Do you find yourself easily bored? Do you think you are more prone to feeling bored than others?
We all know what boredom feels like: time is dragging, a sense of emptiness arises, and then the question of “what am I doing?” comes to mind. We all feel bored from time to time, but it is possible that the same situation in which you feel bored is interesting or exciting to others. Maybe you just get bored easily. Some psychologists refer to such differences as boredom proneness.
Boredom Proneness is Not Trivial
Hundreds of studies have looked at this. It is associated with various undesirable health and behavioral outcomes such as emotional eating, risk-taking, and psychological distress, to name a few. A recent study by Boylan and colleagues even found that people who are more boredom prone are also more likely to break the rules of social distancing in the COVID-19 pandemic.
But what exactly is this “proneness”? Does it simply mean some people are more easily bored than others? We did two studies in the US and Hong Kong and found that being prone to boredom might actually mean three different things:
- Frequently feeling bored
- Experiencing boredom more intensely
- Holding a general impression that “my life is boring”
We found that, among the three, the evaluation that one’s life is boring, rather than the actual frequency and intensity of boredom, has the strongest associations with lower life satisfaction and greater psychological distress. In other words, our findings suggest feeling bored on a regular basis is in itself can be quite all right, as long as you don’t then conclude that your life is boring.
But What Should You Do If You Do Think Your Life is Boring?
At any given moment, our attention wants to focus on something, be it a song, a conversation, a story, a memory, or a fantasy. Boredom is typically experienced when there is a gap between how engaged you want your mind to be and the actual degree of engagement achieved. Thus, you feel bored when you want to be more captivated than you actually are by whatever you are focusing on.
From this perspective, two possible reasons why you are chronically bored and think that your life is boring are: 1) you are not good at focusing your attention, and/or 2) you do not have anything in life that you want to engage in.
If you think you are poor at sustaining your attention, you can try strategies that help you focus, such as putting your phone away, minimizing distractions, and reminding yourself of the importance of what you’re doing.
If there’s nothing in your life that captivates you, then perhaps it is time to pick up a new hobby, learn a new skill, revisit important relationships, or identify a cause that you resonate with. Most people know that it is important to live with a sense of purpose and meaning. The activities that you find valuable are also the ones you would naturally want to pay attention to. So long as they capture your attention, we theorize you would hardly notice boredom.
Boredom is not a psychological death sentence; it is an opportunity to budget the limited time and cognitive resources we have. Next time you feel bored, try to pay attention to it and see what you can learn from the experience.
For Further Reading
Tam, K. Y. Y., van Tilburg, W. A. P., & Chan, C. S. (2021). What is boredom proneness? A comparison of three characterizations. Journal of Personality. Manuscript in press for publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12618
Tam, K. Y. Y., van Tilburg, W. A. P., Chan, C. S., Igou, E. R., & Lau, H. (2021). Attention drifting in and out: The Boredom Feedback Model. Personality and Social Psychology Review.
Boylan, J., Seli, P., Scholer, A. A., & Danckert, J. (2021). Boredom in the COVID-19 pandemic: Trait boredom proneness, the desire to act, and rule-breaking. Personality and Individual Differences, 171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110387
Christian S. Chan is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at The University of Hong Kong. He studies community psychology, clinical psychology, political psychology, and their intersections.
Katy Y. Y. Tam is a PhD candidate at The University of Hong Kong and King’s College London. She studies the cognitive underpinning of boredom experience.
Wijnand A. P. van Tilburg is Lecturer of Psychology at the University of Essex. His research mainly concerns the study of emotion in context of interpersonal judgment and decision making.