11 ms·

Boredom is not a problem to be solved, it's the privilege of a free mind

377 points by vinnyglennon 11y ago

nickysielicki 11y ago
Wow, this is so artistic and spiritual! Being bored isn't a bad thing, being bored is a good thing! I can't believe I never thought of it that way! I'm so enlightened now. Everyone, come with me as I come to peace with my inner-self! I'm imagining that scene from Half Baked with Jon Stewart. "You ever try being bored, and then just thinking about it?"
djabatt 11y ago
I am commenting before I read the article because the headline packs in so much thoughtfulness and humanity into it.
pjc50 11y ago
A similar argument is advanced in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".
- justaman 11y ago
  It has been a few years since I read this book. Could you elaborate/refresh my memory?
  - pjc50 11y ago
    It's been 20 years since I read it, too, so I can't be any less vague :)
- drethemadrapper 11y ago
  Boredom is when your person wants to speak to you but the you is not conscious to notice it. In others, you just can't hear yourself for you don't know what it is speaking to you. In the same way, you don't know what to do next as a machine that works on motivation. That's when you should reach out to Alan Watts, George Carlin,e.t.c. if they could help you.
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awjr 11y ago
I had planned to spend August working in a side-project, however the council I was going to do it with, pulled out. I spent it doing nothing. Just chilling, pottering around, avoiding any development orientated activities. It was surprisingly nice.
asgard1024 11y ago
It kind of reminds me of my philosophy regarding programming - that it can never be boring. If it's boring, then something is done wrong. You can always automate the boring parts, and thinking about automation is less boring.
- steego 11y ago
  I love playing with and working on projects that transform code into different code and I love that you're drawn to meta-programming, but I have a few issues with a few of the ideas: > If it's boring, then something is done wrong. I have a problem with the tone of this statement, because I've seen it taken to an extreme and it can be a dangerous idea. A better way of looking at it is: If something is boring, take it as a sign there might be an opportunity to improve the process, but you have to be acutely aware the problems that automation can introduce. There's a phenomenon I like to call premature automation. When you work on a problem the boring way long enough, your brain learns the patterns. Premature automation happens when you skip learning about or experiencing the process and you shoot straight to automation. Often what happens is the automation fails to anticipate important edge cases. > You can always automate the boring parts, and thinking about automation is less boring. Thinking about automation is less boring because it's not trivial. Automation can be trivial if you're doing simple things like code generation, but often these simple things come at a cost. For example, code generation typically becomes more complex as the need for customizations and exceptions popup. Libraries can automate things at runtime, but writing good libraries based on timeless/minimally leaky ideas takes time. Leaky libraries built on a poor foundation tends to introduce bugs or complexity. There is value in boring, predictable code with minimal dependencies. It's easier to audit and review with static analysis tools, it's harder to introduce cascading bugs and it. TLDR: I'm all for automation, but saying "If it's boring, something is done wrong" and "you can always automate the boring parts" sounds like a cocktail of developer shaming for not doing something that's "simple".
  - asgard1024 11y ago
    I think I agree that "boring" shouldn't be used as an excuse to avoid work required to understand the problem. Only when you understand you can determine how it can be automated. I don't think that I agree with the idea that predictable code has to be boring. And vice versa - needless complexity may be boring too. Anyway, I didn't mean it in derogatory way, just like the original article. What I am saying is that there is probably some smart idea, how to automate things, and you just need to look for it. Where automate really means make computer do it. In other professions, it's more complicated. Say building a house may be considered boring, once it is designed, but it's hard to automate - some humans still have to do the actual bricklaying and plumbing and so on. Programming is unique profession in this respect (at least until we have very flexible robots).
manaskarekar 11y ago
Scott Adams on Boredom Creativity: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102881562226/creativity http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102881562226/creativity Possibly paywalled WSJ article titled 'The Heady Thrill of Having Nothing to Do': http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903454504576486412642177904 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240531119034545045764864... Googling for the article should help.
- willhinsa 11y ago
  Here's a link to the non-paywalled article: http://is.gd/5aMvOW http://is.gd/5aMvOW
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DanielBMarkham 11y ago
Related, an excellent commencement speech: http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in...
debacle 11y ago
The problem with idle boredom is one of curiousity, but active boredom in your work can lead to mistakes, lack of productivity, and potentially dangerous situations.
carlosrg 11y ago
I enjoy boredom every often in a while. Helps me put my thoughts in order and think more clearly, if I'm stressed it forces me to tackle and face whatever problem I'm having, and I'd also say it makes me more creative.
- jazzyk 11y ago
  Boredom != Idleness Boredom != Contemplation, Introspection, Reflection
hudell 11y ago
As someone who was bored 90% of the time as a kid and who's still bored quite often, I really believe that it would be better not to be.
- Nav_Panel 11y ago
  I had a similar experience (which I tried to "solve" in high school via World of Warcraft), and honestly I see this more in my case as a manifestation of depression, not pure boredom. Often the issue was that nothing SEEMED interesting/worth doing, and once I got started I'd be ok, but the initial push to get started was too much effort, or I'd stop too soon and wouldn't be able to get fully engaged with the activity. I was just thinking about it last night: I went for a run, which is a little unusual for me, and I was similarly "time free" as most nights but a lot less bored. I felt my ideas/internal state was more interesting/entertaining, perhaps due to changes in my neurotransmitters caused by exercise.
prophet_ 11y ago
One thing that interrupts my moments of boredom is the thought of falling behind while the world makes progress. That is precisely the same feeling you get when you move to a quieter town: "nothing goes on here while 'everything is going on' somewhere else". This feeling of 'nothing doing' pushes me to do stuff, be it a hobby, reading, etc. I think the idea is pretty much associated to the 'time is money' or the 'time is flying, we're getting older, take advantage of your time' sort of thoughts. A nice point made in the article is the fact that many people just can't stand live in peace with their own thoughts. Indeed.
- mbrock 11y ago
  The problem with that seems to be that if you're always trying to catch up with some overarching scheme of advancement and progress, you won't have a moment of peace until you retire... An old Chinese hobo named Han-shan used to write strange poems on the cliffs and trees of the mountain where he lived. They're called the cold mountain poems. One of them goes like this: Han-shan has his critics too: ‘Your poems, there’s nothing in them!’ I think of men of ancient times, Poor, humble, but not ashamed. Let him laugh at me and say: ‘It’s all foolishness, your work!’ Let him go on as he is, All his life lost making money.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    > The problem with that seems to be that if you're always trying to catch up with some overarching scheme of advancement and progress, you won't have a moment of peace until you retire... Oh that's not true at all. Inner peace relies not on what you do, but on how you do it. It's easier to clear your head, say, when you're mowing the grass as opposed to creating a new marketing strategy, but that doesn't mean you can't.
Htsthbjig 11y ago
For me boredom is the manifestation of a problem. I am introvert and could think on my own for days, but boredom never happens. Animals in the wild rarely get bored. I worked as an assistant in a zoo while teenager and you could see every single animal getting bored there. And today it is much better than in the past, because we are stating to understand them and we make them work for getting their food and so on. After I sold my first company I went to an African Safari, and it was incredible seeing the same animals I had seen in captivity, because they looked different in the Wild. In particular, they were the same, but moved and behaved completely different. Their spirit is different. In my opinion, the same happens to humans, only that we could create our own jail ourselves for paying the rent,raising our kids, advancing our career or having a successful business.
- flogic 11y ago
  This. I don't regret the time I spend just thinking. I do however regret the time lost to boredom. They're not the same thing. Boredom to me is a state of wanting to do something but either not being able to or not knowing what that something is.
  - cryoshon 11y ago
    Exactly, it's an uncomfortable mental state or cognitive rut that is pretty tough to just ditch by doing things that normally keep you entertained.
    - borkabrak 11y ago
      This reminds me of something I'm still working to figure out -- the 'negative capability' referenced by Keats. In one sense, it's the ability to accept an answer of 'unknown'. Maybe it's the ability to choose not to drive towards closure. Maybe it's just being comfortable watching yourself get bored.
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- madaxe_again 11y ago
vineetraja 11y ago
One may get bored while doing something but still have to do it (like the regular job at hand) One can not simply think about anything else, or switch to introspection because one need to concentrate (even boring work needs attention). Boredom thus could be a symptom, an alarm (get a better job !!!)
allencoin 11y ago
I think what this author is getting at is similar to the concept of flow. It's interesting, the article is based on "boredom" but I'm not sure that's the right word. Boredom is a state of "I want to do something but there's nothing to do," and I think what the author is really arguing for is finding time for quiet contemplation, letting your mind wander, personal reflection or, if you will, meditation. A lot of those books on creativity espouse the benefit of quiet time without distracting yourself with Facebook (or Hacker News). So it's a similar idea here. Allow yourself free self-reflective time in order to be happier and more creative.
yfj211 11y ago
Somewhat related article I read awhile back on solitude and leadership: https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/#.VgvWihNVhBc https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/#.Vgv...
jhbadger 11y ago
From the byline. "Gayatri Devi is associate professor of English at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania". Okaaay.
- goldenkey 11y ago
  I would expect a 'User from Hacker News on the Internet' to care less about silly titles and more about substance and merits of words.
  - jhbadger 11y ago
    I only looked at her background because was I so underwhelmed by the lack of substance. Is boredom harmful or good? It's an interesting question yes, but one which can be addressed by actual scientific studies.
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
Each day at work I put in headphones, code for a bit, read HN for a bit, then back to code. I don't know if I could describe it as boredom, maybe confused context switching. It brings to mind how the protagonist of Neuromancer gets hooked on amphetamines after being surgically banned from the Internet. We get so used to everything happening quickly and efficiently that our brains don't have time to rest. If you're not doing something, then what's wrong with you, the modern world seems to say. We were led to believe technology would eventually alleviate us of our ills. Instead I feel...tired.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  I think that one of the helpful side effects of being on the go constantly is avoidance of unanswerable philosophical or existential questions. If you're busy, you're not going to get kneecapped by these depressions-in-disguise. Having time to wallow can be detrimental, because it can build a habit out of wallowing. Capitalism/materalism does a very good job of disguising that even at its best it doesn't necessarily provide a life that everyone would agree is worth living. Of course, you could argue that existential and philosophical questions are critical to a studied life that is worth living, but meh.
  - mikkergp 11y ago
    I go back to the person above who mentioned mindfulness. That's what I really focus on in the attempt to stave off "boredom". Because ultimately I find that the existential and philosophical questions which have their place at times are ultimately just as much as a distraction as a cell phone. Spending too much time on those questions is just an avoidance of the present moment, the future and ultimately death. Like the delusion that if your were really smart, you could you think your way out of the human condition.
  - borkabrak 11y ago
    This is a bit philosophical, but I'd say the thing you're disdaining here is the ability to handle difficult concepts. It's tough to acquire, because it requires practice failing at it for a while until we begin to succeed at standing in the path of these ideas without getting "kneecapped" by them. There does come a point, though, where they cease being so threatening. When you're practiced at handling ideas that threaten depression, they're no longer so effective when an attempt is made to use them against you. Or maybe I just need coffee.
bryanrasmussen 11y ago
so if it is the last privilege of a free mind this means what - that the other privilegs have been taken from the free mind, boredom is the last privilege that remains to a free mind. hmm. I think word choice was not adequately considered here.
dhimes 11y ago
I cannot remember the last time I was bored. I had an elementary school teacher that told me that "boredom was the sign of a weak mind." I believed her and took it to heart.
- noja 11y ago
  Someone told you being bored was bad, so you were never bored?! How does that work?
  - makeitsuckless 11y ago
    Well, if you have a weak mind and someone with authority has a strong opinion...
    - dhimes 11y ago
      Lol
  - dhimes 11y ago
    Boredom is a sign of mental laziness. You can find something interesting about damn near anything- so make yourself search for it.
jasim 11y ago
The author confuses a state of calm contentment with boredom. And despite the new-age rhetoric, she admits to trying to solve it - she asks us to think instead of doing things, in the hopes that thinking would help us stumble into profundity. But thought can be worse than action - thinking quickly spirals into brooding. Pardon me for yet another misrepresentation of depression, but I confuse it with boredom, albeit in an existential sense. Zazen encourages us to meditate on our breath and to observe our thoughts so that they hopefully melt away. It asks us to think less, not more; to shut down our internal monologue which is the biggest agent of human misery. The trope of the mad genius is true - there are three great books that touches on this subject: Hesse's Steppenwolf, Colin Wilson's The Outsider, and the amazing Logicomix. Also a recent research surfaced on HN on neuroticism and the dangers of self-generated thoughts - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661315001540 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661315.... There is however a kind of thought that _is_ action. The state of flow when deep in deliberate thought, trying to solve hard problems (hard is relative to the person thinking it) is amazing. That kind of thought is very different from thoughts about the self, or doing drugs looking for profound realizations - there unfortunately isn't anything deeper about life that we'll be able to figure out by random introspection. Science is our best bet for that; not LSD, not meditation, not boredom.
- maroonblazer 11y ago
  >Zazen encourages us to meditate on our breath and to observe our thoughts so that they hopefully melt away. It asks us to think less, not more; to shut down our internal monologue which is the biggest agent of human misery. I know this wasn't the thrust of your comment but having spent a lot of time studying meditation it's important to note that meditation isn't about "thinking less". Rather it's about developing the ability to see thoughts for what they are (they're just thoughts) and being able to respond (as opposed to react) to them. I can no more turn off my internal monologue than I can control when my blood cells regenerate or my skin cells slough off.
  - danielbln 11y ago
    I would make the point that mere observation of a thought can "disarm" it, preventing it from spiralling into a train of thought, as it were. Therefore I think it's fair to say that someone who rests in awareness is effectively thinking "less", (in contrast to the common misconception that the goal of meditation is to stop thinking, or to clear the mind altogether).
ThomPete 11y ago
I think she is using the term boredom in a somewhat misguided way. In fact it seems like he is really talking about something else — laziness. Boredom is to literally not know what to do because nothing excites you. What she is talking about is that we have become so lazy that instead of taking up a hobby we just end up using cellphones to kill time. Which i would agree with but it's a quite different point.
- ebt 11y ago
  I was looking for a definition of "boredom" that I agree with and "literally not know[ing] what to do because nothing excites you" is the one I most agree with and is the most succinct. I could replace "excites" with "interests", "relaxes" or some other state changing term.
Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
This feels a bit short-sighted to me. Maybe it's just use of terms at the end of the day. Telling a young person to "lean into boredom" is a recipe for disaster. And "thinking" as the antidote to boredom doesn't do much either. There's a quote that always stuck with me I ran into a while back that goes something like: "All day long we tell our children to 'Pay attention!' but we never actually teach them how." The premise of this article, IMO, would be much more valuable if it dovetailed into meditation practices. It's always been my take that one of the main reasons many of us seek out typically unproductive distractions and noise (phones, TV, gossip, whatever) is to avoid quiet, personal, thinking. In jail, which is presumably the worst environment one could find themselves in, solitary confinement is viewed as a significant punishment for bad behavior. Being alone with your thoughts is worse than being around criminals all day or locked in a cell! I think "lean into your boredom/thoughts" is an empty provocation without training advice (again, meditation is the route I'd take this). “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
- borkabrak 11y ago
  I don't disagree with your thesis here. I'd like to observe that a course of training such as you describe seems outside the scope of the article. Perhaps it does some small good, anyway, by suggesting that acquiring such training oneself, from whatever source, is a good thing to do.
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  >>solitary confinement is viewed as a significant punishment for bad behavior. Being alone with your thoughts is worse than being around criminals all day or locked in a cell! Solitary confinement for a few days isn't a problem. What people have an issue with, and is unfortunately a very common practice, is when a prisoner is placed into solitary confinement for weeks at a time, or indefinitely. That is a form of torture.
lemevi 11y ago
This post is silly, just consider its premise reductio ad absurdum. I suppose prisoners in solitary confinement are the most privileged among us. Boredom creates real pain that over long enough time leads to psychological problems. The mind doesn't want to be idle. Kids could take more time to appreciate life away from their smartphones but to make an argument against boredom itself is absurd. Boredom is an incredibly unpleasant experience and there is nothing with wrong with wanting to avoid it.
emanuelev 11y ago
Great article although I think maybe the title could be a bit misleading. The way I see it, boredom is not a state in which you want to be, but rather the initial condition that triggers the need of doing things. One word that I think is related to boredom is passivity, hence I wouldn't associate thinking and introspection to a state of boredom as they require quite an active engagement.
zeidrich 11y ago
Boredom isn't the act of having nothing to do. That's idleness. Boredom is a problem of a lack of satisfaction. There's various reasons for that but I believe having too much to do, and too much stress is what leads to boredom. People have an amount of attention they can pay to any topic before they need to rest. You can only listen to a song for so long before it stops being pleasant and starts being annoying. You can only hear the same story so many times before it gets boring. When you are bored, sometimes idleness can even be a fine replacement. If you're bored, and you decide to go and sit in a chair in the sun with a nice cold drink, that's a nice response. What boredom is, is when you're in class or at work, and you need to keep doing some routine behavior, but you need a break, you need a change, but you can't. Boredom is the feeling that you have to fight in order to keep doing something that your whole reward system of your brain has told you you've had enough of. Boredom isn't something good. It's something damaging. It's a condition where your mind is tired of a particular action, but you don't have the agency to make a change in your situation to suit that.
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  I don't know that it's good or bad, I think it's simply a signal, like hunger or tiredness that allows us to make an informed choice about what we can do to meet the needs of our body and mind.
  - phesse14 11y ago
    I completely agree with this. Boredom is an indicator. Just that. If the light turns on it indicates you have to do something about it. the question is...is it good or bad when it turns on? That depends on everyone I mean, there's not a standard for that
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- wnm 11y ago
  fantastic comment! very well written. Can you share your thoughts on what to do when you're bored? Especially can you elaborate on the "your whole reward system of your brain has told you you've had enough of" part of your comment?
baudelaire 11y ago
...Dans la ménagerie infâme de nos vices, II en est un plus laid, plus méchant, plus immonde! Quoiqu'il ne pousse ni grands gestes ni grands cris, Il ferait volontiers de la terre un débris Et dans un bâillement avalerait le monde; C'est l'Ennui! L'oeil chargé d'un pleur involontaire, II rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka. Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat, — Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!
MarcusP 11y ago
After reading this article I feel more confused about the point it's making than anything else. Of course there are plenty of things written about how to avoid boredom, it's a symptom of not having anything to do. The article does attempt to touch on how low-cpu tasks are not often mentally enriching tasks, but that point is more about how to get more out of the time that you aren't bored, not what the title suggests. Boredom hits hard for me, I find it physically uncomfortable, I get an ache in my stomach that grows and grows. For me, boredom is certainly a problem to be solved, by doing things that are stimulating, not by dwelling on it.
ctdonath 11y ago
It's been a long time for me since experiencing boredom per se. There is so very much to do, to think about, to create, to investigate. Boredom is about choosing (or not) to engage thinking/curiosity/activity. So yes, as the author says, the solution to boredom (when perceived as a problem to solve) is to THINK. The problem is too many people have learned to not care, to not be interested, in their circumstances. At this point, should I be actually bored (which would probably require a willful act of situational deprivation imposed on me by others), and which the author addresses, the very state of being bored would & should become a point of intense fascination.
JohnBooty 11y ago
I fantasize about having enough time to be "bored." I don't mean that as a humblebrag. Just the opposite, exactly. If I was better at life then I'd actually have the time to be "bored." I put "bored" in quotes because boredom is a very momentary state for me. If I'm "bored" then I can choose to do something I actually want to do: read a book, write something, do something spontaneous, etc.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  I'm worried that most of us use sensory-stimulation to avoid boredom, instead of those worthy activities you mention. Like firing up Angry Birds (or whatever is popular now). Or turning on Netflix. Or texting somebody, anybody, to get them to text you back.
notahacker 11y ago
HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM ~Terry Pratchett Of course it's not just the privilege of a free mind, but also the privilege of relative freedom from stress, free time, and to an extent the education that leads you to aspire to more stimulation. A cure for boredom should probably sit atop Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
sk8ingdom 11y ago
For anyone interested in the history of the concept and how it's manifested in theology, philosophy, and pop-culture, I highly recommend A Philosophy of Boredom by Lars Svendsen [1]. Although the translation isn't GREAT, the content is an excellent overview. [1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009KP5CAE/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009KP5CAE/
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black_knight 11y ago
As other people have pointed out, there is a difference between "boredom" and "idleness". As for idleness, Russel puts it well[0]. [0] http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
xanderjanz 11y ago
To quote the Minutemen, Being bored is power! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxjEi4tgvU0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxjEi4tgvU0
Datsundere 11y ago
For me repetition is boredom.
copsarebastards 11y ago
This article is basically just a different definition of the word "boredom" than is being used by most people. It's trying to communicate something insightful (that we should be okay with being alone and undistracted with our own thoughts). But I don't think that's what most people mean when they say "boredom", and there's plenty of deeper discussion on this topic in literature about mindfulness. Louis C.K. also talks about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c
zem 11y ago
and moreover my mother told me as a boy (repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored means you have no Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored. http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/Berryman.14.html http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/Berryman.14.html
_nullandnull_ 11y ago
"Boredom: the desire for desires" - Leo Tolstoy
ciconia 11y ago
“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.” - John Cage

377 points by vinnyglennon 11y ago

Wow, this is so artistic and spiritual! Being bored isn't a bad thing, being bored is a good thing! I can't believe I never thought of it that way! I'm so enlightened now. Everyone, come with me as I come to peace with my inner-self! I'm imagining that scene from Half Baked with Jon Stewart. "You ever try being bored, and then just thinking about it?"

djabatt 11y ago

I am commenting before I read the article because the headline packs in so much thoughtfulness and humanity into it.

pjc50 11y ago

A similar argument is advanced in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

justaman 11y ago
It has been a few years since I read this book. Could you elaborate/refresh my memory?
- pjc50 11y ago
  It's been 20 years since I read it, too, so I can't be any less vague :)
drethemadrapper 11y ago
Boredom is when your person wants to speak to you but the you is not conscious to notice it. In others, you just can't hear yourself for you don't know what it is speaking to you. In the same way, you don't know what to do next as a machine that works on motivation. That's when you should reach out to Alan Watts, George Carlin,e.t.c. if they could help you.

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awjr 11y ago

I had planned to spend August working in a side-project, however the council I was going to do it with, pulled out. I spent it doing nothing. Just chilling, pottering around, avoiding any development orientated activities. It was surprisingly nice.

asgard1024 11y ago

It kind of reminds me of my philosophy regarding programming - that it can never be boring. If it's boring, then something is done wrong. You can always automate the boring parts, and thinking about automation is less boring.

steego 11y ago
I love playing with and working on projects that transform code into different code and I love that you're drawn to meta-programming, but I have a few issues with a few of the ideas: > If it's boring, then something is done wrong. I have a problem with the tone of this statement, because I've seen it taken to an extreme and it can be a dangerous idea. A better way of looking at it is: If something is boring, take it as a sign there might be an opportunity to improve the process, but you have to be acutely aware the problems that automation can introduce. There's a phenomenon I like to call premature automation. When you work on a problem the boring way long enough, your brain learns the patterns. Premature automation happens when you skip learning about or experiencing the process and you shoot straight to automation. Often what happens is the automation fails to anticipate important edge cases. > You can always automate the boring parts, and thinking about automation is less boring. Thinking about automation is less boring because it's not trivial. Automation can be trivial if you're doing simple things like code generation, but often these simple things come at a cost. For example, code generation typically becomes more complex as the need for customizations and exceptions popup. Libraries can automate things at runtime, but writing good libraries based on timeless/minimally leaky ideas takes time. Leaky libraries built on a poor foundation tends to introduce bugs or complexity. There is value in boring, predictable code with minimal dependencies. It's easier to audit and review with static analysis tools, it's harder to introduce cascading bugs and it. TLDR: I'm all for automation, but saying "If it's boring, something is done wrong" and "you can always automate the boring parts" sounds like a cocktail of developer shaming for not doing something that's "simple".
- asgard1024 11y ago
  I think I agree that "boring" shouldn't be used as an excuse to avoid work required to understand the problem. Only when you understand you can determine how it can be automated. I don't think that I agree with the idea that predictable code has to be boring. And vice versa - needless complexity may be boring too. Anyway, I didn't mean it in derogatory way, just like the original article. What I am saying is that there is probably some smart idea, how to automate things, and you just need to look for it. Where automate really means make computer do it. In other professions, it's more complicated. Say building a house may be considered boring, once it is designed, but it's hard to automate - some humans still have to do the actual bricklaying and plumbing and so on. Programming is unique profession in this respect (at least until we have very flexible robots).

manaskarekar 11y ago

Scott Adams on Boredom Creativity: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102881562226/creativity http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102881562226/creativity Possibly paywalled WSJ article titled 'The Heady Thrill of Having Nothing to Do': http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903454504576486412642177904 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240531119034545045764864... Googling for the article should help.

willhinsa 11y ago
Here's a link to the non-paywalled article: http://is.gd/5aMvOW http://is.gd/5aMvOW

deleted 11y ago

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DanielBMarkham 11y ago

Related, an excellent commencement speech: http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in...

debacle 11y ago

The problem with idle boredom is one of curiousity, but active boredom in your work can lead to mistakes, lack of productivity, and potentially dangerous situations.

carlosrg 11y ago

I enjoy boredom every often in a while. Helps me put my thoughts in order and think more clearly, if I'm stressed it forces me to tackle and face whatever problem I'm having, and I'd also say it makes me more creative.

jazzyk 11y ago
Boredom != Idleness Boredom != Contemplation, Introspection, Reflection

hudell 11y ago

As someone who was bored 90% of the time as a kid and who's still bored quite often, I really believe that it would be better not to be.

Nav_Panel 11y ago
I had a similar experience (which I tried to "solve" in high school via World of Warcraft), and honestly I see this more in my case as a manifestation of depression, not pure boredom. Often the issue was that nothing SEEMED interesting/worth doing, and once I got started I'd be ok, but the initial push to get started was too much effort, or I'd stop too soon and wouldn't be able to get fully engaged with the activity. I was just thinking about it last night: I went for a run, which is a little unusual for me, and I was similarly "time free" as most nights but a lot less bored. I felt my ideas/internal state was more interesting/entertaining, perhaps due to changes in my neurotransmitters caused by exercise.

prophet_ 11y ago

One thing that interrupts my moments of boredom is the thought of falling behind while the world makes progress. That is precisely the same feeling you get when you move to a quieter town: "nothing goes on here while 'everything is going on' somewhere else". This feeling of 'nothing doing' pushes me to do stuff, be it a hobby, reading, etc. I think the idea is pretty much associated to the 'time is money' or the 'time is flying, we're getting older, take advantage of your time' sort of thoughts. A nice point made in the article is the fact that many people just can't stand live in peace with their own thoughts. Indeed.

mbrock 11y ago
The problem with that seems to be that if you're always trying to catch up with some overarching scheme of advancement and progress, you won't have a moment of peace until you retire... An old Chinese hobo named Han-shan used to write strange poems on the cliffs and trees of the mountain where he lived. They're called the cold mountain poems. One of them goes like this: Han-shan has his critics too: ‘Your poems, there’s nothing in them!’ I think of men of ancient times, Poor, humble, but not ashamed. Let him laugh at me and say: ‘It’s all foolishness, your work!’ Let him go on as he is, All his life lost making money.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  > The problem with that seems to be that if you're always trying to catch up with some overarching scheme of advancement and progress, you won't have a moment of peace until you retire... Oh that's not true at all. Inner peace relies not on what you do, but on how you do it. It's easier to clear your head, say, when you're mowing the grass as opposed to creating a new marketing strategy, but that doesn't mean you can't.

Htsthbjig 11y ago

For me boredom is the manifestation of a problem. I am introvert and could think on my own for days, but boredom never happens. Animals in the wild rarely get bored. I worked as an assistant in a zoo while teenager and you could see every single animal getting bored there. And today it is much better than in the past, because we are stating to understand them and we make them work for getting their food and so on. After I sold my first company I went to an African Safari, and it was incredible seeing the same animals I had seen in captivity, because they looked different in the Wild. In particular, they were the same, but moved and behaved completely different. Their spirit is different. In my opinion, the same happens to humans, only that we could create our own jail ourselves for paying the rent,raising our kids, advancing our career or having a successful business.

flogic 11y ago
This. I don't regret the time I spend just thinking. I do however regret the time lost to boredom. They're not the same thing. Boredom to me is a state of wanting to do something but either not being able to or not knowing what that something is.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Exactly, it's an uncomfortable mental state or cognitive rut that is pretty tough to just ditch by doing things that normally keep you entertained.
  - borkabrak 11y ago
    This reminds me of something I'm still working to figure out -- the 'negative capability' referenced by Keats. In one sense, it's the ability to accept an answer of 'unknown'. Maybe it's the ability to choose not to drive towards closure. Maybe it's just being comfortable watching yourself get bored.
- deleted 11y ago
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madaxe_again 11y ago

vineetraja 11y ago

One may get bored while doing something but still have to do it (like the regular job at hand) One can not simply think about anything else, or switch to introspection because one need to concentrate (even boring work needs attention). Boredom thus could be a symptom, an alarm (get a better job !!!)

allencoin 11y ago

I think what this author is getting at is similar to the concept of flow. It's interesting, the article is based on "boredom" but I'm not sure that's the right word. Boredom is a state of "I want to do something but there's nothing to do," and I think what the author is really arguing for is finding time for quiet contemplation, letting your mind wander, personal reflection or, if you will, meditation. A lot of those books on creativity espouse the benefit of quiet time without distracting yourself with Facebook (or Hacker News). So it's a similar idea here. Allow yourself free self-reflective time in order to be happier and more creative.

yfj211 11y ago

Somewhat related article I read awhile back on solitude and leadership: https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/#.VgvWihNVhBc https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/#.Vgv...

jhbadger 11y ago

From the byline. "Gayatri Devi is associate professor of English at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania". Okaaay.

goldenkey 11y ago
I would expect a 'User from Hacker News on the Internet' to care less about silly titles and more about substance and merits of words.
- jhbadger 11y ago
  I only looked at her background because was I so underwhelmed by the lack of substance. Is boredom harmful or good? It's an interesting question yes, but one which can be addressed by actual scientific studies.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

Each day at work I put in headphones, code for a bit, read HN for a bit, then back to code. I don't know if I could describe it as boredom, maybe confused context switching. It brings to mind how the protagonist of Neuromancer gets hooked on amphetamines after being surgically banned from the Internet. We get so used to everything happening quickly and efficiently that our brains don't have time to rest. If you're not doing something, then what's wrong with you, the modern world seems to say. We were led to believe technology would eventually alleviate us of our ills. Instead I feel...tired.

cryoshon 11y ago
I think that one of the helpful side effects of being on the go constantly is avoidance of unanswerable philosophical or existential questions. If you're busy, you're not going to get kneecapped by these depressions-in-disguise. Having time to wallow can be detrimental, because it can build a habit out of wallowing. Capitalism/materalism does a very good job of disguising that even at its best it doesn't necessarily provide a life that everyone would agree is worth living. Of course, you could argue that existential and philosophical questions are critical to a studied life that is worth living, but meh.
- mikkergp 11y ago
  I go back to the person above who mentioned mindfulness. That's what I really focus on in the attempt to stave off "boredom". Because ultimately I find that the existential and philosophical questions which have their place at times are ultimately just as much as a distraction as a cell phone. Spending too much time on those questions is just an avoidance of the present moment, the future and ultimately death. Like the delusion that if your were really smart, you could you think your way out of the human condition.
- borkabrak 11y ago
  This is a bit philosophical, but I'd say the thing you're disdaining here is the ability to handle difficult concepts. It's tough to acquire, because it requires practice failing at it for a while until we begin to succeed at standing in the path of these ideas without getting "kneecapped" by them. There does come a point, though, where they cease being so threatening. When you're practiced at handling ideas that threaten depression, they're no longer so effective when an attempt is made to use them against you. Or maybe I just need coffee.

bryanrasmussen 11y ago

so if it is the last privilege of a free mind this means what - that the other privilegs have been taken from the free mind, boredom is the last privilege that remains to a free mind. hmm. I think word choice was not adequately considered here.

dhimes 11y ago

I cannot remember the last time I was bored. I had an elementary school teacher that told me that "boredom was the sign of a weak mind." I believed her and took it to heart.

noja 11y ago
Someone told you being bored was bad, so you were never bored?! How does that work?
- makeitsuckless 11y ago
  Well, if you have a weak mind and someone with authority has a strong opinion...
  - dhimes 11y ago
    Lol
- dhimes 11y ago
  Boredom is a sign of mental laziness. You can find something interesting about damn near anything- so make yourself search for it.

jasim 11y ago

The author confuses a state of calm contentment with boredom. And despite the new-age rhetoric, she admits to trying to solve it - she asks us to think instead of doing things, in the hopes that thinking would help us stumble into profundity. But thought can be worse than action - thinking quickly spirals into brooding. Pardon me for yet another misrepresentation of depression, but I confuse it with boredom, albeit in an existential sense. Zazen encourages us to meditate on our breath and to observe our thoughts so that they hopefully melt away. It asks us to think less, not more; to shut down our internal monologue which is the biggest agent of human misery. The trope of the mad genius is true - there are three great books that touches on this subject: Hesse's Steppenwolf, Colin Wilson's The Outsider, and the amazing Logicomix. Also a recent research surfaced on HN on neuroticism and the dangers of self-generated thoughts - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661315001540 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661315.... There is however a kind of thought that _is_ action. The state of flow when deep in deliberate thought, trying to solve hard problems (hard is relative to the person thinking it) is amazing. That kind of thought is very different from thoughts about the self, or doing drugs looking for profound realizations - there unfortunately isn't anything deeper about life that we'll be able to figure out by random introspection. Science is our best bet for that; not LSD, not meditation, not boredom.

maroonblazer 11y ago
>Zazen encourages us to meditate on our breath and to observe our thoughts so that they hopefully melt away. It asks us to think less, not more; to shut down our internal monologue which is the biggest agent of human misery. I know this wasn't the thrust of your comment but having spent a lot of time studying meditation it's important to note that meditation isn't about "thinking less". Rather it's about developing the ability to see thoughts for what they are (they're just thoughts) and being able to respond (as opposed to react) to them. I can no more turn off my internal monologue than I can control when my blood cells regenerate or my skin cells slough off.
- danielbln 11y ago
  I would make the point that mere observation of a thought can "disarm" it, preventing it from spiralling into a train of thought, as it were. Therefore I think it's fair to say that someone who rests in awareness is effectively thinking "less", (in contrast to the common misconception that the goal of meditation is to stop thinking, or to clear the mind altogether).

ThomPete 11y ago

I think she is using the term boredom in a somewhat misguided way. In fact it seems like he is really talking about something else — laziness. Boredom is to literally not know what to do because nothing excites you. What she is talking about is that we have become so lazy that instead of taking up a hobby we just end up using cellphones to kill time. Which i would agree with but it's a quite different point.

ebt 11y ago
I was looking for a definition of "boredom" that I agree with and "literally not know[ing] what to do because nothing excites you" is the one I most agree with and is the most succinct. I could replace "excites" with "interests", "relaxes" or some other state changing term.

Disruptive_Dave 11y ago

This feels a bit short-sighted to me. Maybe it's just use of terms at the end of the day. Telling a young person to "lean into boredom" is a recipe for disaster. And "thinking" as the antidote to boredom doesn't do much either. There's a quote that always stuck with me I ran into a while back that goes something like: "All day long we tell our children to 'Pay attention!' but we never actually teach them how." The premise of this article, IMO, would be much more valuable if it dovetailed into meditation practices. It's always been my take that one of the main reasons many of us seek out typically unproductive distractions and noise (phones, TV, gossip, whatever) is to avoid quiet, personal, thinking. In jail, which is presumably the worst environment one could find themselves in, solitary confinement is viewed as a significant punishment for bad behavior. Being alone with your thoughts is worse than being around criminals all day or locked in a cell! I think "lean into your boredom/thoughts" is an empty provocation without training advice (again, meditation is the route I'd take this). “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

borkabrak 11y ago
I don't disagree with your thesis here. I'd like to observe that a course of training such as you describe seems outside the scope of the article. Perhaps it does some small good, anyway, by suggesting that acquiring such training oneself, from whatever source, is a good thing to do.
enraged_camel 11y ago
>>solitary confinement is viewed as a significant punishment for bad behavior. Being alone with your thoughts is worse than being around criminals all day or locked in a cell! Solitary confinement for a few days isn't a problem. What people have an issue with, and is unfortunately a very common practice, is when a prisoner is placed into solitary confinement for weeks at a time, or indefinitely. That is a form of torture.

lemevi 11y ago

This post is silly, just consider its premise reductio ad absurdum. I suppose prisoners in solitary confinement are the most privileged among us. Boredom creates real pain that over long enough time leads to psychological problems. The mind doesn't want to be idle. Kids could take more time to appreciate life away from their smartphones but to make an argument against boredom itself is absurd. Boredom is an incredibly unpleasant experience and there is nothing with wrong with wanting to avoid it.

emanuelev 11y ago

Great article although I think maybe the title could be a bit misleading. The way I see it, boredom is not a state in which you want to be, but rather the initial condition that triggers the need of doing things. One word that I think is related to boredom is passivity, hence I wouldn't associate thinking and introspection to a state of boredom as they require quite an active engagement.

zeidrich 11y ago

Boredom isn't the act of having nothing to do. That's idleness. Boredom is a problem of a lack of satisfaction. There's various reasons for that but I believe having too much to do, and too much stress is what leads to boredom. People have an amount of attention they can pay to any topic before they need to rest. You can only listen to a song for so long before it stops being pleasant and starts being annoying. You can only hear the same story so many times before it gets boring. When you are bored, sometimes idleness can even be a fine replacement. If you're bored, and you decide to go and sit in a chair in the sun with a nice cold drink, that's a nice response. What boredom is, is when you're in class or at work, and you need to keep doing some routine behavior, but you need a break, you need a change, but you can't. Boredom is the feeling that you have to fight in order to keep doing something that your whole reward system of your brain has told you you've had enough of. Boredom isn't something good. It's something damaging. It's a condition where your mind is tired of a particular action, but you don't have the agency to make a change in your situation to suit that.

TrevorJ 11y ago
I don't know that it's good or bad, I think it's simply a signal, like hunger or tiredness that allows us to make an informed choice about what we can do to meet the needs of our body and mind.
- phesse14 11y ago
  I completely agree with this. Boredom is an indicator. Just that. If the light turns on it indicates you have to do something about it. the question is...is it good or bad when it turns on? That depends on everyone I mean, there's not a standard for that
- deleted 11y ago
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wnm 11y ago
fantastic comment! very well written. Can you share your thoughts on what to do when you're bored? Especially can you elaborate on the "your whole reward system of your brain has told you you've had enough of" part of your comment?

baudelaire 11y ago

...Dans la ménagerie infâme de nos vices, II en est un plus laid, plus méchant, plus immonde! Quoiqu'il ne pousse ni grands gestes ni grands cris, Il ferait volontiers de la terre un débris Et dans un bâillement avalerait le monde; C'est l'Ennui! L'oeil chargé d'un pleur involontaire, II rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka. Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat, — Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!

MarcusP 11y ago

After reading this article I feel more confused about the point it's making than anything else. Of course there are plenty of things written about how to avoid boredom, it's a symptom of not having anything to do. The article does attempt to touch on how low-cpu tasks are not often mentally enriching tasks, but that point is more about how to get more out of the time that you aren't bored, not what the title suggests. Boredom hits hard for me, I find it physically uncomfortable, I get an ache in my stomach that grows and grows. For me, boredom is certainly a problem to be solved, by doing things that are stimulating, not by dwelling on it.

ctdonath 11y ago

It's been a long time for me since experiencing boredom per se. There is so very much to do, to think about, to create, to investigate. Boredom is about choosing (or not) to engage thinking/curiosity/activity. So yes, as the author says, the solution to boredom (when perceived as a problem to solve) is to THINK. The problem is too many people have learned to not care, to not be interested, in their circumstances. At this point, should I be actually bored (which would probably require a willful act of situational deprivation imposed on me by others), and which the author addresses, the very state of being bored would & should become a point of intense fascination.

JohnBooty 11y ago

I fantasize about having enough time to be "bored." I don't mean that as a humblebrag. Just the opposite, exactly. If I was better at life then I'd actually have the time to be "bored." I put "bored" in quotes because boredom is a very momentary state for me. If I'm "bored" then I can choose to do something I actually want to do: read a book, write something, do something spontaneous, etc.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
I'm worried that most of us use sensory-stimulation to avoid boredom, instead of those worthy activities you mention. Like firing up Angry Birds (or whatever is popular now). Or turning on Netflix. Or texting somebody, anybody, to get them to text you back.

notahacker 11y ago

HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM ~Terry Pratchett Of course it's not just the privilege of a free mind, but also the privilege of relative freedom from stress, free time, and to an extent the education that leads you to aspire to more stimulation. A cure for boredom should probably sit atop Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

sk8ingdom 11y ago

For anyone interested in the history of the concept and how it's manifested in theology, philosophy, and pop-culture, I highly recommend A Philosophy of Boredom by Lars Svendsen [1]. Although the translation isn't GREAT, the content is an excellent overview. [1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009KP5CAE/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009KP5CAE/

deleted 11y ago

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black_knight 11y ago

As other people have pointed out, there is a difference between "boredom" and "idleness". As for idleness, Russel puts it well[0]. [0] http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

xanderjanz 11y ago

To quote the Minutemen, Being bored is power! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxjEi4tgvU0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxjEi4tgvU0

Datsundere 11y ago

For me repetition is boredom.

copsarebastards 11y ago

This article is basically just a different definition of the word "boredom" than is being used by most people. It's trying to communicate something insightful (that we should be okay with being alone and undistracted with our own thoughts). But I don't think that's what most people mean when they say "boredom", and there's plenty of deeper discussion on this topic in literature about mindfulness. Louis C.K. also talks about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c

zem 11y ago

and moreover my mother told me as a boy (repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored means you have no Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored. http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/Berryman.14.html http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/Berryman.14.html

_nullandnull_ 11y ago

"Boredom: the desire for desires" - Leo Tolstoy

ciconia 11y ago

“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.” - John Cage