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During the first few days we were at a loss for what to do. It had been our routine to watch whatever is on TV after dinner, and suddenly we were both dumbstruc

During the first few days we were at a loss for what to do. It had been our routine to watch whatever is on TV after dinner, and suddenly we were both dumbstruck for ideas. So we went to sleep at 8:30 p.m. Two things about this confuse me. 1) Running out of "stuff" to do. Maybe it's because it's been literal years since I've watched scheduled programming and don't understand the habits involved anymore, but I can't understand this idea of not knowing what to do with free time. We watch what's likely way too much TV on some days, but all the things they "discovered" they could do with all this time are still things we do regularly, without cutting off the TV entirely. 2) How do people just "go to bed" early because they get bored? I'm actually jealous of that idea. If I just decided to "go to bed" early, it would most likely involve me staring at either the ceiling, my phone, or a book for a few hours.

y4mi 7y ago
It works surprisingly well. But only if you're actually bored. If you'd rather be doing something, then you'll keep thinking about that until you stands up again. It only happens to me if I'm in a depressed phase or sleep deprived without really noticing it. Not really enviable though, tbh. It does not feel good (at least for me)
kd5bjo 7y ago
> Running out of "stuff" to do. This happens to me after about 2-3 weeks of crunch time; I’ll have replaced my normal habits with working, and there’s a confusion when there’s suddenly no more work to do.
- r00fus 7y ago
  This is what I hate about "crunch time". I keep a priority list of my personal goals/tasks so I have perspective when I'm thinking of pulling another 60h week. Reminding yourself that crunch time shouldn't be a regular recurrence is a good thing.
ndiscussion 7y ago
Repeat after me: I am an outlier, therefore my outcomes should also be outliers. It's a bit self-indulgent but I've found it increasingly true the more I relate to, erm, non-outliers.
- mwfunk 7y ago
  This is good advice, but the question here is who's the outlier. I had the same reaction and I'm pretty sure just about everyone I know would too. Or perhaps the point I'm missing is that everyone should assume that everyone, including themselves, is an outlier. I wonder if age has anything to do with it. As I've gotten older, not only has the idea of being bored evaporated, but the idea of other people feeling bored is borderline offensive. Life is short, time is precious, there's always a zillion more things that could be done (maybe productive things, or maybe just fun time-wasting things) than there is ever time to do those things. And then someday it's all over. I associate being bored with when I was a little kid, or even when I was in my 20s and it still felt like my whole life was ahead of me. When you've convinced yourself that your whole life is ahead of you, time feels a lot less precious.
  - notbored2 7y ago
    One thing I realized about this is that when I was younger, I had a million ideas of what to do, but most of them were out of reach. I either didn't have the necessary knowledge, the necessary skill, or the finances to do the things I thought up. Now that I'm older, I often have many of those things. So I'm a lot less bored than I used to be. In fact, I have to pick and choose like you say - there are more things I'm able to do than I have time for. I better do something meaningful (even if that's just watching a really moving show or reading a good book).
  - ndiscussion 7y ago
    Perhaps you live in a bubble of remarkable people. Try listening to conversations between coworkers, people in coffee shops, and at the grocery checkout. Most people operate their lives like a smartphone has conditioned them to: never pull relevant information, only receive what's pushed.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Re 2: They could if they were tired. TV keeps you up when you're tired. If you don't have it to do, then you may find out how tired you are. And boredom and tiredness are somewhat related. "Bored" could be "everything I might do takes too much energy to be worth it". There's a component of "tired" in there.
- jhbadger 7y ago
  There is something to that. Not that TV as such has really been a draw for me, but screen time (including just surfing the Web) is. When I'm with relatives that still don't have broadband, I do tend to go to bed early -- not because I'm "bored" as such, but because I don't have something else competing with being tired.
sp332 7y ago
Well, maybe they had sex but didn't want to put that in the article.
oarabbus_ 7y ago
>1) Running out of "stuff" to do. Maybe it's because it's been literal years since I've watched scheduled programming and don't understand the habits involved anymore, but I can't understand this idea of not knowing what to do with free time. I'm jealous. I usually pop open my laptop and burn through the hours until it's time to sleep. I wish I knew what to do with my free time more often. 2) How do people just "go to bed" early because they get bored? I'm actually jealous of that idea. If I just decided to "go to bed" early, it would most likely involve me staring at either the ceiling, my phone, or a book for a few hours. This one I empathize with 100%.
somepig 7y ago
2) Drugs. This has been my number one use for cannabis. If I need to go to sleep early for what ever reason, I smoke a bowl, lie down, and am out in no time.
- beauzero 7y ago
  A large glass of chocolate milk works for me.
ljm 7y ago
I sometimes send myself to bed early if I’m in a poor mood and see it descending into a mental breakdown, especially when it’s getting towards the part of the evening where being tired and energised makes things worse. And I will always make sure to get an earlier start out of it. This is more of a coping mechanism for depression than getting bored though. I kind of understand boredom less and less over the years, most of the times I’m really just feeling lethargic or demotivated and wishing there was _something_ I could do, rather than feeling like there’s nothing to do. There is _always_ something to do. It’s just a matter of being interested or bothered.
asark 7y ago
> 2) How do people just "go to bed" early because they get bored? I'm actually jealous of that idea. If I just decided to "go to bed" early, it would most likely involve me staring at either the ceiling, my phone, or a book for a few hours. I did a no electronics and no electric light after sundown thing for a couple weeks. Lived after-dark hours by a couple candles—found two beeswax tapers are about the smallest amount I could comfortably read by, assuming they were close, though unshaded looking at them directly by accident and being blinded/feeling eye-pain was a real problem. Beeswax because once you notice how chemical-spill-smelling the cheap parafin ones are you can't un-notice it. I went to bed way earlier than I would have otherwise, during that time, and generally much better rested than usual. I think it was a combination of the lower light and the lack of hyperstimulation from having a world of audio-visual, passive and interactive, entertainment at my fingertips. I'd usually read for a while then turn in, not because there wasn't more I could do (there's always more to read) but because it was just time to sleep and because I didn't have a friggin' carnival going on in my house I actually felt that. I'd thought my whole life I was a night owl, but now I'm pretty sure 90%—or more—of the "I just can't sleep at night, it's how I am" stuff you read on here and other places on the Web is the same problem I (actually) had/have: our houses are friggin' amusement parks complete with incredibly bright lights, so we're constantly hyper-entertained and hyper-distracted. Of course we can't sleep! We've got more and better entertainment than a damn Emperor's celebratory feast would've in yester-year—with the relative plenty in food and drink to match, I might add, should we desire it—and it's on tap, in our homes, 24/7.
- rhinoceraptor 7y ago
  Also, many device screens and light bulbs have daylight color temperature which can disrupt melatonin. It's amazing how blue LEDs are built into everything. I wish some of the smart bulbs makers would get rid of their fancy mood lighting colors and make a light bulb that automatically adjusts its color temperature and brightness with the sun (or at least an ideal sun cycle if you don't want to go to bed at 5pm in the winter, or live in Alaska).
  - pault 7y ago
    I already do this with hue white LED bulbs and timers in the app. I love how the blue mid day light looks like natural sunlight, and in the evening it's a nice warm glow. I have it fade to dark between 9pm and midnight, so I know it's time to go to bed when it starts getting difficult to see things.

y4mi 7y ago

It works surprisingly well. But only if you're actually bored. If you'd rather be doing something, then you'll keep thinking about that until you stands up again. It only happens to me if I'm in a depressed phase or sleep deprived without really noticing it. Not really enviable though, tbh. It does not feel good (at least for me)

kd5bjo 7y ago

> Running out of "stuff" to do. This happens to me after about 2-3 weeks of crunch time; I’ll have replaced my normal habits with working, and there’s a confusion when there’s suddenly no more work to do.

r00fus 7y ago
This is what I hate about "crunch time". I keep a priority list of my personal goals/tasks so I have perspective when I'm thinking of pulling another 60h week. Reminding yourself that crunch time shouldn't be a regular recurrence is a good thing.

ndiscussion 7y ago

Repeat after me: I am an outlier, therefore my outcomes should also be outliers. It's a bit self-indulgent but I've found it increasingly true the more I relate to, erm, non-outliers.

mwfunk 7y ago
This is good advice, but the question here is who's the outlier. I had the same reaction and I'm pretty sure just about everyone I know would too. Or perhaps the point I'm missing is that everyone should assume that everyone, including themselves, is an outlier. I wonder if age has anything to do with it. As I've gotten older, not only has the idea of being bored evaporated, but the idea of other people feeling bored is borderline offensive. Life is short, time is precious, there's always a zillion more things that could be done (maybe productive things, or maybe just fun time-wasting things) than there is ever time to do those things. And then someday it's all over. I associate being bored with when I was a little kid, or even when I was in my 20s and it still felt like my whole life was ahead of me. When you've convinced yourself that your whole life is ahead of you, time feels a lot less precious.
- notbored2 7y ago
  One thing I realized about this is that when I was younger, I had a million ideas of what to do, but most of them were out of reach. I either didn't have the necessary knowledge, the necessary skill, or the finances to do the things I thought up. Now that I'm older, I often have many of those things. So I'm a lot less bored than I used to be. In fact, I have to pick and choose like you say - there are more things I'm able to do than I have time for. I better do something meaningful (even if that's just watching a really moving show or reading a good book).
- ndiscussion 7y ago
  Perhaps you live in a bubble of remarkable people. Try listening to conversations between coworkers, people in coffee shops, and at the grocery checkout. Most people operate their lives like a smartphone has conditioned them to: never pull relevant information, only receive what's pushed.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

Re 2: They could if they were tired. TV keeps you up when you're tired. If you don't have it to do, then you may find out how tired you are. And boredom and tiredness are somewhat related. "Bored" could be "everything I might do takes too much energy to be worth it". There's a component of "tired" in there.

jhbadger 7y ago
There is something to that. Not that TV as such has really been a draw for me, but screen time (including just surfing the Web) is. When I'm with relatives that still don't have broadband, I do tend to go to bed early -- not because I'm "bored" as such, but because I don't have something else competing with being tired.

sp332 7y ago

Well, maybe they had sex but didn't want to put that in the article.

oarabbus_ 7y ago

>1) Running out of "stuff" to do. Maybe it's because it's been literal years since I've watched scheduled programming and don't understand the habits involved anymore, but I can't understand this idea of not knowing what to do with free time. I'm jealous. I usually pop open my laptop and burn through the hours until it's time to sleep. I wish I knew what to do with my free time more often. 2) How do people just "go to bed" early because they get bored? I'm actually jealous of that idea. If I just decided to "go to bed" early, it would most likely involve me staring at either the ceiling, my phone, or a book for a few hours. This one I empathize with 100%.

somepig 7y ago

2) Drugs. This has been my number one use for cannabis. If I need to go to sleep early for what ever reason, I smoke a bowl, lie down, and am out in no time.

beauzero 7y ago
A large glass of chocolate milk works for me.

ljm 7y ago

I sometimes send myself to bed early if I’m in a poor mood and see it descending into a mental breakdown, especially when it’s getting towards the part of the evening where being tired and energised makes things worse. And I will always make sure to get an earlier start out of it. This is more of a coping mechanism for depression than getting bored though. I kind of understand boredom less and less over the years, most of the times I’m really just feeling lethargic or demotivated and wishing there was _something_ I could do, rather than feeling like there’s nothing to do. There is _always_ something to do. It’s just a matter of being interested or bothered.

asark 7y ago

> 2) How do people just "go to bed" early because they get bored? I'm actually jealous of that idea. If I just decided to "go to bed" early, it would most likely involve me staring at either the ceiling, my phone, or a book for a few hours. I did a no electronics and no electric light after sundown thing for a couple weeks. Lived after-dark hours by a couple candles—found two beeswax tapers are about the smallest amount I could comfortably read by, assuming they were close, though unshaded looking at them directly by accident and being blinded/feeling eye-pain was a real problem. Beeswax because once you notice how chemical-spill-smelling the cheap parafin ones are you can't un-notice it. I went to bed way earlier than I would have otherwise, during that time, and generally much better rested than usual. I think it was a combination of the lower light and the lack of hyperstimulation from having a world of audio-visual, passive and interactive, entertainment at my fingertips. I'd usually read for a while then turn in, not because there wasn't more I could do (there's always more to read) but because it was just time to sleep and because I didn't have a friggin' carnival going on in my house I actually felt that. I'd thought my whole life I was a night owl, but now I'm pretty sure 90%—or more—of the "I just can't sleep at night, it's how I am" stuff you read on here and other places on the Web is the same problem I (actually) had/have: our houses are friggin' amusement parks complete with incredibly bright lights, so we're constantly hyper-entertained and hyper-distracted. Of course we can't sleep! We've got more and better entertainment than a damn Emperor's celebratory feast would've in yester-year—with the relative plenty in food and drink to match, I might add, should we desire it—and it's on tap, in our homes, 24/7.

rhinoceraptor 7y ago
Also, many device screens and light bulbs have daylight color temperature which can disrupt melatonin. It's amazing how blue LEDs are built into everything. I wish some of the smart bulbs makers would get rid of their fancy mood lighting colors and make a light bulb that automatically adjusts its color temperature and brightness with the sun (or at least an ideal sun cycle if you don't want to go to bed at 5pm in the winter, or live in Alaska).
- pault 7y ago
  I already do this with hue white LED bulbs and timers in the app. I love how the blue mid day light looks like natural sunlight, and in the evening it's a nice warm glow. I have it fade to dark between 9pm and midnight, so I know it's time to go to bed when it starts getting difficult to see things.