I've been meaning to write about this for a few days now, but I've been simply too bored to do so. How is that possible? I have all the free time in the world, yet I feel like I have no time to actually get this article done. Creativity saps away. Too much freedom can be a bad thing, after all.

What's going on?

What is it, and what causes it?

There has been quite a few looks at the science behind boredom in recent years.

The first thing to do was to try and define boredom. This can be trickier than it seems. Boredom consists of both objective and subjective facets. Neurologically, a lack of stimulation can be objectively measured,

But a more subjective approach would be our perceived level of frustration, apathy, ennui, disinterest, hopelessness, depression.

This complexity of boredom has been defined by Researcher Dr Thomas Goetz in five forms:

Indifferent Boredom

A relaxed, semi-content boredom, withdrawn into oneself

Calibrating Boredom

An uncertain boredom, creating a lot of distraction and likelihood of change

Searching Boredom

Restless boredom, where an individual actively looks around for distractions

Reactant Boredom

Similar to Searching Boredom, but with a specific alternative change in mind you anticipate accomplishing

Apathetic Boredom

The most unpleasant of them all. A learned feeling of helplessness and depression born from low arousal and a typical aversion to other alternatives.

Wonderfully for me, the most widely accepted generalized definition is

'the frustrating experience of wanting but being unable to engage in satisfying activity'

A paper by John Eastwood, Alexandra Frischen, Mark Fenske, and Daniel Smilek further demonstrates that it's not simply a 'lack of things to do' that creates boredom. That can just as easily create 'relaxation'.

To feel bored, there needs to be a high enough level of psychological arousal. This is a desire to expend yours energy on something, rather than let it float away on a hammock on some beach somewhere. When you can't spend that energy on something for whatever reason, boredom creeps in.

Another cause for boredom is a lack of concentration. When anticipating something like a delivery, a late guest, a flight, there may be lots of other things to do around you, but the outside influences affect your ability to concentrate, your miind racing from one distraction to another, and frustration and boredom soon follow.

So there are both internal and external influences that can create boredom by creating a sense of lack of control. You may want to do one thing, but 12 other things, such as money, family, pets, work obligations, mental or physical sickness prevent you from accomplishing anything at all.

The benefits

The fact is, boredom can be a highly beneficial state for one particular reason; we seek to get out of it. Unstable individuals with debilitating mental illnesses such as major depression do not see and do not seek a way out, they are trapped. A bored individual is typically healthy in mind, and that desire to leave ones current state can, with the right amount of self control, inspire.

Creativity is often born from the depths of boredom. Innovation comes from observing the mundane, finding solutions to dissatisfaction. This doesn't mean you have to be an artist to reap the benefits, but anybody in a boring job or studying a boring subject will start questioning their direction, wondering if what they're doing in the world is enough. Are they leaving their mark?

It seems humans are naturally not so capable at simply doing nothing, and, given the chance, will for the most part fight to accomplish something. Though nobody yet knows what evolutionary purpose boredom has, I would guess that it's another one of those 'no why' situations. Perhaps it just came from our extensive, luxury experience of having free time; something we would never have had, mentally, back in the foraging days.

The risks

All the benefits revolve around an individual's high capacity for self control. Without it, a life can go to waste. It may be simple for us to look at another individual and spot what they're not doing, what they could easily be doing with themselves. But it's not useful when you're in isolation, or you yourself feel your current way of life is unvaluable and unimportant.

Without an ability to control oneself or their environment, an individual can easily fall into depression, anxiety, low self-worth, low grades in school, overeating, high drop-out rates, paranoia and more. A lot more research needs to be done to help .

The stress of boredom has other adverse effects. In school in particular, boredom can 'decrease people’s ability to pay attention and can narrow people’s working memory capacity.' This has a lifelong detrimental effect when grades are lower than they could have been, and a lasting dislike of academia can corrupt ones desire to pursue things later in life.

Neurologically speaking, there are measurable adverse effects. When tested for reaction times and observing through MRI scanners, 'communication between regions related to self-control, vision and language processing died down' when volunteers started getting bored.

Cognitive decline was also noticeable and could potentially lead to neurological deficit as a person ages if the brain is not used to a satisfactory degree as an individual ages. The brain should be treated like a muscle; 'use it or lose it'.

It seems that boredom is a bittersweet emotion. But if we can control it, if we can experience it in the right doses without falling into Chronic boredom, it can create a boom in ingenuity and creative thinking. Think Albert Einstein, staring out of the window.

In the US and other countries, creativity is on the decline. With the very real future of technology taking over most jobs that we have, innovation in new technologies is going to be absolutely necessary. Hopefully boredom created from half the population having no jobs will spark something phenomenal, but that remains to be seen.

Fingers crossed, and embrace the boredom! Keep staring out that window.

@Crypto2day