In a video from the Harvard Business School, Harvard professor Arthur C. Brooks says, “You need to be bored. You will have less meaning and you will be more depressed if you are never bored. It couldn’t be clearer.”
This got my attention immediately because it is something I covered in my book, This Isn’t Working! Evolving the Way We Work to Decrease Stress, Anxiety, and Depression. I love it when someone more credentialed and more famous backs up my assertions!
We leave no blank space in our days to be bored. If you’re honest about it, you might admit that you do everything you can to fill up empty spaces in your day. Most people can’t stand in a line or wait for someone without pulling out their phone.
Brooks says:
You go to uncomfortable existential questions when you’re bored. That turns out to be incredibly important, incredibly good. One of the reasons we have such an explosion of depression and anxiety in our society today is because people actually don’t know the meaning of their lives, much less so in previous generations. Tons of data show this, and furthermore, we’re not even looking. Why not? I’ll tell you why not. We figured out a way to eliminate boredom.
Being bored feels uncomfortable. It can feel itchy. Thoughts or situations we have tried to set aside may float up.
Questions we don’t immediately know the answer to might come up as well. Boredom can be a gateway to creative problem-solving.
Being bored can feel like a waste of time, but it is not. In fact, you might want to deliberately create space in your day to be bored.
From the YouTube description:
Boredom isn’t a bug—it’s a feature. Harvard professor Arthur C. Brooks explains why boredom unlocks creativity, activates a powerful brain network, and might even protect you from depression. Learn how the mind wanders—and why that’s a very good thing.
Photo by Jonas Leupe on Unsplash
