Even Though The Time Seems Longer, These Are 5 Benefits Of Boredom

Illustration of the benefits of boredom (Unsplash/Magnetme)

JAKARTA – Boredom is an unpleasant emotional situation. When experiencing these feelings, time seems to slow down until you feel compelled to do something to pass the time.

Arthur Schopenhauer in his essay On the Vanity of Existence, reported by The British Psychological Society, Monday, October 25, wrote that boredom is a reminder of the meaninglessness of human existence. This existential doubt is often felt by each person.

Even boredom according to psychology is the enemy of desire and breeds incompetence or dissatisfaction about one thing. Professor John Eastwood and colleagues at York University define boredom. Boredom occurs when we are unable to engage our attention with information from thoughts and stimuli from the environment.

The fact that people are easily bored, according to Eastwood's research, students who feel bored will be more externally focused and report difficulty identifying their emotions. The negative impact of boredom, among others, makes us fall into a sense of worthlessness, meaninglessness, and style.

However, experts including Eastwood are exploring the effects of boredom further. Not only negative, boredom can be a catalyst for someone who wants to pursue and escape from the cage of boredom.

On the positive side, boredom can improve several aspects of yourself, including the following.

Illustration of the benefits of boredom (Unsplash/Magnetme)

1. Improve mental health

You may be wondering, how come existential crisis conditions can improve mental health. Citing the writings of Zachary Wojtowicz and colleagues reported by Psychology Today, the wealth of information in the information age means there is a dearth of attention. Attention only focuses on productive activities so that rest is often not enough.

In essence, boredom with the hubbub of information makes one take a break. At first it was too much burden, we became more relaxed by taking distance from social media because it was driven by boredom.

2. Increase creativity

Boredom can give us the opportunity to fill our time with thinking and being more reflective. In a study conducted in 2018 by Mann Sandi wrote, people are forced to do tedious tasks. Doing boring tasks prompts their minds to wander, leading to creative thinking.

According to this study, worldly activities serve as external stimuli to activate imagination and think differently.

3. Motivate the search for new things

Curiosity will not be triggered without the presence of boredom. A 2013 study entitled On the Function of Boredom by Bench and Lench reported that seeking novelty implies dissatisfaction with the status quo and a willingness to challenge established ideas and practices.

4. Motivate the pursuit of new goals

In a 2014 psychology journal study conducted by Elpidorou, boredom is an emotional signal that we are not doing what we want to do. Boredom means that we are not involved in a situation, either finding it unchallenging or not in the way we would like it to be.

Boredom thus prompts us to move on to a more satisfying goal or project than what we are currently doing.

5. Affects the ability to maintain focus

Interest in doing activities fading? This can affect the ability to focus and pay attention. Boredom is also close to disengagement and poor performance. A person can feel bored when they lack the cognitive power to focus.

Therefore, learning to endure boredom or restore focus and attention will be great for developing self-control skills.

Well, because boredom is not fun, how do you restore the motivation to complete tasks so that they are as expected?