BOREDOM IS JUST THE BEGINNING!

~Jay Mehta.

Hello!! Hello!! Hello!! Is anyone out there? 

Man, I am bored! – Probably the most spoken statement of our generation.

So, why are we so bored? What makes the world around us so boring? 

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Even though we are living in a world which stimulates constant source of entertainment, we all are often easily bored.

Is it because of this over-stimulation of entertainment at our footsteps making us feel bored? Is it the easy access to different amusing things make as vulnerable to boredom? 

Well, answer to these questions is a YES!!

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Even after having so much for us to do, so much stuff to sort and so many things to take care of, our brain should have been very much occupied with everything happening around us, making it impossible for boredom to ever creep into our lives.

But yet there we are carrying our beloved boredom all around the world, which by now should have been a relic of a bygone age.

This brings me to wonder, how did our ancestors pass their time? How did they live a life which was free from boredom as they did not have internet access, Netflix, television, iPods, mp3’s, multiplex cinemas and what not, the list goes on. Their age was devoid of all these stuff and yet they were free from our beloved evil friend, or were they?? 

We have unlocked a new level of boredom, where we are bored of age-old holidays that we are celebrating since our childhood, we are bored of going to school, we are bored of school breaks (Vacations), meeting friends has become tiring and boring for a third of or population. We are bored of getting homework and even having ‘PT’ break. These days, people are getting bored by each and everything which ironically was built by us to crush our boredom. These particular things which were invented to amuse us are now becoming the reasons for our boredom.    

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Just like in my case, till the mid of my freshmen year I was ignorant about the craze that people had about the social networking sites and applications on their smart mobile phones. I did not have a smart phone till the winter vacation may be due to that I was not crazy about all this stuff, but no sooner did I get one for myself, I to got too curious about the new technology on my fingertips. I explored every trending application and downloaded most of the social networking apps like WhatsApp, Line, Viber, Hike, Instagram, Facebook, etc. the list goes on and on. I was a bit confused when I observed that I was connected to almost the same people who almost did the same things in different applications, but as it was new to me I was also enjoying it to a great extent. But this enthusiasm and excitement had soon lost in fact sooner than anyone can think. It was by the end of summer vacation that I had uninstalled most of the applications and by the start of semaphore year, I only had WhatsApp, yeah not even Facebook or Instagram. I was too bored of them. I had kept WhatsApp for the sake of keeping it being connected with my friends and get the assignments and important information at a faster pace. By the end of three weeks to the start of my semaphore year, I checked my WhatsApp notifications only at night before sitting for studies and get the updates about tomorrow's schedule and stuff like that. So, you could say WhatsApp had become a necessity evil. And by the end of this year, I almost stopped chatting with friends on it as things really got mundane out there and anyone could see a clear pattern in chats which were no more interesting to read. I was still in contact with my friends but only when it was urgent and at such times I would preferably call them to complete the task at a faster rate, it was only when they did not pick up my calls I would text them. Maybe this drift in the scenario occurred due to me getting busy with other interesting stuff as I found the new way of getting my daily dose of dopamine (it was the council work and technical problem solving that I did there(up to some extent) :-p :-P). And it is obvious that I had found something new because if it wouldn’t have been so I would have been resting in peace for a quite a long time now. :-p :-p

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So, what exactly is happening here?? What is the explanation for our ennui?? 

  As I said earlier it is due to the overstimulation of entertainment which is making us feel so. That is the reason which is leading to a lack of interest. The more entertained we are the more we need to satisfy ourselves.

- (for the same reason we should not be watching pornographic movies on regular basis as it may decrease are interest in real world romance. Rather we can use imagination and fantasize things which will keep it more real than a reel. #JUST_SAYING_IT, #NO_OFFENCE)

 The more we fill our world with fast moving objects, high intensity, ever changing stimulation, the more we get used to that, the less we get tolerant we become to lower levels of happiness and slow moving objects/jobs.

In the world where we surf at the speed of a few gigabytes per second, we are not amused or entertained by things moving at bits rate. Thus, slower paced activities such as reading books, studying for exams, sitting for lectures seem too boring for us because we have accustomed ourselves to faster-paced amusements.

Our attention span has thought to have decreased to a level that we are compared with goldfish. FYI attention span of goldfish is approximately equal to eight seconds. We are hardwired to seek novelty, which produces a hit of dopamine in our brains. As soon as, a new stimulus is noticed we chase it and no sooner we do so, it no longer stays new which leads to boring us. Hence, to get that same pleasurable dopamine hit we seek a fresh source of stimulation/distraction. 

And this is the same thing that happened to me in my initial years of college.

Effects of Boredom:-  

According to researchers, chronic boredom is responsible for profusion of negative outcomes like:-

• Overeating

• Gambling

• Truancy

• Antisocial behavior 

• Drug use

• Accidents 

We need less, not more stimulation and novelty.

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But that’s just a part of the story; we have just discussed the bane of boredom. Now let us see it from the other point of view. Let us look at the pros of boredom. Yes, we do have perks for it. Just like every other thing, boredom also has advantages and disadvantages related to it.

A side note, we should always check out or learn about both the sides of any concept then let it be the most cliché thing or the most irrelevant topic, one must know both sides of the story before judging commenting or sharing the information with others.

Boredom being a negative feeling, we must be Pollyannaish. We must be quite confident about ourselves while performing the rituals that will be mentioned later in this article. We need to have an optimistic approach to deal with and see the positive effects of boredom.

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It is often said that creative people have low boredom threshold i.e. they get bored quite easily as they regularly need a new dose of a task to keep their mind busy. They are fickle, frisky; they constantly need something that has to be done (provided they are interested in it.)

Here, as I am on this topic I roughly recall a dialogue or rather a statement from the Arthur Doyle’s book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – The Great Agra Treasure. Where he writes, 

“My mind”, he (Sherlock) said, “rebel stagnations. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants (drugs). But I abhor the dull routine of existence I crave for mental exaltations.”  

That’s, exactly how we creative people are, we need something or the other to keep our brain in stimulation and generate new neuron networks.

One should note that converse of the above statement isn’t true i.e. not all bored creatures are creative; it is just the creative people that get bored easily but as they are creative they even find the way out of it by themselves. And we all want to learn now is how to generate creativity from boredom. Once we unlock this level of boredom and practice this mantra (mentioned below) on the daily basis we will no longer be bored or rather boredom would just be the first step to our wonderful journey. It would just be the gate to the marvelous and spectacular world that we would be creating, once we have passed that gate.

So, as I said earlier that to get creative we need to get bored first. Now how does this concept works?

Consider this:-

Just analyze yourself to do something really important which will matter to you in near future. You shall find yourself to get bored in a while as you start that task or you sometimes don’t even start the task and just sit in front of it battling with your inner thoughts as to what should be done. At this point you start analyzing the time you would require completing the task and you thus start procrastinating and the train of thoughts so formed will lead you to the world of creative ideas. You will come up with new ideas to do different stuff instead of the task assigned to you and as, there is still no sufficient pressure on you, your brain leisurely wonders around and you start getting a bit creative in terms of thoughts and idea. But this idea still may not be feasible so as to be implemented in the real world or they may even be but as they are random thoughts even you forget about it as you don’t really think about it on a serious note at that particular point in time. Basically, it is this part which we need to notice and start putting our creative job in action. So, here we are if we wouldn’t have been bored at the first place we wouldn’t have started thinking out of the box. Thus, if we take boredom as a positive note we can build great wonders and solve great problems just by our creative imagination.

As Albert Einstein accurately said, “Imagination is more important than Knowledge.”  Hence, we too should give time to our brain to freely wander around and let it think out of the textbooks, out of the knowledge printed in them, out of the novels and story books. 

The catch here is that we should strictly be off-line; we shouldn’t use any source that can connect us to the outside world and disturb our imaginations. It is like meditation. We need to give complete devotion to it.

Once you have started practicing the routine where boredom is just the starting point. You will see a pattern that is being followed here. You first get bored, and then you sit ideally in front of your task forcing your mind to wander around the edges of the topics you are interested in, then you start implementing your thoughts and you get involved in it. As you will start observing this pattern every time you get bored eventually you start treating boredom as just the opening to the glorious road ahead.

Points we need to know so as to break through the boredom and set out onto the other side into the joyous world on the other side :- 

1. Know your boredom: 

The boredom which you get from doing something tedious or pointless or something that does not inspire you is the wrong type of boredom that you are dealing with. In this case, you would probably start wondering about irrelevant stuff which might not even make sense and can’t be proved to be right or wrong and is just a sheer waste of time. It hard to get over this kind of boredom but eventually you do get out of it.

The boredom that you get from stuff that are inspiring to you but you still don’t feel like doing it right then due to the reason so-called ‘Just not feeling to do it right now.’ But deep inside you really want to accomplish the task. If the kind of boredom you are going through is of this kind then you should note that it is just a mist a fog before the wonderful sunrise and you just need to spark a small fire in you and have faith in yourself that this is just a phase and you will pass through it and reach the other side with rainbow colors.

2. Set a start point: 

Mark the words, you just need to set a start point i.e. you just need to set a timer as to when you have planned to start the job and should not worry about the end time (obviously it should be over before the deadline but once you have entered this stage you will always come out of it only after finishing your respective job.) This timer will set as a spark that you require getting started with the job.

You also need to keep in mind that you should provide an exact hour. You shouldn’t set an ambiguous time range like morning, noon, evening tomorrow. If you do so you give space for procrastination.  Hence, a specific time is an important aspect here.

3. Know your distractions and check your priorities.

4. Feel the Boredom: 

Experience each and every second of your boredom. Observe your physiological and psychological reactions to it. Notice your flow of emotions during these times and keep a check on the train of thoughts that travels through your neurons.

The more you feel your boredom, the more you get to know about it and hence more clearly will be the pattern that you will observe.

The best way to get a control over this is by meditating. 

5. Be calm and Patient about it: 

There is no need to pressurize yourself to get creative. You need to be patient with it. 

6. Make it Mundane: 

Practice this on a daily basis and step by step you will feel the change in you. By regularly         following it you will start to get the hang out of it and eventually you will master the concept, and never feel the boredom again.

The Pattern:-

 Boredom Curiosity Interest Absorption Glorious End.

I am glad that you made it till here and hopeful aren’t bored anymore. Hope you learned something and would implement the concepts in your life to make it better.

~Jay Mehta

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 Thank You!

Jay Mehta.

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