Boredom is Death

I have always espoused the idea that boredom is death. I believe this only because when I am bored, I’d rather be dead. When I am bored, with work for example, my creativity oozes out of my ears and dries up, my inspiration drains out through my toes, and my brain shrivels into a dried up fig, only not as tasty. The good side of this problem is that I am rarely (excluding work) ever bored. I have always had the ability to entertain myself, and I have so little time to do the things I want to do that when I am sitting around I always have a project, idea, cleaning, or something I want to do.

I discovered this article today in Scientific American (my new favorite magazine besides The Week) called Bored to Death: Chronically Bored People Exhibit Higher Risk-Taking Behavior. It is a fascinating study which purports a number of interesting conclusions about what boredom does to people. A quick summary:

1) Highly bored people tend to lack the ability to entertain themselves thus making them tend to engage more in high risk behavior such as drug use and extreme sports.
This may explain the restlessness that occurs when I am bored. Instead of sitting around complaining I tend to move aimlessly around the house until I figure out what to do. If the opportunity to do something extreme were to present itself, in those moments I am pretty sure I would do it.

2) Chronically bored people tend to score low on measures of self awareness.
I think about the people that I have know in my life who tend to complain of being bored frequently and they are the same people who have a hard time figuring out what they want and what they desire. Does it work in reverse though? If I deconstruct myself and discover mt true desires does my boredom go away?

3) The ability to focus or engage plays a role in boredom.
This completely explains my performance and behaviors at work. Because I am not interested in my work it is very difficult for me to stay focused over long periods of time (anything over about 5 minutes to be exact). Therefore, I am not able to get much work done during the day because my inability to focus causes me to be bored, which increases my restlessness which forces me to lose focus and become more bored. It is a brutal cycle that can only be broken by finding something that engages me at work. (Or to quit my job and become a pirate and sail around the world burying my treasure on various desert islands.)

Anyway, enough self analysis for the day. Check out the article.