Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday November 03 2017, @04:54AM   Printer-friendly
from the brought-to-you-by-Elon-Musk's-Boring-Company dept.

Is boredom necessary to our survival?

Every emotion has a purpose—an evolutionary benefit," says Sandi Mann, a psychologist and the author of The Upside of Downtime: Why Boredom Is Good. "I wanted to know why we have this emotion of boredom, which seems like such a negative, pointless emotion."

That's how Mann got started in her specialty: boredom. While researching emotions in the workplace in the 1990s, she discovered the second most commonly suppressed emotion after anger was—you guessed it—boredom. "It gets such bad press," she said. "Almost everything seems to be blamed on boredom."

As Mann dived into the topic of boredom, she found that it was actually "very interesting." It's certainly not pointless. Wijnand van Tilburg from the University of Southampton explained the important evolutionary function of that uneasy, awful feeling this way: "Boredom makes people keen to engage in activities that they find more meaningful than those at hand."

"Imagine a world where we didn't get bored," Mann said. "We'd be perpetually excited by everything—raindrops falling, the cornflakes at breakfast time." Once past boredom's evolutionary purpose, Mann became curious about whether there might be benefits beyond its contribution to survival. "Instinctively," she said, "I felt that we all need a little boredom in our lives."

Precede creative tasks with the most intensely boring activities you can devise if you want to have the best ideas.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday November 03 2017, @03:51PM (1 child)

    by Sulla (5173) on Friday November 03 2017, @03:51PM (#591708) Journal

    Its the alt-animal conspiracy. TMB will do anything it takes to protect animal rights even if it means the death of thousands of humans. Just the other day he was going out of his way to eat SanFran tier vegan free/fair trade beans with peppers. When offered he REFUSED to add bacon because it "hurts the animals" and "supports the continued human supremacy movement". It has really gone far enough, for us pet haters there no place to express ourselves online without being attacked. We can't even tell someone that having a cat in the house when pregnant is unhealthy due to proven parasites. If we aren't careful these pet lovers are going to rule this country and force everyone into servitude to the cat master-race. Do you really want to have your eyes eaten when you sleep? Absurd. On top of it all TMB is LITERALLY ONE THIRD BUZZARD! Can you believe that? A Bird! The Alt-ANIMAL conspiracy must end this site is getting overrun

    --
    Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @05:18PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @05:18PM (#591749)

    A for effort I guess.