How embracing 'moments of pause' can help us when we're bored

Australia Broadcast Center

a day ago

Are you OK with boredom? You know those moments when time grinds to a halt, and you're fighting off restlessness?
Before you reach for your phone to scroll or check an email, it's worth considering the benefits of sitting with it.
What we do with this feeling is important, according to Michelle Kennedy, a mental health researcher on Kabi Kabi lands, on the Sunshine Coast.
"Society has almost conditioned us that it's indulgent to be bored," she says.
"[But] eliminating the state of boredom deprives us of a simple and natural way to reset our nervous system."
So how can we embrace boredom, and what are some of the other benefits of doing so?
Officially, boredom is defined as difficulty maintaining attention or interest in a current activity.
Dr Kennedy says the fast-paced world we live in means some of us may not be allowing ourselves to fully experience moments of boredom.
"It's so overstimulated, we are taking in so much information," she says.
"Say we finish a task earlier than we anticipate, rather than just sitting there allowing us just to be in that moment, often we go 'Ok what else can I do to fill this space?'
"[Or] you're watching a movie and all of a sudden it hits a low spot [and] you're going 'OK, this isn't really capturing my attention', so then your attention is turned to other things."
Mandie Shean says our obsession with technology is exacerbating the situation.
The adjunct lecturer in education at Edith Cowan University believes some of us are not good at handling feelings "of being uncomfortable".
Dr Kennedy says reframing these moments of boredom as "pauses" could help us incorporate them into our day in a positive way.
"Embracing that moment, and … just making time for that pause," she says.
"Let's all take the dog for a walk or just sit out the back and have a chat.
She says "starting small" will help us understand the benefits and then to gradually build more of that space into our day.
Dr Kennedy says as adults we are often juggling work and family life.
So if we have time between activities, we may be on our screens constantly organising, updating, or scrolling to simply stay occupied.
"What we're doing is we're overloading our neural pathways," Dr Kennedy says.
"When that nervous system is activated for too long … our system becomes overwhelmed.
"So, it keeps us in this heightened state of arousal, which, long term can develop those early symptoms of anxiety."
Dragan Rangelov, a psychology and cognitive neuroscience lecturer from Swinburne University of Technology says allowing ourselves to be bored (and not on screens) may reduce the activation of our sympathetic nervous system and "produce overall greater wellbeing".
"It kind of flushes out this sort of sensory overload and possible negative consequences of it," Dr Rangelov says.
Our experts say there are a few ways we can let ourselves experience boredom.
Dr Rangelov says one method is mindfulness training or simply "sitting there and soaking the boredom in".
"Mindfulness is essentially just focusing on yourself," he says.
"There's mindfulness about your physical sort of sensations, how your breath is looking, what's your heartbeat?
"There's also mindfulness about your psychological processes, whether you are anxious, whether you're agitated."
This practice can help with emotional regulation and can lead to insights about your emotional responses to external events.
Dr Shean says another way of embracing pauses or boredom is to engage in an activity.
"It takes 15 minutes to get engaged in any task," Dr Shean says.
"So, you can set a timer, the Pomodoro timer is a really good thing when you're bored.
"It breaks up an activity into 25-minute intervals and then you get a break and it makes you engage even when you feel bored."
She says it's also important to remember that just because a task seems boring doesn't mean it's not beneficial.
"Doing my PhD was really boring in parts, learning my tables was boring, and cleaning the house was boring," she says.
"And maybe for you, learning French or whatever it might be, it can be boring.
"But some of those things are amazing and they're really good choices and you need to sort of hold space for those uncomfortable feelings in the middle of it."