> As the author points out, we've forgotten how to be bored. We need to learn to engage that part of our brain again.
This sounds like a contradiction. Isn't boredom precisely the state that results when one fails to engage their brain?
This sounds like a contradiction. Isn't boredom precisely the state that results when one fails to engage their brain?
To think a little further forward, doing this tends to increase the time until the next novelty, so you get practiced in not constantly seeking immediate gratification. It helps increase your ability to be patient and to concentrate, which in part is the ability to not switch tasks at the first hint of boredom.
I agree with this but would emphasize that this is just an exercise to get free from a distracted state in your mind all the time.
Some people want to encourage disconnecting yourself from external stimulus, and just enjoying your own thoughts, and use the word "boredom" to describe this. Whereas other people feel that "boredom" means the frustrating state of being entirely unengaged.
I sometimes wonder if people who don't disconnect very often haven't experienced much of the latter kind of boredom, and so aren't as aware of it as a negative thing.