The Curse of the Bored Brain

A friend of mine recently mentioned that reading one of my blog posts, he realised that his tendency to be grumpy on occasion was in fact a reaction to underlying procrastination. In many ways he is being very hard on himself, because he has a relentlessly inquisitive mind and yes, there are days when I used to just let him get on with things, but then - we all have days like these. Interestingly, what his statement reminded me of is what I call the curse of the bored brain.

Looking at what our brains have to cope with on a normal day - not only do we have to put up with  blurring industry lines and confusing responsibilities, ever shortening times to production, cost-cutting, redundancies - you name it - along with it come also the various frustrations caused by feature-rich and experience-poor technologies. A disproportionate amount of our time is taken up by computers, blackberries, mobile phones and email and these all have a capacity to distract us from more productive tasks. In fact, the whole process of checking emails first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening is a habit I certainly have got into, but probably many of you too - because of it's sheer unpredictability. We feel obliged to keep dipping into them so as to 'stay on top of things' , but we often find ourselves firefighting to keep the floodgates down and not getting completely swept away by an avalanche of 'actionables' that nobody mentioned until you clicked that Outlook shortcut on your desktop. Emails have an enormous capacity to jolt you from your plan of what you wanted to achieve that day - load your mind with sudden emergencies or simply make your mood swing from good to bad in about 3 milliseconds. Therefore there is an art to writing good emails - but more on that in another post.

Moreover, weeks and months of this same routine along with a predictable flow of meetings, office intrigue and other miscellanea are in fact quietly boring our brains. I know this about myself - too much routine kills me and I start fighting back. I don’t know about you, but I hate routine and the notion of predictability and those destructive behavioural patterns of procrastinating, pushing things close to the deadline and then suddenly almost drowning myself in work to deliver just-on-time, are in fact a reaction towards a sense of not learning or having enough challenges (a bored brain).

Actually, knowing this about myself is quite useful, a ‘boredom’-meter if you like so when I start behaving like that I know I need to think up new things to immerse myself in to keep my mind flexed. What I was getting to is the fact that modern life and the rich media we are surrounded with are in fact stimulating our minds in such a way that our brains continuously expect more stimuli and get bored more easily when lacking stimuli. On one hand life and all it's challenges keeps us on our toes - on the other hand, many things are repetitive, automated and predictable and we struggle to gain more control over them so we could make them less boring. So on one hand we are extremely capable and empowered and expected to behave as such - on the other hand things are not flexible or challenging enough to continuously engage our brains and keep us focused or interested. We are caught in the void between these two opposites.

Dr. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist, investigating our perception of time, has come to the conclusion that we feel that time passes more and more quickly the more and more of our lives are taken up by routine events and behaviour. We switch to a kind of auto-pilot, where having performed the same activities and tasks so many times before, makes us do it without paying a lot of attention. We almost become automated. This means we don't form memories about events like we do when something is new to us. Less memories formed means a greater sense of time simply rushing past and inadvertently, our inability to control it, which of course makes us feel more powerless.

Thus, when people keep banging on about life-long learning they do have a point - but not in the traditional sense. If we can ensure there are components in our life which we find challenging, awaken our curiosity and desire to learn - we are also forming memories, which means we slow down our perception of time. This means we feel more in control of the passage of time than we do when simply engaged in routine tasks. So yes, you could say life-long learning is pivotal for your continued career-progression and all that, but somehow it sounds quite boring. It sounds like we should always take cues from whatever our role at work demands and direct our learning initiatives to continuously bolster our professional skills.

Yes, maybe - but more importantly, I think it is about finding something, anything you love doing, whether it is connected to your work or not. If it is something you are curious and interested about, you will devote the necessary energy towards figuring things out and continuously be learning more and more, which keeps your mind engaged and active, which means you don't get bored. This means your brain is busy creating memories, which means you remember each day more distinctly and time doesn't just rush past in a blur. Boredom is a curse, it makes people cynical, angry, depressed, shopaholics, TV addicts, you name it - so fight it by finding something you are curious about and make time to delve into learning more and mastering it. A curious mind is a healthy mind.

And a hilariously insightful article on Structured Procrastination - by John Perry on how to turn procrastination into a method of getting things done.

Comments

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[jamesb]

great article. Boredom is a curse for sure and that can lead to all kinds of negativity - shopping as therapy for one - but I think boredom can be a source for creativity too. As a child I remember being super bored.. and that led to a kinda depressive state but creativity cam out of that... humour for example, a good sense of the absurd, and also an artistic 'bent'. I think what I'm saying is theat boredom can be a place on a journey to something better, more creative.

[davidnunez]

I really appreciated this article. Do brains get bored or tired when there is TOO much stimulationl? I often find myself getting frustrated and shutting down as so many inputs causes the landscape of creativity to merge into one dull buzz.

So rather than dive into one incoming stream of new experiences, I find myself hopping among many different sources, not spending enough time in any given topic or activity to build meaningful outcome, and in essence, get bored/frustrated with the lack of progress.

I wonder if this means MORE routine can be a good thing?

[Apoch]

Great stuff. I've definitely noticed the pattern in myself - my contentment tends to vary inversely with how challenged I feel. I've had more a few weird looks from people when they hear me grumbling and cursing over some bug or sticky bit of code, come over to ask how I'm doing, and I brightly tell them I'm having the time of my life :-)

[Margherite]

This explains a great deal about why my job bores me. It does not explain why the routine of walking in the woods, away from the Blackberry, invigorates me. There seems to be a heuristic quality to the nature of routine that accounts for the difference. Most of the "fire drills" that are propogated by the Blackberry turn out to be poorly thought through management brainstorms that end up in rework. And rework is BORING.