“It’s a week mind that gets bored”. But when you look closely, boredom has nothing to do with strength or weakness of mind. These days it is impossible to get bored. We have so much to accomplish that we think sleep is also our enemy. Often stuck in this vicious cycle of filling in time with stuff. We don’t even recognize that, we are always busy doing something and that something is not even important. Try this experiment stop doing whatever you are doing right now. Just do nothing for the next 5 minutes. You might think what a waste of time. Most of us will fail sitting idle just for 5 minutes including me. It’s easy to do something than nothing, even though that something can be fishing out your phone from pocket and looking for new notifications.
Now you know it’s easy to fill up your whole day with stuff. But when we sit idle our mind starts wandering. We use this time for generating ideas. Our mind wanders around; thinking about various topics. when is the last time you had a really deep discussion with someone? Just for once try having dinner without watching television or breakfast without news. Sometimes we are extremely busy with multitasking that we don’t even remember what we had at breakfast.
Studies show that the average person spends over four hours a day on their device. That’s right: most modern people spend a full quarter of their waking hours on their mobile devices. According to one of the studies, about half the time (approx 2 hours) is spent on the top five social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube.And we call ourselves busy. We can use this time talking to our loved ones. Or spend this time more productive or creative way.
“HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM.”
― Terry Pratchett
Let me tell you about one of my experience, I have a big list of tasks and habits that I want in my life. I get bored by starting so many things at once. Human minds have so much inertia that when we try adding any new habit to our life it resists. Rather doing a lot of new things at once try doing one at a time. A few years back I used to buy a lot of books, most of them are unfinished reading, Still sitting in my cupboard waiting for the reader. If your plate is already filled there is no point in adding more. So don’t get bored doing so many things at a time slow down focus one thing at a time you will realize that you are putting your creativity to the task.
We’re trying to swipe and scroll the boredom away, but in doing that, we’re actually making ourselves more prone to boredom, because every time we get our phone out we’re not allowing our mind to wander and to solve our own boredom problems. Adding that people can become an addiction to the constant dopamine hit of new and novel content that phones provide. Our tolerance for boredom just changes completely, and we need more and more to stop being bored.
Next time you find yourself in line at the grocery store, in a tedious meeting or killing time in a waiting room, resist the urge to scroll. You’re bound to get bored — and your brain, mood and work performance just might improve.
Also Read: Did you know routine can be your enemy?
