We all get bored from time to time thinking about how monotonous life is, that we cannot enjoy anything, nothing different. It is quite clear that pandemic restrictions, which have been in our lives for quite some time, have an important role in our boredom. However, even before the concept of pandemic entered your life, there were times when you felt bored with the work you did, the lessons you listened to, the movies you watch, in short, everything.
In the routine flow and monotony of life, it may not always be possible to find something different and exciting every time, to feel the liveliness and colorfulness of life. Especially in a period when our options are very limited and many of our freedoms are under restriction.
Studies show that boredom is caused by a significant inability to concentrate attention and awareness, and our inability to fully pay attention to something feeds the feeling of boredom. The main problem we face when looking for the reasons why we are bored is that we look for the reasons of our distress not within ourselves, but in external factors that we cannot control.
While boredom can sometimes offer great opportunities for our creativity to emerge, sometimes it can also include risks such as anxiety, depression, anger, lack of social skills, weight gain, and even premature death. In order to understand the nature of boredom and boredom and to anticipate possible risks or opportunities, we must first be able to analyze the psychological factors that cause us boredom.
When boredom is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind for almost all of us is the feeling of stuck and helplessness caused by having nothing to do. Boredom is defined as a situation accompanied by unpleasant feelings that cause an intense lack of interest and difficulty in focusing while trying to fulfill any task, responsibility or activity. In existential psychology approaches, boredom is called a feeling of longing that is caused by the meaninglessness of life that we cannot fully satisfy no matter what we do.
Boredom is a universal feeling that all people on earth have experienced at least once in their lives. Studies show that 30-90% of adults struggle with boredom at some point in their lives. While these rates increase up to 98% for the young population, it is among the results of the research that men are more bored than women. In addition, many studies show that education level is strongly associated with boredom, and uneducated individuals are more bored than those who receive education.
Boredom can also be a determinant of many negative situations such as feeling of loneliness, anger, sadness and anxiety. The famous philosopher Kierkegaard states that boredom is such a motivating force that people can do anything to suppress the pain of boredom.
While Kierkegaard's approach to adversity is pessimistic, research on distress shows that the motivation and driving force provided by adversity can be managed to benefit.
Mental monotony
The emergence of boredom actually follows a very similar process to mental fatigue. Many simple activities we do in daily life, such as a project that requires constant attention to the same details and details for a long time, or waiting for a bus for minutes at the stop, can come back to us as boredom. When we proceed on the same experience by following the unchanging processes and steps; So when what we focus on is predictable and repetitive, whatever we are concerned about, we lack the stimulus and it becomes inevitable for us to experience boredom.
Flow and lack of harmony
Although it is challenging, our preoccupation with experiences that closely match our talents and abilities, the state of harmony and harmony, which we can call "in the right place, at the right time", are among the most important psychological processes that determine whether we will get bored with anything.
When the competencies we have are at the level and appropriate to meet the difficulty level of the experiences we encounter, we can focus without getting bored because our goals are clearer and we can get faster results. However, we can easily get bored when we cannot catch this harmony and flow, that is, when what we experience is too easy or too difficult.
Need for innovation
When you observe other people around you, you can easily see that some are more likely to be bored than others. This difference in when and in which situations people can be bored is closely related to how much space they can make for innovations in their life. People who can experience less innovation, excitement and diversity in their life may be more likely to get bored than others. It is also explained by this need that people with extroverted personality traits are constantly in search of innovation and do not hesitate to take risks to eliminate their boredom.
Problems with focus
Research on boredom shows that boredom may be largely related to attention problems. Situations and experiences in which we feel bored often consist of things that do not interest us and cannot pay attention.
However, it is not possible for us to understand whether the things we cannot fully pay attention to are of interest to us. Those with chronic attention-related problems (such as Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity disorder) may be more prone to boredom.
