Lots of people will do a lot to avoid feeling negative emotions. But researchers are figuring out how these unpleasant feelings actually have benefits.
Let your children embrace boredom, don’t try too hard to create the perfect lockdown holiday and warn your employer your attention might be even more divided than usual over the next few weeks.
People hate boredom. Some would rather get a painful shock than sit in a room with nothing to do for 15 minutes. But boredom spurs us on to create and can help focus our attention.
Self-isolation can be boring and lonely.
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Online pornography is one business that’s booming during the coronavirus pandemic. A psychology researcher explains its pull and whether there are likely to be longer-term effects of this surge in use.
We live in the time of the ‘quantified self’. This means we’re constantly under pressure to use technology to ‘optimise’ ourselves, and may be why many people view gaming as a ‘waste of time’.
Members of Shackleton’s Nimrod Expedition (1907–1909) gather round a gramophone player in Antarctica.
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The routine of life has been disrupted for most people as they stay at home to slow down the further spread of the coronavirus. A scholar who studies boredom offers some helpful tips.
The time we invest in our digital lives is time we don’t get back. But, it’s not impossible to knock your digital-dependance - and the holidays are the best time to start.
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As the head of a media and communications program, my life’s digital-analogue balance was off. Four weeks at sea with no devices refocussed my views – even on things that had been there all along.
Boredom has historically been an emotion both viewed as an enemy and embraced for its possibilities.
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Scholars link the emergence of the term boredom to European industrial modernity, and the standardization of time, repetitive labour and development of leisure time associated with it.
Modern life seems to encourage acceleration for the sake of acceleration – to what end?
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