New research in the UK is providing confirmation of my belief that boredom is not always a destructive thing but often a path to creativity. Other people have had the same impression. After all, the site with some of the most creative links on the web calls itself Bored Panda.
Recently, my husband sent along a relevant article by the BBC’s David Robson, who caught my interest at once with his claim that boredom was first mentioned in Bleak House, by Charles Dickens. (I’ve read that novel enough times to know that Robson spelled Lady Dedlock’s name wrong, though.)
For his report, Robson interviewed Sandi Mann, coauthor with Rebekah Cadman of a University of Central Lancashire study on boredom.
He begins, “I’ve met lots of people with a talent to bore in my time, but Sandi Mann is one of the few to have honed it as a craft. Eager volunteers visiting her lab may be asked to carry out less-than-thrilling chores like copying out lengthy lists of telephone numbers. They mostly tolerate the task politely, she says, but their shuffling bottoms and regular yawns prove they are hardly relishing the experience. …
“Mann has found that their ennui boosted their performance on standard tests of creativity – such as finding innovative uses for everyday objects. She suspects the tedium encouraged their minds to wander, which leads to more associative and creative ways of thinking. ‘If we don’t find stimulation externally, we look internally – going to different places in our minds,’ she says. ‘It allows us to make leaps of imagination. We can get out of the box and think in different ways.’ Without the capacity for boredom, then, we humans may have never achieved our artistic and technological heights. …
“Given this benefit, Mann thinks we should try not to fear boredom when it hits us. ‘We should embrace it,’ she says – a philosophy that she has now taken into her own life. ‘Instead of saying I’m bored when I’m stuck in traffic, I’ll put music on and allow my mind to wander – knowing that it’s good for me. And I let my kids be bored too – because it’s good for their creativity.’ ”
My own approach to being stuck at the end of a long line is to recite the poems I know. I also carry in my bag a few other poems in case I run out.
More here, at the BBC, which also covers the darker side of boredom.
Photo: Socialphy
Yawning.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 