Ennui: How to Overcome Chronic Boredom
effectiviology.com
effectiviology.com
Not entirely in the individual's hands, as he goes on to say "Someone who is friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly will simply not be able to find many opportunities for virtuous activity over a long period of time, and what little he can accomplish will not be of great merit. To some extent, then, living well requires good fortune"[2].
Surprised I didn't see this mentioned in the article. An adjacent, perhaps more controversial, formulation of this point: Meaninglessness can be countered by the voluntary adoption of responsibility. (e.g. having children)
[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle/ [2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/
But nowadays you can always become a coder ...
Go find the others who are friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly[1]. Among them, you'll find plenty of opportunity for virtuous activity.
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[1] There's far more of such people than the, uh, non-friendless, non-childless, non-powerless, non-weak, and non-ugly think.
In my 20's, I was very likely to make a decision to work with or for someone if they are attractive. In my late 30's now, I am much more likely to only base it on the other person's ability and/or intelligence in a subject area.
Same reason smart people value intelligence a lot, rich people value money, and so on and so forth.
It might seem courteous and kinder to pretend that this isn't going on, but living in ignorance has significant costs of its own.
Now that I'm older, I'd definitely advise figuring out where you are on the scale and dating down, not up. If you're with someone significantly more attractive, you're paying in other ways--make sure you know what they are.
This reminded me of Jordan Peterson
Well, I guess this answers that (and maybe more).
But to give my personal perspective, I’m not sure what Peterson’s motives are. He has stated that he used to have severe clinical depression, which might help contextualize some of his more “grim” lectures/videos. (He and his daughter are able to mitigate their depression by having a carnivore diet. Strange, but it seems to work for them.)
> "The alternative to valued responsibility, is implulsive low class pleasure"
Which aligns directly with the quote you selected.
Make a kid responsible for a pet might start things off early.
I am also reminded of the old saying:
The key to happiness is someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to.
I dunno if you've read it, but The Nichomachean Ethics, which is where eudaimonia is treated, is basically a parenting book for a slave owning upper class. It is not a book about how you, a grown adult, experiencing mental paralysis in a hedonistic consumerist Capitalist society that has orders of magnitude more abundance, can get out of said paralysis. Not. At. All.
Edit: I wanna be really clear. Aristotle has some very useful things to say, particularly in De Anima, which, IMO, is the sole philosophical definition of a soul that is capable of being set in alignment with the concept of evolution, but the Ethics is a really big hype job that has lots of important sounding phrases taken wholly out of context. Aristotle is at his best when he is just a scientist, like in De Anima, or any of his zoological works.
Here are a few tricks that work for me:
* Don't force yourself to get things done. You need rest, not shame.
* Get properly bored. Mindlessly consuming content just makes it last longer.
* Do something easy and different. I usually run myself a bath or go for a walk. It's enough to get me off the computer and to get ideas flowing again.
* Get some rest. Write this evening off, and relax for a bit. The rest will wait.
* Put a few things back in their place. I don't know why, but it's a surprisingly effective way to get out of a rut. Usually, I end up cleaning the whole flat, even though I hate cleaning.
As for myself, I have noticed there's something calming about moving things where they belong (even if initially it doesn't seem very exciting).
But it's easy to forget.
Thank you for the reminder.
> The term ‘ennui’ is often used interchangeably with ‘boredom’. However, various distinctions have been drawn between these two terms, and in general, the main difference between boredom and ennui is that ‘boredom’ refers to a mental state that is short-tern and driven primarily by situational and environmental factors, while ‘ennui’ refers to a mental state that is chronic and driven primarily by dispositional (personality-based) factors.
so... chronic boredom?
Shit, just talk to a professional, don't read online articles about how to deal with your mental health challenges. Just reach out and ask for help. The stakes are too high. If you feel chronically bored, you're most likely heading towards burnout or you're depressed but not realizing it yet. The tone of the article is very shallow wrt to depression. It more nuanced than ' it’s possible for someone to suffer from depression but not ennui, as in the case of someone who experiences deep chronic sadness and lack of energy, but not the existential boredom that characterizes ennui'.
That does somewhat sum up things. For me, many of these self-help things are there to self-help the author more than anybody else.
But the whole aspect of boredom leading into depression is not wrong, when we keep raising the bar for what we define of happiness, we only increase the scope of what is boredom and deny our brains it's dopamine hits. Over time, we start to redefine ourselves and the long roads of self loathing and useless start to divide the mind down paths that serve no useful destination.
For me, redefining happiness and finding enjoyment in the small things in life works better than any single bit of advice I would give a younger self of mine. Others will have their own ways, but everybody is different. Advise, however great is like a pair of shoes - one size does not fit all perfectly.
Pretty much my thoughts on this. I’m bipolar and is this article is just bad.
There multiple types of depression with various causes and different treatments. I’ve had just about all of them.
Any person can burn out or find life pointless simply by grinding away at life without taking care of themselves.
A good book on cognitive behavioral therapy is going to fix a lot more problems than articles like this.
I often recommend to switching from a consumption mind to a producing one. Instead of looking for the next Netflix show that will cure your boredom, or for a person to entertain you, make something. Of course, this is easier said than done. Boredom doesn't disappear because you decided to do something.
One issue is that boredom is developed over a long period of time, to the point that it becomes a habit. Once you decide to do something about it, expect it to take just as long to part with it.
You can still watch your Netflix show, but make a schedule for your boredom breaking habit. Every evening at 6 write for 30 minutes. Try to run a mile in the morning without any earphones. Practice a musical instruments once a day. Read a book for 30 minutes a day. Nothing to drastically change your lifestyle, but over the course of a month, these habits replace your boredom.
Consuming gives you new ideas on what to produce and enthusiasm about what you could create. You can't produce without consuming, and you likely won't be satisfied just consuming indefinitely.
Maybe people feel better when their are busybodies because culture/media feeds the message they should be unhappy if they don't do something or help others. Maybe society couldn't function if most people felt no desire to have kids or work besides the minimum required for shelter and subsistence.
The post below yours at the moment calls for having a kid, which is both taking a responsibility and according to most parents the equivalent of finding a greater purpose that yourself.
It strikes me also as very convenient bargain for a society that couldn't function if the population and the economy was always shrinking.
Do you really think most people would bother waking up to go to work if they had no kids but a place of dwelling and food on the table (say through UBI or anything)? The creative hackers, maybe, but I think most people would find videogames and drinking with friend quite sufficient.
The post pandemic will be a great experiment to check if the price elasticity of work has been permanently altered by a few weeks of isolation, and reflection.
Boredom is you can't find something to do that is fulfilling, eg, not having a hobby.
Chronic depression is being restricted from doing something that will make you feel better, be it no energy, overly pessimistic beliefs of outcome, or similar mental states that can cause these mental blocks. Depression often has a lack of feeling, even sex drive is reduced, from this. Note, depression is not just the lack of feeling, as there are other disorders, even kinds of brain damage that can reduce feeling, without depression. Also, this is not depressive episodes, which is a separate topic.
Depression is hard to get out of when one is mentally blocked from doing fulfilling activates. Boredom is easier to get out of, because they will get around to doing something fulfilling, either immediately, or usually within the next day or two and the boredom goes away.
Somewhat related: while I've always cared about others after I grew up it is much stronger now. How much of it that comes from having children an how much comes from becoming a new person because of deliberate decisions I don't know.
I keep wondering how many of the psychological problems arise from people having children much much later in their lives than used to be normal.
It's so cruel. Come on, it's way more complex than that... How about sterile people? Are they all mentally ill?
Some examples that seem obviously concerning to me are changes in child-rearing patterns (later and fewer), changes in diet (less fat and protein, more stuff that didn't exist in the evolutionary environment at all), changes in stress exposure (mental, physical, and immune [especially parasitic]).
This is also something I have been thinking about for a long time now. The human body, instinct and mind seems to be made to raise children. As a new parent, you have zero experience in handling a child. Yet after just a few minutes, your instinct kicks in. You somehow know how to hold the newborn, despite the fact you have never done this. You try everything to keep it warm and comfortable. You realize that your body is perfectly shaped to hold a baby with one arm, and that the baby instinctively contracts its legs for a perfect and secure fit. Despite the fact that crying babies sounded the same to you all your life, you can suddenly distinguish the crying of your own child from that of others from the beginning and from a large distance. If your baby cries, you instinctively know what the problem is. Without making a conscious decision regarding this, your absolute number one priority is suddenly to keep this child alive, whatever it takes. The thought that you would fight anything or anyone attacking your child, until the bitter end, suddenly seems completely natural. All of this can not be made clear to people without children, which is basically why parents like to talk to other parents. Raising a child certainly is one of the most extreme things a human being is capable of, and yet most parents manage it. To me, it would not at all be surprising that not using this potential may lead to serious psychological problems.
I find that the more I focus on my problems, the stickier ennui is. It is specifically being forced to solve other people's problems that slackens its grip and allows for escape.
Whereas your child's joys are often ... also your problems.
Taking a fundamentally trite example: my daughter wants a pencil so that she might draw. Fundamentally, she's not concerned about me solving the 'pencil problem' utterly, for all time, but rather wants one 'now'; that is, ideally within ~30s but definitely within ~5 minutes. There is no time to dwell on the merits of STAEDTLER vs Caran d'Ache, or whether I should be provisioning a set focused on soft or hard lead, or a lifetime supply of Ticonderogas. Instead, you find the first one that you already have around that has a reasonable chance of keeping its lead intact long enough to allow her to finish her doodle and move on to the next thing.
So yes, I agree with your premise, but I also argue that the problems you inherit by proxy are materially different from the ones I [at least] find cause ennui.
I still have week-long phases of ultra hyper focus and phases of absolute bat-shit boredom where I binge-watch or play everything half interesting.
It's a personality thing. I have a real hard time doing something evenly across a long time. Either I give it all I have until I power-out or I leave it aside and rot.
Kids don't help in this regard. The only thing which changed is that I have less time to work on personal projects. I tell myself, that I'm better at it because time got really valuable, but actually I know that I'm still the same lazy bugger I was like before.
Not that it's you're doing for just pointing it out. I actually admire how much a single HN comment could disgust me.
Though I will also say, one of the amazing feats of humans is our ability to become incredible people despite being born to parents that had no business having children.
Yes.
Dedicating time and money does not make something unselfish, so this can't really be used as justification to show that having a child is not selfish.
We can start with a lower bar -- having children is definitely not selfless, right? Most people have children to give their life purpose and meaning, or because they believe they will be good parents and want to see if they can raise a child that will find success in the world. So at the very least, I think we can agree that a parent gains something by virtue of having a child, and they have a child so that they can benefit in this way. Ergo, having a child is not selfless, we can at least agree on that, right?
Next we can move onto showing why it is actually quite selfish. Let's just look up the word "selfish" to find some footing:
> (of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure.
So if I can demonstrate that the parents lacks consideration for others when having a child, that should sufficiently demonstrate that the parents are acting selfishly, yes?
So who benefits (other than the parents) from the child being born? I can only think of one party you may suggest -- the child. But the child has not been born yet, so how can the parent be acting out of consideration for their unborn child? Can you act in the interest of something that does not exist?
This is where we get into the matter of opinion. Can an unborn child have desires?
If no, then the parent is definitely acting selfishly. The only one who desires the child be born is the parent, so this is by definition selfish.
If yes, then you may say that the child desires to be born, and the parent is acting out of consideration for this desire. But if you are in this camp, you must also admit there is a chance the child desires not to be born, yes? And if this is the case, then by bringing this child into the world without first consulting their desires, I would argue the parent is acting selfishly. They made an assumption about their child's desires, and acted without confirming them -- giving their child no say in the matter. This sounds quite selfish to me.
So I think this conclusively demonstrates that having a child is indeed selfish, would you contest this? The only reasonable way to contest this argument, in my opinion of course, is by taking the religious stance and somehow "speaking" to your unborn child (through god?) to first determine if they want to be born. This is impossible to reproduce though, so it's impossible to say if anyone has ever done this, and therefore I won't bother addressing it.
Of course, I'm not saying having children is "repulsive," but it's definitely selfish.
"Have a child"
lack of motivation
unable to enjoy things you previously liked
disinterest in the future
constant low energy
Are classic signs of clinical depression. Nobody gets diagnosed with clinical depression based on brain chemistry, they get diagnosed on symptoms. And these symptoms are basically the same ones.
https://www.psycom.net/depression-definition-dsm-5-diagnosti...
There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging the pointlessness of something. You don’t always have to be doing something and you don’t always have to be happy.
This is B.S. I don't believe in categorical statements like this. Life is not a constant. A person may be friendless, powerless, weak and even childless for two decades. But all of that can suddenly change. As for ugly, I've seen the ugliest people marry the most beautiful people. And some of these ugly people were total shy, introverts.
So if you are ugly like me, and if you're down in your life like I've been at times when my startup failed, be patient and continue on with life. It will get better. And for love of all that is holy, stay away from these sorts of nonsense absolutisms.
Irregardless of the truth each aspect of that statement, its commonly understood that beautiful people have easier access to opportunity than ugly people; we as humans are biased based on appearance.
Also therapy is more available than ever and talking to a real person is guaranteed healthier than reading WebMD. If you can't afford a therapist talk to your friends. It takes a bit of courage to admit your feelings but everyone has experienced these feelings to some degree and likely has great advice. Even finding out, for example, that it took one friend a few years to get over something is helpful since it means you don't have to beat yourself up about not getting over it today.
2 & 3 cancel 1 out, and you're never "bored" again.
Anecdotally I would think it's more prevalent in people with narcissistic personality traits during depression (speaking of friends here not acquaintances), maybe it even could be medication dependent . Off course it ought to be more common but maybe not expressed in other personality types, a depressed person with schizoid traits probably wouldn't even complain in a first place, so who knows.
I do think there is a good article about ennui that could have been written. And, in particular, how to distinguish it from depression. Both feature anhedonia (life is not pleasurable), monotony, dissatisfaction, and a vague sadness. To me, the key difference is drive.
With depression, it is as if your own motor is turned off. Everything you do brings you no pleasure, you can't imagine them bringing you pleasure, and you don't even have the energy to try. Both the world is empty and you are too.
With ennui, the inner component is different. The world feels boring and unsatisfying, but the internal drive to fix that problem is still present, just unguided. You know you aren't happy and want to do something about it, you just don't know what.
Ennui is restless where depression is inert.
This makes it a relatively easier problem to solve because it's essentially external. The feeling is caused by your actions and not a fundamental chemical imbalance. Addressing it requires understanding your own values and motivations. What gives your life a sense of meaning? Look back on days that you felt were particularly gratifying—the ones you want to reflect on on your deathbed. What made them that way? What did they have in common?
Often, ennui comes from trying to replicate the same actions that brought us joy in the past without realizing that the context has changed. So there is a generalization step. It's not that doing X was meaningful. It's that doing X because it meant Y was.
For example, I used to be a game developer. After about six years, I was pretty burned out. It wasn't as fun anymore. I kept doing it but felt more and more ennui. Why did the same activity that used to make me feel gratified no longer do so?
It's because the underlying context—my own internal state—changed. A big part of the gratification came from:
* Learning a new domain and seeing my skill in it improve.
* Proving to myself that I could accomplish shipping a real AAA game.
After several years, my knowledge had plateaued, and I had already proven to myself several times over that I could do it. Those aspects were gone. What I took away from it is that internal growth—learning new skills—is important for me to feel that something is meaningful. Once I "max out" in a domain, it is no longer gratifying for me.
This may not be true for others where their satisfaction comes more from providing value to others, or demonstrating mastery. I value those too, but in the absence of learning, they aren't enough.
I ditched Netflix and listen to podcasts for example. I tend to not want to sit and do nothing while listening so I clean more or end up going for a walk.
[1] https://enuu.ch/
"This makes you realize that you're taking color(vision) for granted. There are people who not only are colorblind but are completely blind-- blind from birth. And I'm just sitting here, like, "Oh, I'm so bored." And I'm surrounded by colors!" -Michael from VSauce
Source: YouTubers React to Colorblind Man Sees Purple for the First Time https://youtu.be/FANiL2dPCCg?t=530
Ennui is bullshit. You don't get the privilege/right to say, "I'm bored." Ever.