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Boredom and its Discontents

Lady_X

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hmmm...no legos sorry but....
g5xw0om.gif
 

Fiver

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I can be very specific.

I'm bored when the only productive or constructive thing I have left on my list to get done reeks of drudgery *and* there is no deadline. In otherwords, I should do this drudgery thing (clean out the garage) but yuck, if it doesn't get done for a few days, who cares?

Then I goof around doing things I like to do, but I have no joy in it because the drudgery is hanging over my head. And not just the drudge-task, but the guilt over not doing it. All the pleasure slowly leaches out of goofing off and I think gah I'm bored; but

yes

I

guess

I

really

just

hate

myself

Where is some freaking J when I need it????
 

Salomé

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Thanks people, some interesting stuff here.
WARNING: This response is going to be long, and, potentially, BORING.

I'm bored no matter what I'm doing, which in turn leads to frustration and paranoia (because I end up focusing on things that don't really exist until I'm convinced that they do). After awhile I can't contain it anymore and start dragging other people into my delusions which pisses them off and all sorts of conflicts arise.
Yes. I've been in that negative feedback loop. It's dangerous and can get horrific pretty quick.
How do you get out of it, or do you just have to wait for it to pass?

How bored do you have to be to write an essay on being bored?
Pretty bloody bored!
(Psst...He's a psychoanalyst - he does boredom for a living).

Being bored is a form of self hatred.
No it isn't.
Have you heard of projection, Victor? It's another psychoanalytic term. Look it up.

I've been thinking about this recently because of my thread on multi-tasking. Many people said they get bored concentrating on one thing and need to switch a lot. I believe most of those people were P types.

Pondering that even more, I can't really remember using the word bored to describe myself since I was a kid stuck at home on summer vacation. I don't lead an exciting life, but I don't ever feel bored either. I guess I am easily entertained. I just find something to do. All I have to do is sit down at the computer and whatever I want to know is at my fingertips.
Yes, the essay is mostly about the utility of boredom in child development.
The author argues that children need to be bored, in order to figure out what it is that they truly like and dislike. I remember mind-crushing boredom as a child...
...that state of suspended anticipation in which things are started and nothing begins, the mood of diffuse restlessness which contains that most absurd and paradoxical wish, the wish for a desire.

I sometimes think that kids today (in the West, at least) have a much richer life - they are constantly entertained by one thing or another - and yet, Phillips argues that
In the muffled, sometime irritable confusion of boredom the child is reaching to a recurrent sense of emptiness out of which his real desire can crystallize. But to begin with, of course, the child needs the adult .... to recognize it as such, rather than to sabotage it by distraction. The child's boredom starts as a regular crisis in the child's developing capacity to be alone in the presence of the mother. In other words, the capacity to be bored can be a developmental achievement for the child....It is one of the most oppressive demands of adults that the child should be interested, rather than take times to find what interests him. Boredom is integral to the process of taking one's time.
He also talks about a boy who, when asked if he was ever lonely, said that he was "too bored to be lonely". Which I thought was interesting, given our discussion in the loneliness thread.

In boredom there is the lure of a possible object of desire, and the lure of the escape from desire, of its meaninglessness.

Boredom, I think, protects the individual, makes tolerable for him the impossible experience of waiting for something without knowing what it could be. The paradox of the waiting that goes on in boredom is that the individual does not know what he was waiting for until he finds it, and that often he does not know that he is waiting. One could, in this sense, speak of the 'analytic attitude' as an attentive boredom.....The more common risk of the adult - less attended to, more set in his ways, then the child - is that boredom will turn into waiting. For the adult, it seems, boredom needs to be the more permanent suspended animation of desire. Adulthood, one could say, is when it begins to occur to you that you may not be leading a charmed life.

Normally boredom passes on its own, but if it doesn't, it ends up leading to further lethargy and eventually depression. I can generally overcome a bit of it by finding a book I've enjoyed, going outside, and reading in the sun or exploring. For some reason being in the sunlight for a few hours every other day for a few weeks helps me feel properly balanced. I do not know why this is. (I suppose then, boredom usually comes in the weeks where I am at home with no work to do and because of this, I tend to stay inside more, which only exacerbates the problem.)

I agree with your first question here. I do think it's a sign of destructive patterns, though I think boredom is related more to destructive intellectual patterns whereas depression is related more to destructive emotional patterns (and it is possible to be both bored and depressed, I think the two can feed off each other).

As for the second question, I don't think so. I don't think it's any kind of driving force that helps you, but it is an indicator that something is wrong and measures should be taken to resolve the issue.
Interesting. Thanks.

What I do find boring is the acceptance of assumptions thread after thread after thread.

Most threads are started with a question - and it is usually a leading question. It is a question that is stuffed full of assumptions. And the assumptions are deliberate and they are meant to manipulate.

But the killer assumption is that it is not polite to question the assumptions. And it is polite to take them at face value.

This is a brilliant maneuver as who wants to be rude - it is simply unacceptable.

This is called social control.

And it works.
Yeah. Hidden assumptions suck.

As do not-so hidden presumptions.

As well as hidden agendas, and . . .

barely-veiled attacks.

victor...i can appreciate the perspective but i'm beginning to think it just works differently for an extrovert. For me specifically it has to do with that...if a tree falls in the forest scenario....what point is beauty and love if not to be shared...is it enough just to be....someone that lives their life focused on sharing those things WITH someone may bore easily alone..out of want to share not self hatred...i most certainly DO NOT hate myself...nor have i ever entertained such an idea.
The external vs. internal focus is also interesting.

Victor is correct.
Vanity is the most hardened of all enemies of science and advancement.

And the non-vain don't fraternize with the vain. They let them be wrong.
?

I only don't accept the rose because I am at work in a florist at the moment and am sick to the gills of them.

Perhaps some legos would alleviate me of my boredom.

:)
Like I said - no flirting in my thread!

I'm hardly ever bored. There are so many things I could do, learn, etc etc that if a day was of 48 hours, I'd be even less bored.
Js pwn Ps at this game.
 

Lady_X

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haha...just to clarify...i was not flirting...i was saying sorry. :D
 

Nocapszy

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Flirting alleviates boredom.
I guess I ought to confess to not reading the original post very carefully.
Is it the stance of Ms. Bluemonday that boredom is a positive state of being?
 

Lady_X

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^^^ oh right...i thought you were magic! who are you...now i'm confused. haha
 

ZiL

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Lately I've been feeling like life is a grand struggle against boredom. For me, I'd say I get bored due to frustration with reality. As a kid, I was hyper and always had ideas and plans to entertain myself with, but as I've gotten older, I've realized that most of these ideas and plans will never come to fruition. I'm fighting this sense of futility that leads to boredom with everything. I thrive on the feeling that what I'm doing is part of some larger future goal, and when those goals feel uncertain, I get discouraged and bored pretty easily. That really sounds like a sort of depression, but I'm rarely sad, just lost.

I can say that the boredom I've been experiencing lately is absolutely connected to questioning the pattern and progress of my life to date. I feel right now that I'm searching for some realistic larger goal or path to latch on to, and until I do, I find it hard to commit to things, which leads to boredom. To fight it I try to stay busy - do things that get me out of my comfort zone and make me consider new ideas or possibilities. I hope that if I find something new in this period of uncertaintly - if I try to widen my perspective - I'll be inspired again. It can be laborious though.

Edit: I also try to keep a sense of humor about everything, to make it more bearable.
 

wedekit

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I am rarely ever bored. I can always find something productive to do. Though I say "Dr. So-and-so's class is boring", I think that I really mean "dull". I am always irritated by people who lie around moaning "I'm borrreeeddddd". Get a hobby. It works, I promise. Not all pleasures and entertainment in life come from immediate gratification.

I had a teacher give an elaborate lecture about how boredom was a new phenomena. I forget all the argument though, but it was interesting nonetheless.
 

Virtual ghost

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Don't you get bored when you have things to do? I am least bored when I have nothing to do, because I can do what I like. Boring things bore me.

This is exactly about what I was talking about.
What a smart J will do is planning, so that he/she ends up in a situation where doing things = doing things you want to do. Everything else is just a obstacle that serves as planning and coordiantion training.
Also I have steel nerves and that helps me a lot in life.

For example I can wake up in 2:00 AM and study for the rest of a night and I can do it without problem since situation requires that.
What I want to say is that I work toward goals and beign bored simply is not a part of that movie.
 

INTJMom

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After thinking about it for a day, I have come to realize, I don't get bored but I do get lonely.
 

substitute

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It's strange... whilst on the one hand I feel like I was practically born bored and that it's my natural state, on the other hand I know I've always got something to do and can always find things to do, never have difficulty occupying myself. And yet, whatever I'm doing most of the time, I'm still bored. About the only time I'm not even slightly bored, when the awareness of boredom is utterly banished (temporarily), is when I'm having a really fun, lively, intelligent and exploratory conversation with someone.
 

Haphazard

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I'm only bored when I'm upset.

When I'm not, the things I do seem worth doing...
 

FFF

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I recently read an interesting essay by Adam Phillips, "On Being Bored".
It made me wonder how boredom might relate to type. Do you think boredom is a symptom of poverty of imagination? Of inactivity? Or frustration with reality?
Are you bored often? Are you more bored by having a lot of (boring) stuff to do, or not enough? How does it manifest itself? And how do you overcome it - do you use distraction techniques? Or do you focus on deeper issues?

Does boredom serve a purpose, like depression - can it make us question the pattern and progress of our lives to-date?
Does it make us shake ourselves out of a rut? What other purpose might it serve?

Nobody pointed this out yet, but I really think the characteristic with the strongest relationship to boredom is extroversion. Extroverts NEED external stimulation or the result is boredom. Most of the people here that report little to no boredom are introverts. I myself only get bored when I'm in a situation where I feel obligated to pay attention to the environment when something boring is going on. It manifests itself more like anxiousness or being antsy because I know as soon as I get out of that situation, I'll be okay. Generally, most strong introverts have so much going on in their heads that it's hard for them to get bored, and they generally have lifestyles that don't rely much on the environment for stimulation.

S/N relates to the Big Five trait of Openness. High openness types (N) have a low tolerance for repetition and the familiar and look for novelty. Familiar things can become boring to them. Low openness types (S) have a low tolerance for novelty, and when exposed to too much, they feel a strong need for being around the familiar.

J/P relates to Conscientiousness (C). People high in C (J's) are more disciplined and capable of continuing with work even if it is boring. Low C types (P's) are generally less professional, less formal, and more interested in fun.

*late add on*

I just thought of this. High openness types have a broad range of interests and the low openness types have a narrow range. So if you have 10 fields of interest instead of let's say 2, it's a lot easier to find something that will keep you from getting bored.
 

Wade Wilson

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Yes. I've been in that negative feedback loop. It's dangerous and can get horrific pretty quick.
How do you get out of it, or do you just have to wait for it to pass?

Well, unfortunately it's piling a negative on top of a negative for me. To alleviate my boredom I engage in any various form of escapism which is only temporarily relieving me of the problem which, of course, returns once I get back to reality.

My main issue is that without engaging in reckless behavior I don't really know how to find any consistent outlets for alleviating boredom. Ten years ago the answer would have been to quit my job, take all my money out of the bank and take a roadtrip to some random place. I got over that after about the fifth time of having to move back home broke & unemployed though.
 

Salomé

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Lately I've been feeling like life is a grand struggle against boredom. For me, I'd say I get bored due to frustration with reality. As a kid, I was hyper and always had ideas and plans to entertain myself with, but as I've gotten older, I've realized that most of these ideas and plans will never come to fruition. I'm fighting this sense of futility that leads to boredom with everything. I thrive on the feeling that what I'm doing is part of some larger future goal, and when those goals feel uncertain, I get discouraged and bored pretty easily. That really sounds like a sort of depression, but I'm rarely sad, just lost.

I can say that the boredom I've been experiencing lately is absolutely connected to questioning the pattern and progress of my life to date. I feel right now that I'm searching for some realistic larger goal or path to latch on to, and until I do, I find it hard to commit to things, which leads to boredom. To fight it I try to stay busy - do things that get me out of my comfort zone and make me consider new ideas or possibilities. I hope that if I find something new in this period of uncertaintly - if I try to widen my perspective - I'll be inspired again. It can be laborious though.

Edit: I also try to keep a sense of humor about everything, to make it more bearable.
Sounds like existential ennui to me.
I don't know what the answer is...it's the curse of our generation.
How to find meaning in a world that makes no sense?

I am rarely ever bored. I can always find something productive to do. Though I say "Dr. So-and-so's class is boring", I think that I really mean "dull". I am always irritated by people who lie around moaning "I'm borrreeeddddd". Get a hobby. It works, I promise. Not all pleasures and entertainment in life come from immediate gratification.

That's quite judgmental of you. A hobby is just a distraction. I think it is perhaps braver to be bored and to explore the reasons why, then to desperately try to fill your life up with useless time-killing 'stuff'. Only an unthinking person would equate having no time with being fulfilled.

This is exactly about what I was talking about.
What a smart J will do is planning, so that he/she ends up in a situation where doing things = doing things you want to do. Everything else is just a obstacle that serves as planning and coordiantion training.
Also I have steel nerves and that helps me a lot in life.

For example I can wake up in 2:00 AM and study for the rest of a night and I can do it without problem since situation requires that.
What I want to say is that I work toward goals and beign bored simply is not a part of that movie.
You are a marvel. I need a smart J.

After thinking about it for a day, I have come to realize, I don't get bored but I do get lonely.
It's odd how they seem to relate, isn't it?

I wonder about the implementation of boredom, that is to say, how can we feel the absence of something without knowing what that something is? It isn't like loss, where we have a before and after state. It's almost like the loss of potential, like we have a vision of what our life should be like, or how our life should feel, against which we compare our current state, and it is found to be wanting. As such, I guess it is almost inevitable for Ps - living in the world of possibilities, as they do....

It's strange... whilst on the one hand I feel like I was practically born bored and that it's my natural state, on the other hand I know I've always got something to do and can always find things to do, never have difficulty occupying myself. And yet, whatever I'm doing most of the time, I'm still bored. About the only time I'm not even slightly bored, when the awareness of boredom is utterly banished (temporarily), is when I'm having a really fun, lively, intelligent and exploratory conversation with someone.
Yeah. More of those please. ;)

I'm only bored when I'm upset.
When I'm not, the things I do seem worth doing...
I don't know if that is boredom, or mild depression, sometimes the edges blur.

Nobody pointed this out yet, but I really think the characteristic with the strongest relationship to boredom is extroversion. Extroverts NEED external stimulation or the result is boredom. Most of the people here that report little to no boredom are introverts. I myself only get bored when I'm in a situation where I feel obligated to pay attention to the environment when something boring is going on. It manifests itself more like anxiousness or being antsy because I know as soon as I get out of that situation, I'll be okay. Generally, most strong introverts have so much going on in their heads that it's hard for them to get bored, and they generally have lifestyles that don't rely much on the environment for stimulation.

S/N relates to the Big Five trait of Openness. High openness types (N) have a low tolerance for repetition and the familiar and look for novelty. Familiar things can become boring to them. Low openness types (S) have a low tolerance for novelty, and when exposed to too much, they feel a strong need for being around the familiar.

J/P relates to Conscientiousness (C). People high in C (J's) are more disciplined and capable of continuing with work even if it is boring. Low C types (P's) are generally less professional, less formal, and more interested in fun.

*late add on*

I just thought of this. High openness types have a broad range of interests and the low openness types have a narrow range. So if you have 10 fields of interest instead of let's say 2, it's a lot easier to find something that will keep you from getting bored.
I see where you're coming from, but I don't know if that's true. 10 things can become boring as easily as 2.
I'm pretty sure I'm an introvert but I have a high capacity for boredom. I think the things that bore introverts and extroverts may well be different though. Introverts tend to have a more intense focus on fewer things and are less easily distracted. Extroverts seem to need more variety.

Well, unfortunately it's piling a negative on top of a negative for me. To alleviate my boredom I engage in any various form of escapism which is only temporarily relieving me of the problem which, of course, returns once I get back to reality.

My main issue is that without engaging in reckless behavior I don't really know how to find any consistent outlets for alleviating boredom. Ten years ago the answer would have been to quit my job, take all my money out of the bank and take a roadtrip to some random place. I got over that after about the fifth time of having to move back home broke & unemployed though.

Yeah, been there, done that. The only comfort is that tolerance of boredom does seem to increase with age.
 

Mole

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Boredom is usually a cover for another emotion. For instance, when I say I am bored, what I mean is, I am angry.

But really I am not owning my own anger and blaming someone else instead. So I will say, you are boring, rather than I am angry at this particular thing.

If I could admit my anger to myself, my boredom would disappear.

But my conscience or superego tells me that anger is bad, so I try and hide it behind boredom and blaming.

So I am playing hide and seek with my anger to placate my superego.

But the funny thing is that when I can say, I am angry at this particular thing, my anger transforms into exuberance.

And this is true of all emotions - when we allow ourselves to feel them, they transform into something else. So when we allow ourselves to feel, we are constantly flowing emotion, like a constantly bubbling fountain of feeling. I think they call it, being alive.

But my superego stops me being alive.

How I hate my superego.
 

substitute

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Lately I've been feeling like life is a grand struggle against boredom. For me, I'd say I get bored due to frustration with reality. As a kid, I was hyper and always had ideas and plans to entertain myself with, but as I've gotten older, I've realized that most of these ideas and plans will never come to fruition. I'm fighting this sense of futility that leads to boredom with everything. I thrive on the feeling that what I'm doing is part of some larger future goal, and when those goals feel uncertain, I get discouraged and bored pretty easily. That really sounds like a sort of depression, but I'm rarely sad, just lost.

I can say that the boredom I've been experiencing lately is absolutely connected to questioning the pattern and progress of my life to date. I feel right now that I'm searching for some realistic larger goal or path to latch on to, and until I do, I find it hard to commit to things, which leads to boredom. To fight it I try to stay busy - do things that get me out of my comfort zone and make me consider new ideas or possibilities. I hope that if I find something new in this period of uncertaintly - if I try to widen my perspective - I'll be inspired again. It can be laborious though.

Edit: I also try to keep a sense of humor about everything, to make it more bearable.

Yet again, you're right inside my head!! :ohmy:

Things I do need to have meaning, I need to see and feel where they fit into a bigger picture, how they enable progress towards a meaningful goal not just for my life but sorta making a difference in the world, leaving a legacy if you will. If I can't see this, then whatever I do, however superficially exciting - I'm bored, because it seems pointless to me.

I think this could be one reason why I could never do the career in paid employment thing... I've been successful at self-employment because I could determine my own 'promotional ladder' as it were... but I could never do entry level stuff for long. For a while I was for example, photocopying the service sheets for my local church - a dull, routine, unchallenging and boring task. But I was able to do it for a while quite happily, only by reminding myself about how it fitted into the whole, how it enabled bigger things to happen that I believed in. Once I questioned those things though and couldn't believe they were happening any more, my work felt pointless and I just couldn't bear to do it, I'd come home at the end of a working morning and feel really profoundly depressed - as I say it had taken all my persuasion skills turned onto myself to keep doing it anyway, but once the meaning was lost I just couldn't do it a second longer and just quit without notice.

I've had the same thing with jobs... I could go in at entry level and sustain interest as long as I believed a) the job I was currently doing was an important tile in a bigger mosaic that I believed in and was happy to help with enabling its continuing existence and b) it was a necessary step in a direction I wanted to go in and would enable progress for me in that direction. As soon as I had reason to question those points, the job became intolerable.
 

INTJMom

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Yet again, you're right inside my head!! :ohmy:

Things I do need to have meaning, I need to see and feel where they fit into a bigger picture, how they enable progress towards a meaningful goal not just for my life but sorta making a difference in the world, leaving a legacy if you will. If I can't see this, then whatever I do, however superficially exciting - I'm bored, because it seems pointless to me.

I think this could be one reason why I could never do the career in paid employment thing... I've been successful at self-employment because I could determine my own 'promotional ladder' as it were... but I could never do entry level stuff for long. For a while I was for example, photocopying the service sheets for my local church - a dull, routine, unchallenging and boring task. But I was able to do it for a while quite happily, only by reminding myself about how it fitted into the whole, how it enabled bigger things to happen that I believed in. Once I questioned those things though and couldn't believe they were happening any more, my work felt pointless and I just couldn't bear to do it, I'd come home at the end of a working morning and feel really profoundly depressed - as I say it had taken all my persuasion skills turned onto myself to keep doing it anyway, but once the meaning was lost I just couldn't do it a second longer and just quit without notice.

I've had the same thing with jobs... I could go in at entry level and sustain interest as long as I believed a) the job I was currently doing was an important tile in a bigger mosaic that I believed in and was happy to help with enabling its continuing existence and b) it was a necessary step in a direction I wanted to go in and would enable progress for me in that direction. As soon as I had reason to question those points, the job became intolerable.
I feel the same way as you. As a matter of fact, I spent most of my mothering years either as a stay-at-home-mom or self-employed. I have a hard time working for other people because of the very reasons you just stated.

I just started a job as an office assistant 3 weeks ago. So far so good, though it's a lot more intense than I was hoping for. And I feel like I'm keeping plates spinning on the tops of sticks - not something I like... but I'm hoping it will have a side benefit of preventing Alzheimer's! :smile:
 

Haphazard

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I think I actually understood what Victor said this time.

I'm so proud of myself.
 
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