Boredom.
Over the pandemic, individuals experienced a severe disruption in everyday routines, an abundance of isolation and free time, the culmination of these factors resulting in the unsettling feeling of prolonged boredom. While boredom seems to be an antidote to productivity and contentment, from an evolutionary and biological standpoint, boredom may be more beneficial than one may think.
Take for instance, kids who check out mentally during class due to boredom: why are they doing this? From an economist's standpoint, it may be seen as a rational approach to preserving energy. After weighing the importance of learning the material against the energy it would require, boredom may simply be a biological response to information deemed irrelevant: a simple case of opportunity cost.
When expanding this to an evolutionary standpoint, boredom may signal to the body that the information they are learning/ tasks they are doing are not necessarily worth their time and energy, and incentivizes them to find another activity that would be a better choice for their skills and resources.
In fact, boredom has been proven to be a greater deterrent to productivity than fatigue. An episode of Freakonomics Radio explains a study conducted in the Victorian era, where British employers and the Industrial Fatigue Research Board were attempting to figure out the limitations of assembly-line production workers. At first, fatigue seemed like a reasonable inference for the primary limiting factor; after all, these workers spent long days working in horrendous conditions, not to mention trudging through snow and sleet when commuting to and from work. However, when they hired a psychologist named Stanley Wyatt, he started talking with assembly-line workers about the repetitive tasks they did all day and found that the predictable and monotonous nature of these tasks meant that boredom was the primary factor limiting productivity.
As such, it's important to note the biological purpose behind this feeling in order to understand what your body is signaling through these sentiments.
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This was interesting to learn about; I had never really thought about the biological reasons for boredom. It is interesting to think about how boredom can actually increase productivity by leading us to do things that are more fulfilling or worthwhile to us.
This was such an interesting read. I have never put much thought into the concept of boredom nor ventured to research its causes and purposes. Every bodily response is just that - a response to a certain stimulus or lack thereof. The way you delineated the various standpoints from which to view boredom was fascinating. This truly opened my eyes to something I had no prior knowledge about.
This is such a tough and interesting topic. I feel like during the pandemic we saw this huge surge of high intensity - short burst of stimulation- social media relationships. Most notably tiki’s Tok comes to mind. Both not satisfying our boredom in a stable way and leading to shorter attention spans, you saw this intersection between people who were stuck at home and now had an easier time being board because of the changing nature of the media we consume. It’s scary to think about, but interesting to think how we can rewire our minds.