Boredom

In conventional usage, boredom is an emotional and occasionally psychological state experienced when an individual is left without anything in particular to do, is not interested in their surroundings, or feels that a day or period is dull or tedious. It is also understood by scholars as a modern phenomenon which has a cultural dimension. 'There is no universally accepted definition of boredom. But whatever it is, researchers argue, it is not simply another name for depression or apathy. It seems to be a specific mental state that people find unpleasant—a lack of stimulation that leaves them craving relief, with a host of behavioural, medical and social consequences.' According to BBC News, boredom '...can be a dangerous and disruptive state of mind that damages your health'; yet research '...suggest that without boredom we couldn't achieve our creative feats.' In Experience Without Qualities: Boredom and Modernity, Elizabeth Goodstein traces the modern discourse on boredom through literary, philosophical, and sociological texts to find that as 'a discursively articulated phenomenon...boredom is at once objective and subjective, emotion and intellectualization—not just a response to the modern world but also a historically constituted strategy for coping with its discontents.' In both conceptions, boredom has to do fundamentally with an experience of time and problems of meaning. The expression to be a bore had been used in print in the sense of 'to be tiresome or dull' since 1768 at the latest. The expression 'boredom' means 'state of being bored,' 1852, from bore (v.1) + -dom. It also has been employed in a sense 'bores as a class' (1883) and 'practice of being a bore' (1864, a sense properly belonging to boreism, 1833). The word 'bore' as a noun meaning a 'thing which causes ennui or annoyance' is attested to since 1778; 'of persons by 1812'. The noun 'bore' comes from the verb 'bore', which had the meaning ' be tiresome or dull' first attested 1768, a vogue word c. 1780–81 according to Grose (1785); possibly a figurative extension of 'to move forward slowly and persistently, as a boring tool does.' As stated on panel show QI, it was actually Charles Dickens who coined the word. The French term for boredom, ennui, is sometimes used in English as well, at least since 1778. The term ennui was first used 'as a French word in English;' in the 1660s and it was 'nativized by 1758'. The term ennui comes 'from French ennui, from Old French enui 'annoyance' (13c.), back-formation from enoiier, anuier. 'The German word for 'boredom' expresses this: Langeweile, a compound made of lange 'long' and Weile 'while', which is in line with the common perception that when one is bored, time passes 'tortuously' slowly. Different scholars use different definitions of boredom, which complicates research. Boredom has been defined by Cynthia D. Fisher in terms of its main central psychological processes: 'an unpleasant, transient affective state in which the individual feels a pervasive lack of interest and difficulty concentrating on the current activity.' Mark Leary et al. describe boredom as 'an affective experience associated with cognitive attentional processes.' In positive psychology, boredom is described as a response to a moderate challenge for which the subject has more than enough skill. There are three types of boredom, all of which involve problems of engagement of attention. These include times when we are prevented from engaging in wanted activity, when we are forced to engage in unwanted activity, or when we are simply unable for some other reason to maintain engagement in an activity. Boredom proneness is a tendency to experience boredom of all types. This is typically assessed by the Boredom Proneness Scale. Recent research has found that boredom proneness is clearly and consistently associated with failures of attention. Boredom and its proneness are both theoretically and empirically linked to depression and similar symptoms. Nonetheless, boredom proneness has been found to be as strongly correlated with attentional lapses as with depression. Although boredom is often viewed as a trivial and mild irritant, proneness to boredom has been linked to a very diverse range of possible psychological, physical, educational, and social problems. Absent-mindedness is where a person shows inattentive or forgetful behaviour. Absent-mindedness is a mental condition in which the subject experiences low levels of attention and frequent distraction. Absent-mindedness is not a diagnosed condition but rather a symptom of boredom and sleepiness which people experience in their daily lives. When suffering from absent-mindedness, people tend to show signs of memory lapse and weak recollection of recently occurring events. This can usually be a result of a variety of other conditions often diagnosed by clinicians such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression. In addition to absent-mindedness leading to an array of consequences affecting daily life, it can have as more severe, long-term problems. Lethargy is a state of tiredness, weariness, fatigue, or lack of energy. It can be accompanied by depression, decreased motivation, or apathy. Lethargy can be a normal response to boredom, inadequate sleep, overexertion, overworking, stress, lack of exercise, or a symptom of a disorder. When part of a normal response, lethargy often resolves with rest, adequate sleep, decreased stress, and good nutrition.