Boredom Buster: Avoid the same routine and spice up your sex life with these tips. Boredom is often cited as a symptom of depression , but may also be a trigger. A study published online in PLoS One linked long hours and job strain to depression. As famously characterized in Dilbert , office jobs can be particularly dull and lead to poor emotional health.
Experts highlight that a predictable and unchallenging work environment is one of the key factors of job stress , which can pour over to your personal life and lead to the blues. Boredom Buster: If you find yourself disengaged at work, it could be a sign that the daily grind is burning you out. Check-in with your manager to figure out how to add more creativity to your job. If you recognise you've been inactive, or haven't been engaging in the world, you can break state by moving, or making a change.
Boredom can also take its toll on our physical health, through lack of physical activity and lack of attention to our eating habits. So if you are spending too much time in a bored state, it's likely your physical condition will suffer.
Taking part in physical activity - whether an exercise class on YouTube or a walk in the garden or park - will both relieve boredom and improve your fitness.
The good news is that those of us with busy lives who are used to the non-stop nature of daily living may benefit from a bit of additional down-time. It is only when we spend extended periods feeling bored, become inactive or spend too much time mindlessly scrolling in a bored state that we need to take note and make change.
Can apps help you manage your mental health during the pandemic? Disclaimer: This article is for information only and should not be used for the diagnosis or treatment of medical conditions. Egton Medical Information Systems Limited has used all reasonable care in compiling the information but make no warranty as to its accuracy. Consult a doctor or other health care professional for diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions.
For details see our conditions. Looking for a counsellor? Video appointments with qualified counsellors are now available in Patient Access Book now.
On average, adults in the United States experience days of boredom per year — at least that is what a recent commercial survey suggests. What matters, though, is not just how much time a person spends feeling bored, but also how they react to the state of boredom. Traditionally, boredom gets a bad rap because many people believe that the state of boredom equates with a lack of productivity or focus on a given task. However, some research has indicated that it is good to be bored because this state helps boost creativity.
One way or the other, boredom is something we all have experienced repeatedly throughout our lives, and according to some research, it seems that animals might share this experience with us, too. For this reason, Perone and colleagues from Washington State University decided to conduct a study focusing on what boredom looks like in the brain.
The study findings — which now appear in the journal Psychophysiology — might help them identify the best ways of coping with boredom so that this state does not end up affecting mental health.
So, if there was no difference in terms of brain hardwiring, then what could explain why boredom affected some people more adversely than others? The researchers decided that the most likely explanation was individual response: some people simply reacted poorly to being bored, which could affect their well-being. Previous research, the investigators report in their study paper, has actually suggested that individuals who are often bored are also more prone to poor mental health, and particularly to conditions such as anxiety and depression.
Based on these premises, the researchers argue that it is possible to find ways of coping with states of boredom so that they become less likely to affect mental health. Highly bored individuals also tend to lack the ability to entertain themselves.
If drug addicts can learn to deal with their doldrums, however, they may be less likely to relapse. In one as-yet unpublished study of addicts ranging in age from 24 to 68 at a methadone clinic, the subjects' reported levels of boredom were the only reliable factor that predicted whether they would stay on course, Todman notes.
Our culture's obsession with external sources of entertainment—TV, movies, the Internet, video games—may also play a role in increasing boredom. It is possible that the roots of boredom lie in a fundamental breakdown in our understanding of what it is we want to do. Bored people tend to score low on measures of self-awareness. They find it difficult to accurately monitor their own moods and feelings and hence understand what they truly want.
These findings fit into the psychodynamic model of boredom, whereby people repress their true wants and desires and therefore cannot locate satisfying activity. The repression part is still debatable, but Eastwood has found that students who scored high on scales of alexithymia—difficulty in describing or identifying feelings, distinguishing between bodily sensations and feelings, and an inhibited inner emotional and fantasy life—also tended to be bored.
At a more functional level, the ability to focus or engage also plays a significant role in boredom. People with attention deficit hyperactive disorder ADHD are more likely to be bored, as are those who score low on measures of sustained attention.
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