Bored in the House and In the House Bored: Is Boredom Healthy?

Boredom.

The sometimes-overwhelming feeling that took over our nation when COVID hit. We couldn’t go out to see friends or family, couldn’t go to museums or movie theatres, no more concerts or live music, no more physical social interaction.

When the nation was put under lockdown during the beginning of the pandemic, the cabin fever was real. But how bored were we really? We had our phones, TV’s, and other at home activities to keep us busy, so were we really bored, or just having a hard time paying attention?

In her book, Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self, Manoush Zomorodi talks about boredom and how it may unlock a part of your brain that generates ideas.

She also offers up some challenges for her readers to try, including CHALLENGE ONE: Observe Yourself. You essentially look at your phone screen usage over a 24-hour period and take note about how often, what time, and where you use your phone.

Let’s take a step back and talk about what our brain does when we begin to fill the void of boredom we feel. We start trying to find small tasks to keep us preoccupied, and in Zomordi’s Ted Talk that you’ll find below, she explains to us that our brains enter a Default Mode.

When we go into default mode, we do something called autobiographical planning. We look at our daily challenges, make goals to accomplish them, and then start making lists to accomplish those goals! Sounds like what our brain should be doing on a regular basis, right? It’s actually becoming less common since the popularization of the handheld technology.

What we think of as “multi-tasking” is actually just switching our attention from one project to another, it’s not a constant stream of productivity so its never our best work. We get burnt out faster and have a harder time focusing on tasks, but that’s why we need boredom!

How to we reclaim our boredom?! It’s a challenge, but one easily lined up for in her book. Back to Challenge One.

I personally analyzed my own phone usage and was shocked that in a 12-hour time span, I used my phone for social media for roughly 5 hours. Not email or messaging, but Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook.

They say the first step to breaking an addiction is identifying that you have an addiction… so hi everyone, my name is Cailey, and I am a phone addict. And there is nothing wrong with identifying this issue in my life, it just gives me the opportunity to make some healthy changes.

During COVID-19, there was a huge change in the way we dealt with boredom, and it showed in our electronic usage.

Jory MacKay

In this study done by Jory MacKay, he found that our daily usage of our devices jumped 16% overall, or almost one full hour in a day. That’s one more hour of distraction.

Long story short, boredom is something many of us try to avoid, its always had a negative connotation to it. Many of us try to fill this time by distracting ourselves with our electronics by either trying to multitask or by mindlessly scrolling through different media streams.

How can we overcome this? The first step is to analyze your usage and accept the reality of where you are in terms of your usage. You also should be open to the idea of boredom being ok! It’s a gateway into mind-wandering and creativity which turns into productivity.