Boredom is probably not as bad as you think it is.
SINCHANA SHETTY
Have you ever stood in a long line at the grocery store and your predecessor has 17 packets of Maggie? As any sane person does, I pull my phone out, tweet about it and find myself spiralling down the rabbit-hole of retweeting all the “Lana Del Rey is to 21st century what Mozart was to the 18th century” posts until I hear the cashier yell, “Madam! Madam!”, only for me to look up and have him roll his eyes all the way up to the Tropic of Cancer. It was the sort of incident that made me think that perhaps amnesia is not so bad after all.
That was only the second day of my four-week-long summer holiday. I remember the jitters about all things to cross off my bucket list. From finishing Crime and Punishment to quite seriously learning French to be able to say more than just “baguette baguette” in class, I had set some high bars for myself and was adamant to come out of the holidays like a domesticated version of Steve Jobs (with the exclusion of a black turtle-neck of course).
Not immune to the necessities of life: food, water and memes; I started my day scrolling through Discord. Watching the video of a true-crime podcast on YouTube with breakfast and continuing to finish the series I had started the day before, I locked myself in my room and emerged only when it was time for dinner. I didn’t notice the hours go by. It was as if the sand glass was soon turned upside down by an invisible hand when I clicked the Next Episode button.
Days turned to some more days and my to-do list rusty as ever, I felt unproductive. With one more season to finish, I could tell the next day would look the same too. So I decided to reduce my screen time and read in the evenings. Two pages down of Raskolnikov’s strenuous monologue, I was bored (Sorry, Dostoevsky). Naturally, I watched some more reels on Instagram. These 15-seconds long vertical videos lured my attention and the works of world’s finest literature bored me. It seemed that I’d squeezed all the lemons life gave me into a pie that wasn’t even mine to begin with.
Every time I felt the slow train of boredom make its way to the life station, I hit snooze on all things exciting by doomscrolling from Instagram and Pinterest to Tumblr, Discord and whatnot. The world a click away from my fingertips, why was I so adamant about not feeling bored?
The neutral stimulation of boredom is just as appealing as a red pill the size of a T.rex to swallow. The eternal call at the sight of my sad little phone all alone with no fingers stomping on it? Sigh, one caves. But one would be none the wiser if they didn’t anticipate that. My Lilliputian task of reducing screen time is up against tech giants that have perfected persuasive design techniques - the same technique that keeps you rolling the dice at casinos.
To remedy this, I turned off the mobile data, muted my notifications and buried my phone under two pillows in another room. I would not bring my phone out at the slightest chance there was when I found myself alone and bored. This also extended to when I was at a café and my friend excused herself to the restroom. At the metro and quite sometime before I’m home? You guessed it, no phone. When the urge to grab my phone came about, I usually buried my phone in the bag and muttered “I’m better than an algorithm” four times. At the cost of looking ludicrous, it worked.
Although it was hard at first, I persisted. Even if it was 5 minutes at a time before I took hold of my phone like there was no tomorrow, it was enough. Slowly, but eventually, I found that I could go on for quite a long time without the white glare of a screen.
While it may seem like I was helicopter parenting myself, it allowed me to cut down around 30-45 minutes of screen time. Several studies show that it is necessary to take some time off the screens to balance the mental strain caused by disproportionate amounts of activity online. As it turns out, scrolling away your boredom will make you addicted to the constant surge of dopamine, the feel-good hormones and in turn your brain will need to surf for more stimulation to keep the boredom at bay, altering our tolerance for it.
This time off was essential because if there was such a thing as a refresh button for brains, mine was pressed a dozen times over. Slowly, I ticked off the tinier things in my bucket list like cleaning my room and trying out a new recipe. The time I wasn’t mindlessly stimulated through content called for deep introspection. I was looking into myself and finding things to work on. Boredom, it appears, was allowing me to feel more creative. In fact, a study in the Academy of Management Discoveries found that boredom helps increase productivity, too.
Alicia Walf, a neuroscientist, says that being bored can improve social connections. I found this to be true! I was reconnecting with my family for those snippets of conversations with mum on what the new neighbour is like, dad on why WhatsApp forwards were just as trustworthy as my reasoning for why I’m late home and brother, well, to reiterate that he indeed was adopted.
The best thing I ever got from training myself to be bored is that I have rediscovered the lost art of connecting to nature and observing. Noticing the most minute details: a droplet on a leaf, two identical laugh lines when my friend cracks up at her own joke, and a ladybug on a cat on a ledge. Bottom line: You’re nothing short of a Miyazaki protagonist!
According to several researchers, connecting with nature can have a multitude of benefits: better mental health, improved concentration and induces positive emotions. Dare I say, the glass does seem half full.
A Sisyphean task, it certainly is not easy. The idea is to understand that overstimulation will eventually lead one to feel chronically bored. From 5 minutes with no phone on Day 1 to perhaps 50 something minutes on Day 75, resisting the urge to be stimulated is better for overall health. Give boredom a go because wasn’t Newton bored when he sat under the apple tree only to have the discovery of the century– gravity?
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