From: The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 October 2012
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Everyone has their moments of
downtime, but it's not a pleasant feeling, writes Ann Robinson.
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What were you doing before you started reading this? Were you fully
focused on another article? Or doing the crossword? Eating breakfast?
Organising your day? Or were you staring out of the window, feeling restless
and bored?
It is more likely to have been the latter. Fleeting moments of boredom
are universal, and are often what drives us to stop what we are doing and shift
to something that we hope will be more stimulating.
Although boredom is common, however, it is neither trivial nor benign,
Dr John Eastwood, a psychologist at York University, Toronto, says. Eastwood is
the joint author of The Unengaged Mind, a new paper on the theory of boredom.
Boredom, he points out, has been associated with increased drug and
alcohol abuse, overeating, depression and anxiety, and an increased risk of
making mistakes. Mistakes at work might not be a matter of life and death for
most of us, but if you are an air traffic controller, pilot or nuclear power
plant operator, they most certainly can be.
A commercial pilot, Sami Franks (not his real name), confirms that
boredom can make pilots lose attention
''When you fly long haul, there are two pilots, one of whom is
monitoring all the screens while the other does the paperwork, talks to air
traffic control and so on. You need to be alert for landing and takeoff, but
once you're 500 feet [150 metres] above the runway, the plane's on autopilot
and it can be very quiet and boring.
''In a study I saw of co-pilots who woke up after a nap, 30 per cent
reported seeing the other pilot asleep too,'' Franks adds, in a comment that
will not play well with nervous flyers.
The stakes are not usually so high, but boredom can be protracted,
heavy and associated with an unpleasant sensation, Eastwood says. And despite
having attracted the attention of philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists
and educationalists, there is no precise definition of boredom and no consensus
as to how we counter it. .
''All instances of boredom involve a failure of attention,'' Eastwood
says. ''And attention is what you are using now to blot out the plethora of
stimuli around you while you focus awareness on a given topic.''
There are three functions involved in attention. We have to be suitably
aroused, so as not to fall asleep on the job. Then we have an orienting system
that can cut in so that if you cross the road, deep in thought, you will still
respond to a flickering light on the edge of your visual field that heralds a
fast-approaching car. And the third type of attention is an executive system
that oversees our mental activities, so we can consciously stay engaged even if
the task is not very interesting. Boredom results when any of these functions
breaks down.
Dr Esther Priyadharshini, a senior lecturer in education at the
University of East Anglia, in England, has studied boredom and says it can be
seen in a positive light.
''We can't avoid boredom - it's an inevitable human emotion,'' she
says. ''We have to accept it as legitimate and find ways it can be harnessed.
We all need downtime, away from the constant bombardment of stimulation.
There's no need to be in a frenzy of activity at all times.''
Children who complain that they have nothing to do on rainy half-term
breaks may find other things to focus on if left to their own devices.
The artist Grayson Perry is believed to have spoken of how long periods
of boredom in childhood may have enhanced his creativity. ''We all need vacant
time to mull things over,'' Priyadharshini says.
But if boredom can enhance our creativity and be a signal for change,
why is it such a corrosive problem for some individuals?
People who have suffered extreme trauma are more likely to report
boredom than those who have had a less eventful time. The theory is that they
shut down emotionally and find it harder to work out what they need. They may
be left with free-floating desire, without knowing what to pin it on. This lack
of emotional awareness is known as alexithymia and can affect anyone.
Frustrated dreamers who haven't realised their goals can expend all
their emotional energy on hating themselves or the world, and find they have no
attention left for anything else.
Bungee jumpers and thrill-seekers may also be particularly susceptible
to boredom, as they feel the world isn't moving fast enough for them.
''Boredom isn't a nice feeling, so we have an urge to eradicate it and
cope with it in a counterproductive way,'' Eastwood says. This may be what
drives people to destructive behaviours such as gambling, overeating, alcohol
and drug abuse, he says, though research is needed to tease out whether there's
a direct causal link.
''The problem is we've become passive recipients of stimulation,''
Eastwood says. ''We say, 'I'm bored, so I'll put on the TV or go to a loud
movie.' But boredom is like quicksand: the more we thrash around, the quicker
we'll sink.''
Guardian News & Media
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