention is not forced to be on something I find boring. I can drive for hours with no radio, no music, just silence in the car. I love that. That’s never boring, however I once was required to attend a training that lasted a few days for a job where I had to pay attention and I found out that it is possible to be literally bored to tears. Tears streaming down my face from boredom; not an exaggeration.
The word 'boring' always makes me think of parties. I get bored really fast with small talk. Within 15 minutes of arriving, I usually start cleaning or reading any books I find in the host's home. At one party I read a fabulous old children's book called "Pigs is Pigs". The story revolved around whether a guinea pig was a 'pig' as in livestock or a pet for shipping purposes - shipping livestock was cheaper than a pet. So this guy wants to save $$ by calling it livestock. In the time it took to resolve the debate, the guinea pigs had reproduced from a handful to hundreds. The shipping clerk resolves to agree that "pigs is pigs" in the future.
I can't remember who was even AT the party but I guess getting to read "Pigs is Pigs" made it all worthwhile.
I generally have a low tolerance for being bored. If I start to feel bored with some activity, I usually just do something else if I have any choice in the matter. I'm not gonna sit there and be bored. In our modern times, there's any number of distractions and activities to do. If you have any control over your life, there's no reason to be bored. If you have a spouse or significant other or friend who wants you to participate in some activity that you find boring, you have to be honest with them about it.
Poor Tsarevna.
I bow to no man in my esteem for the power of music to uplift us, but it's no match for PMS.
And this post was triggered by? Just randomly selecting articles on Wikipedia like I do when sleeplessness in the early hours bores me. Or what?
Result: I don’t get bored easily. My experience: When I do, arghhh!
I took the test, but was too bored to wait for the results.
I took the test and my result was, "About average." my immediate thought: how boring!
Personally I'm more of an ennui person than a boredom one. :-)
Boredom to me, when I encounter it, is motivation to do something, so I guess that supports the notion of creativity coming from boredom. I greatly desire being busy - not bored - doing stuff, making stuff, writing innocuous comments on blogs.
We have the least boring President ever. And he is enjoying it bigly.
I combine a high tolerance for doing nothing with an inability to stand in line for almost everything. I'm an impatient dullard.
When your mother sends back all your invitations
And your father, to your sister he explains
That you're tired of yourself and all of your creations
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane
The only time I get bored at Althouse is when Inga and Chuck and friends start...zzz..sorry i drifted off.
I kept looking for the bored cat in the painting depicted in the post. Like "Where's Waldo?" or one of those bits in the old Highlights magazine.
I now realize the cat is a separate picture in the Wikipedia article. Glad I didn't get too bored to figure it out.
Survey Says!: You Don't Get Bored Easily.
Should I be happy about that? I'm told to read on to find out what that means. Nah.
Boredom is what happens when you have nothing to think about.
When your mind is empty, you have nothing to think about.
Some of us don't get bored because we always have something to think about. Others avoid boredom by hamstering on their smartphones.
Have smartphones reduced people's boredom threshold by providing an almost-always-accessible source of external stimulation, so that many now become very quickly bored without near-constant external stimuli?
Whatever did people do to avoid boredom before they had these things? Think? Ruminate? Sleep? Imagine what life would be like if a seemingly miraculous information/communication device was always available?
My result says I don’t get bored easily and that is so true. The older I get the faster the days seem to go. Multitasking is not boring at all and fighting with you noodknicks here while baking, or cooking, or drawing, journaling, knitting, researching, reading a book etc, etc etc makes my day fly by. Today I baked 12 jumbo blueberry ginger muffins, made black bean soup, vacuumed the house, journaled, worked in my sketchbook. Yesterday I baked bread, made corn jalapeño corn muffins, dusted the house and changed all the sheets and laundered them, folded them and put them away, all while arguing with you all here. Tomorrow I want to wash my floors, clean the bathrooms, and who knows what else.
There are three types of boredom.
NO, there are five types of boredom.
No wait, there are seven types of boredom.
No wait, boredom is a social construct with a continuous distribution so you can't count how many types of boredom there are.
Here you can test where you go on the Boredom Proneness Scale.
How many different ways can They ask "Do you tend to get bored? Scale zero to five."
Here's an article on the supposed positive effects of boredom.
Wiki says: "Some recent studies have suggested that boredom may have some positive effects. A low-stimulus environment may lead to increased creativity and may set the stage for a "eureka moment".[36 = link to AA's "Here's an article..."]"
That link doesn't mention any "studies", and doesn't contain the word "positive": it contains some conjecture and the opinions of some teen-aged girls about boredom.
Fake Wiki. Sigh.
"Would you kiss me if I wear the hat?"
Caligula said: "When your mind is empty, you have nothing to think about."
I can't agree, unless we make a distinction between "empty mind" and "attention".
Having an "empty" (not busily thinking thinking thinking planning ruminating regretting anticipating) mind means our mind has space for Attention. Attention is when actual living takes place, when insight and seeing take place. The rest is often only a distraction, engaged in purposefully.
There is a word for this in Japanese: shoshin. (It can also be roughly translated as "beginner's mind", or "child-like mind".
When I am walking, or quietly working (especially with my camera) I try to maintain an empty mind, that is paying full attention at all times, with no internal monologue going on. Of course, the rational mind is always available when needed ("There's puddle ahead; which way should I go", or "Should I cut this branch here or there", or "How should I develop this film") but after it's done its job, it turns the controls back to Attention.
I am never bored.
My results said that I am bored easily. As if i didn't know that. Reading is my usual response to boredom, so I read and read and read.
--Rex
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-to-skip-boring-white-house-correspondents-dinner-for-third-year-in-a-row/
Boredom Proneness Scale
Thank you for ending the moderation experiment!!
My results say that I am average in terms of boredom, but I think that much of that is that over the last half century, I have learned how not to be bored. Nag does it by multitasking. That doesn’t work for me - because my spoolup and spool down times are so long. I can get involved in a fascinating task, and wake up from it hours later, wondering where all the time went. Worst example I can remember was on a computer benchmark in maybe 1982 or so. The other guys said goodnight to me at maybe 7 pm. I told them I would be along shortly. I was still sitting there at 7 the next morning. I had solved the problem though, and to the time I left the company maybe five years later, I was one of only two people in the company who understood that piece of software, embodied in the foot and a half thick listing that I had spent the night learning.
Multitasking doesn’t bore me - it frustrates me to no end because I find it necessary to spool up in another task, then another, before I have adequately spooked up in a previous one. I was lucky, in my work life, to have been able to situate myself where I could spend hours and hours on a single task. I did this in software, where I quickly worked my way up and out of applications programming, into systems programming. And in law, where I worked as a patent attorney, where we had a saying that when you got bored with the law, you got into the technology, and then when you got bored with the technology, you got into the law, or probably, more often, the procedure and process.
For me, the way to get around boredom has been to know myself well enough that I could appease my mind that seems to run in overdrive from the time I wake up to the time I crash at night. For example, I discovered almost a half century ago how to keep from boredom (and frustration) when standing in line - I always carry a book, except now I usually carry an iPad instead. So, if I am in line, you can usually expect me to be reading something. My partner is similar, except that she doesn’t wake up with her mind running at 110 mph. Rather she takes an hour to get cranked up. She gave up reading for awhile when her kids were small after the time that it was almost midnight and her 2 year old son asked her if she was going to feed them. We were both bored silly in Jr High and HS, with the slow pace of learning. She solved her boredom problem by graduating two years early, and starting college young. One place where we do differ though is that I genuinely like people, and she really doesn’t. In that, she is much more like her mother, who put more importance on her pets, than her five kids. I am more like her father who could talk to anyone, and enjoy it. Thinking back to my time in the work force, I often found myself sitting alone and working quietly in my private office for a couple hours, then I would come out, walk around, and talk to people for maybe a half an hour, before disappearing back into my office for a couple hours.
“When I am walking, or quietly working (especially with my camera) I try to maintain an empty mind, that is paying full attention at all times, with no internal monologue going on. Of course, the rational mind is always available when needed ("There's puddle ahead; which way should I go", or "Should I cut this branch here or there", or "How should I develop this film") but after it's done its job, it turns the controls back to Attention.”
Probably the opposite of how I operate, which may mean that it is good that I am not Japanese. That interior voice is always talking to me, from the time I get up, to the time I go to bed.
“Multitasking doesn’t bore me - it frustrates me to no end because I find it necessary to spool up in another task, then another, before I have adequately spooked up in a previous one.”
In nursing if one doesn’t learn to be an expert multitasker, one will drop out of nursing pretty quickly. When multiple patients are all demanding attention, you need to chart, you have an emergency, the doc wants you to take orders and changes his mind five times, etc.etc etc. you’ll sink quick in the world of nursing without being comfortable multitasking.
Bruce Hayden: I am not Japanese either, but was somewhat immersed in the culture working for a Japanese company for 17 years.
Hey, as long as your interior voice is good company for you, and life is fine, enjoy the ride.
Actually, I have to choose to get into the empty mind state, it's not a default condition for me.
The question of "How shall we live" remains open. I don't think the Japanese have licked it by any means, despite the many admirable things in their traditional culture.
I didn't properly attribute, as among others the great B.H. here at the Althouse blog has shown me is the way to be, the deleted comment above.
And below. I ain't gonna correct it until I get paid. And everyone looks at me like a hero for standing against the rich copyright attorneys that I meekly weakly submit to.
86 STYLES OF BEERDUMB
by the Great Gram Parsons
In my hour of darkness, in my time of need
Oh Lord, grant me vision oh, Lord grant me speed
Once I knew a young man went driving through the night
Miles and miles without a word but just his high beam lights
Who'd have ever thought they'd build such a deadly Denver bend
To be so strong, to take so long as it would till the end
In my hour of darkness, in my time of need
Oh Lord, grant me vision oh, Lord grant me speed
Another young man safely, strummed his silver stringed guitar
And He played to people everywhere some say he was a star
But he was just a country boy, his simple songs confess
And the music he had in him so very few possess
In my hour of darkness, in my time of need
Oh Lord, grant me vision oh, Lord grant me speed
The there was an old man kind and wise with age
And he read me just like a book never missed a page
And loved him like a father, and I loved him like my friend
And I knew his time could shortly come but I did not know just when
In my hour of darkness in my time of need
Oh Lord, grant me vision oh, Lord grant me speed
Oh Lord, grant me vision oh, Lord grant me speed
"In My Hour of Darkness" as written by Gram Parsons Emmylou Harris
Lyrics © RESERVOIR MEDIA MANAGEMENT INC, HORI PRO ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, BMG Rights Managemen
Who can become the trillionaire that figures out there were really only three ...
Untrillions. Soil. Dirt.
Besides Bourlaug of course, Norman. He of the 20th Century. A time those who disdain voters voting to return to because idiot voters don't appreciate '32 Deuce Coups.
Mid-shit degrees do matter, otherwise you'd never me.
I was going to post something about empirical research on boredom, but I am just too bored by it all.
If I hadn’t clicked through to the article, I wouldn’t have seen Robert Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions, in which boredom is linked to disgust and loathing.
I'll defer to Dr. Kennedy, but I'm pretty sure the Princess has Bitchy Resting Face.
The Princess Who Never Smiled is an old Russian fairy tale. Here is another version of it. I prefer the Russian version to the bedtime story version, as there is an old tradition in Russian fairy tales of the "fortunate fool," who does everything wrong but it all works out in the end and he wins the beautiful woman (often a princess, but sometimes just the wealthy daughter of a wealthy man) for his wife.
We're bored already with your interest in boredom.
The Unsmiling Tsarevna in the painting isn't bored; she just has a perverted sense of humor. When she finally does laugh it comes from her delight at the misfortunes of man that arise from scrupulous honesty and selfless charity.
So, Inga, when did you sit for this portrait?
terrific art, on wikipedia, nice
i learned in my twenties that I had a seven second attention span for football. I would even try to pay mind to the tv, and even as my gaze stayed glued, my mind by 7 seconds was elsewhere.
so actually, i could never be bored with football because it just sproinged my mind to go anywhere else i wanted, cool.
Have we covered Berryman yet?
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47534/dream-song-14
...and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
The Unsmiling Tsarina would be suffering from a "too many upvotes" syndrome nowadays, maybe.
Too anxious to be bored, by the way: I take weak melatonin pills to try to sleep when it's Necessary (<5mg), but usually end up with paralyzed limbs in wild dreams I can't escape from. Most nights without are spent flailing, uncomfortable, half dreaming.
I find boredom reassuring and calming. Also, as in Catch 22, it slows down the movement of time and retards the moment of mortal doom........I just finished reading a biography of Pitt the Younger. Despite being Britain's youngest ever Prime Minister (at 24!) and being Prime Mnister during the early years of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, he managed to lead a very dull life. His biographer could find no record of a consummated love affair. He drank a lot but never did anything outlandish. Mostly he was a workaholic with a deep interest in finance and taxation. If you've ever wondered why you know so little about Pitt the Younger, that's why. Our little sleep is bounded with a yawn.
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Wow. Faith Kathy. I think I find her more annoying than boring.
Ennui and boredom get old quickly. Langeweile, now that I can get into.
Boredom can’t defeat a rich inner life. Sometimes everyone else goes away, but I’m always here.
Over the last few years I’ve noticed an increased urgency about how I spend my time, and also that I get bored more easily.
Feels like they are connected.
When I was younger I could sit and watch lots of sports on TV but find that difficult to do now. I look back and guess it was always a waste of time but it took me 40 years to figure that out!
I have ADHD. I get bored, uh, distracted, very easily. Hard to keep focus on one thing unless it interests me. So, yes, that is the definition of "boredom". Mundane household chores bore me so they get put off so I can be on the internet. Right now I should be ironing. Oh, well.
Bruce H: “Thinking back to my time in the work force, I often found myself sitting alone and working quietly in my private office for a couple hours, then I would come out, walk around, and talk to people for maybe a half an hour, before disappearing back into my office for a couple hours.”
I too worked in software Bruce and did exactly the same thing, and found that I missed that a great deal when I was working from home a few years ago. A mix of focused task time and then breaks for social interaction and bonding (often discussing some work task) is ideal for me; too much of either makes me want to correct the imbalance.
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