Top-7 interesting facts about boredom and fighting it

Boredom is what every person experiences. This restless, empty feeling from the scientific point of view is little studied. Nevertheless, some studies allow shedding light on the "ingredients" of boredom and can provide a clue in the fight against it.

Here are the top 7 amazing facts about boredom.

7. Boredom is not apathy

Although these terms are often used as synonyms, bored is not the same as being apathetic."I think that often when people think of boredom, they think of apathetic householders, but it's not so," says James Dankert, a professor of cognitive neurology at the University of Waterloo in Ontario."Boredom is an aggressive unsatisfactory feeling in the sense that you have a high level of motivation to do business, but nothing you do can satisfy this need."

6. Self-monitoring is closely related to the boredom of

James Dunkert studied boredom in people with traumatic brain injury( TBI), including his brother, and found that people who complained of severe boredom were highly likely to have a damaged orundeveloped frontal lobe of the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres. This part of the brain plays a crucial role in self-control. The scientist suggests that because of a failure of self-control, people with CHMP begin to behave too impulsively and often acquire a lot of bad habits.

5. Boredom can be fatal in the literal sense

In 2010, University College London staff analyzed questionnaires of 7,524 civil servants aged 35 to 55 years. People filled out questionnaires from 1985 to 1988.Participants in the study, who often reported that they were bored, had an increased( about 37%) chance of dying by 2009 than those who wrote that they were not bored at all. However, the authors emphasized that boredom is probably associated with higher mortality rates through other problems, such as poor health or depression.

4. Can be boring when it's hard

In 2012, in one study, a group of 150 students were given the answer to light and complex puzzles. Then the researchers analyzed the level of boredom of the test subjects. The results showed that light tasks led to self-focusing boredom( apathy), while complex tasks led to more goal-oriented boredom( the feeling is "tiring").

3. Boredom can affect the treatment of depression

In the rating of interesting facts about boredom, there was one more case involving Dunkert and his research. In 2013, Dunkert and several of his colleagues suggested that boredom can interfere with the treatment of depression in people who have had a brain injury. Behavioral activation therapy, encouraging patients to participate in activities that will contribute to pleasure, does not work for patients prone to boredom. After all, these patients are already motivated to participate in any activity, it remains only to find which one. Instead of fighting the lack of motivation among bored people, it is better to use a therapeutic approach focused on finding a lesson that will become an "antidepressant".

2. Communication of high technologies and boredom is not clear

People like to argue about the merits and demerits of the modern high-tech world, but there is no way to tell from a scientific point of view how boredom is related to modern technologies. Researchers do not have easy access to the control group. They can not return in 1950, and see if people were more bored because they did not have iPhones. They can only assume that the novelties of high-tech slightly dispel boredom, attracting the attention of people.

1. You need to think about boredom so that it's not boring

Scientists suggest that thinking about boring tasks can help make them less tedious. For example, a factory worker whose job is to assemble the same thing on a conveyor belt for several hours in a row can dispel boredom thinking about what people will benefit from the product they have assembled. And teaching the meditation technique can help a person to go deeper into the meaning of a task that appears boring on the surface, and perform it more effectively.