BOREDOM HAS ITS BENEFITS

A wandering mind is a creative mind

“Your mind wanders and you daydream and that’s really important”

We tend to view boredom as an unwelcome guest – something to be rid of as soon as possible. But research is showing that there’s good reason to embrace it.

“Boredom is a much maligned emotion, but it’s very good for us,” says Dr Sandi Mann, a psychology lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire. Mann’s research involves making people downright bored. Her favoured technique is to encourage her volunteers to laboriously copy phone numbers out of a phone book, or even just read them in their heads. In one experiment, her bored volunteers were encouraged to think of as many ways as possible to use two plastic cups. It turned out that those who had become most bored – those just reading out the phone numbers – came up with the most ideas. In other words, they were the most creative.

“When you’ve got nothing to stimulate your mind, it creates its own stimulation,” says Mann. “Your mind wanders and you daydream and that’s really important as it allows you to make connections. You’re free from the constraint of your brain saying: ‘that’s a ridiculous idea, it will never work’.”

There’s no doubting that boredom isn’t always a force for good. There’s growing evidence, for example, that the more boredom-prone are also more likely to become internet-addicted or experience ‘problematic smartphone use’.

It seems that it’s how we react to that feeling of boredom that’s key. “Boredom is just a signal telling us to get up and do something else,” explains Prof James Danckert, a neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo in Canada. “Boredom is neither good nor bad, it’s our responses that matter, turning towards self-destructive behaviours or becoming a spur towards creativity.”

So harnessed correctly, boredom can become a force for good – inspiring creativity, and helping to unlock our hidden potential.