11–20 of 230 posts
Being bored is great. You're forced to be with your thoughts. You have the opportunity to work on them. Be it via meditation. Or cognitive behavioral therapy. or whatever. And if you succeed, you earn a happier mind.
If it weren't for the crushing boredom of the suburbs when I was a child, I might not have learned how to program computers. I would never have thought so much about spaceships. The original Star Wars trilogy wouldn't have been nearly as cool to discover. I also play traditional music, though boredom wasn't part of my discovering that. However, silence was a big part of traditional music, in the past. You need empty…
Totally! I think what’s really important is having space to think. Stimulation seems to stopper the possibility of deep-thought. Having significant, radical, perhaps discomforting thoughts becomes impossible when we’re constantly aborting our opportunity to think by filling our lives with distractions. It’s an activity which really does require absence—séquestration and quiet space. I try to set aside time each day f…
This weekend I was slogging through a book I had been meaning to read for ten years when I realized that twitter is actually more enjoyable than books.
It took me a long time to realize that if a book wasn't interesting or enjoyable, I could just...stop. With twitter it's a bit mentally easier to just close the browser.
I was so bored this past weekend, and it was great. Every year I volunteer to backpack into the desert mountains of Southern California, sit in one spot for 3 full days, and count all of the Bighorn Sheep that I see. There's typically a total of an hour of excitement each day, and the rest is just sitting, staring at a mountainside. No cell reception, no human made structures visible, just two other people there with…
I highly recommend this episode of the art of manliness podcast if you like that kind of things: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/fire-watcher-philip-...
If it weren't for the crushing boredom of the suburbs when I was a child, I might not have learned how to program computers. I would never have thought so much about spaceships. The original Star Wars trilogy wouldn't have been nearly as cool to discover. I also play traditional music, though boredom wasn't part of my discovering that. However, silence was a big part of traditional music, in the past. You need empty…
This weekend I was slogging through a book I had been meaning to read for ten years when I realized that twitter is actually more enjoyable than books.
I would argue that totally depends on the books and the twitter threads that you're reading! It took me a long time to realize that if a book wasn't interesting or enjoyable, I could just...stop. With twitter it's a bit mentally easier to just close the browser.
When I was less distracted, the slog was easier.
I was so bored this past weekend, and it was great. Every year I volunteer to backpack into the desert mountains of Southern California, sit in one spot for 3 full days, and count all of the Bighorn Sheep that I see. There's typically a total of an hour of excitement each day, and the rest is just sitting, staring at a mountainside. No cell reception, no human made structures visible, just two other people there with…
If I had to sit for 3 days watching the mountains and the occasional sheep passing by, I would probably turn to meditation or continue planning my project in my mind.
I think boredom is a mechanism for novelty seeking, making us take a step back and maybe try a different activity, a necessary part of the exploration-exploitation tradeoff... because we never know what unknown unknowns we're missing. It's good to do what we know will give us rewards, but maybe there are even better rewards we're passing on, so from time to time it's necessary to sacrifice the safe zone and go out. I…
Having a population with varied amount of attention seeking seems beneficial for finding the "optimum" for the local environment. Too much novelty seeking and the seekers will all get eaten by bears and starve because they fail to do what is known good. Too little novelty seeking and the known good will rot and be inflexible to changing conditions. (obviously contrived)