Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Boredom comes not from what you do

This study suggests that:
"boredom has little to do with lack of external stimulation and everything to do with being out of touch with our emotions".
The authors claim that this:
"shows our natural tendency to seek outside stimulations and distractions when we’re bored is the wrong solution."
How very interesting. We seem to have a hard time correlating feeling crappy with poor exercise and eating habits. Could boredom be just another problem where we seek the wrong solutions?

I can see how outside "stimulations" (which spellcheck tells me is not even really a word) would be less satisfying if you were "out of touch with" your emotions, because presumably your internal distractions would overshadow whatever joy you might experience. But I find it hard to believe that if I'm bored it's because I'm not in touch with my emotions. So, when I have nothing else to do, would I be best served to sit around and think about my emotions?

That might be at odds with my theory that sometimes we think TOO much about ourselves.

I guess the trouble with knowing how exactly to examine these results through your own personal experience is that "getting in touch with your emotions" is presumably not something you go in and out of. Either you are in touch, or you aren't. So it might be impossible to "show" yourself how to be less bored. "Getting in touch with your emotions" I imagine, is one of those longer processes with lots of little steps along the way.

I don't even necessarily know if I'm in touch with my emotions or not. How does one quantify that?

2 comments:

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

I'd rather not touch my emotions until I've washed my metaphorical hands with hot soap and water.