Could You Benefit From Boredom?

Are we there yet?

It's not just kids stuck in a car on a long road trip who feel left in the lurch by life sometimes. For millennia, people have reported struggling with the same unpleasant state that may -- in a more modern context -- creep up on a person during the post-holiday season lull or a travel layover: boredom.

Dating back to the first couple centuries A.D., monks who had trouble engaging in religious practices described a lack of care, says Andreas Elpidorou, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Louisville, who does some teaching on the history of boredom. "In a religious context, if we go back, boredom becomes ... kind of a sin: You exhibit lack of care for God or your religious duties." Idle hands are said to do the devil's work.

[See: 11 Simple, Proven Ways to Optimize Your Mental Health.]

Bored and Agitated

While today boredom isn't typically described in such a religiously charged way, it's still not viewed as a good thing. "I think about boredom as being, by definition, an aversive state -- so it's an unpleasant feeling that's associated with wanting to be engaged in satisfying and meaningful activities," says John Eastwood, an associate professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, who has researched boredom; that includes working to more clearly define boredom for the purposes of further study.

"A bored person experiences time passing slowly. They will have difficulty engaging or focusing their attention, and they may experience both low arousal and negative emotions like lethargy ... then high-arousal negative emotions like agitation or restlessness," Eastwood says. "So you can think about it as this state of being disengaged from the world."

Experts note that boredom is both a result of internal -- including personality-related -- factors as well as external factors, like that long wait at the doctor's office with only old magazines to read. Being prone to boredom is associated with a host of emotional and mental health problems, and we'll do almost anything to escape it. "People who get easily bored are more likely to be depressed, anxious and violent. They eat less healthy, are more likely to drop out of school and may engage in dangerous behavior, such as joy riding or pathological gambling," Wijnand van Tilburg, a lecturer in psychology at King's College London in the UK who has done research on boredom, writes in an email.

Experts are careful to point out that research doesn't prove boredom causes these issues, but that there is a correlation. "The relationship between boredom and mental disorder is extremely complex," Dr. Neel Burton, a psychiatrist, philosopher, writer and fellow of the Green-Templeton College in Oxford, England, writes in an email. Burton is author of "Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions," which devotes a chapter to boredom. He notes that boredom, aside from being intrinsically stressful, is associated with a perceived lack of direction or meaning -- a risk factor for mental health issues. "Mental disorders such as depression are associated with a lack of energy and motivation, which can in turn promote boredom," he says.

People prone to boredom often prefer pain or even inflicting pain on others -- like hurting another person emotionally -- to experiencing boredom. For those prone to boredom, it's not just a matter of choosing between pain and boredom, but that boredom is its own brand of discomfort. So it's a choice between experiencing one kind of pain over another, Burton says.

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Harnessing the Power of the Lull

In our modern, 24-7-connected, on-the-go world, we could stand to unplug and risk being idle. Though Eastwood doesn't advocate that people actively court boredom, he says we can learn from it. "If we don't ever slow down to allow ourselves the possibility of being bored, we'll never have the opportunity to kind of clarify our own desires and our own abilities and our own unique way of expressing ourselves and engaging with the world," Eastwood says.

A lull may provide the perfect occasion to collect your thoughts regarding a complex problem you've been mulling over in your mind -- and devise a unique solution. "There's a smattering of research that suggests when you're bored you might engage in more creative activity," Eastwood says. That said, the research overall on whether experiencing boredom boosts a person's boosts creativity is mixed; and, as with other boredom research, he notes, it's still fairly thin. A study he was involved in published in the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity in August found boredom as a personality trait -- or being prone to being bored -- is not a predictive of creativity. Researchers noted, however, that past studies found boredom as a state triggers creativity.

For better or worse, boredom does seem to motivate people to act -- if for no other reason than to vanquish the unpleasant state. "Experimental research that we conducted shows that people who feel bored say that they are more willing to help a charity, provided that they see this charity support as something really meaningful," van Tilburg says. He notes that other experiments show people who are bored tend to become nostalgic. "They recall memories of pleasant, important social occasions, such as holidays or graduations, which makes them feel that life is meaningful. Even though this nostalgic reverie can come with some sense of loss, the memories are nonetheless heartwarming and make people feel that life is meaningful."

But just as being bored might spur someone to engage in risk-taking behavior as well, not every action it sparks exactly improves the human condition. "At least from a handful of studies, it seems that boredom can increase political polarization, making people more strongly committed to strong ideological views," van Tilburg says, as well as increase hostility toward outsiders, such as people of a different nationality. "One of the reasons why boredom can have these consequences is that people feel they can find a sense of purpose by committing to strong political views or by favoring their own group over groups that they do not belong to." Of course, no Gallup poll has yet to determine if societal boredom contributed to the sharp political divides in modern America.

[See: How to Stop Emotional Eating.]

Take Heart -- It's Not Apathy After All -- and Move Forward

Unlike apathy, boredom involves a strong motivational component, van Tilburg points out. "Bored people are actively looking to do something about the situation they are in," he says. So if you're frequently bored, it may be a signal that something substantial in your life needs to change, whether you tackle a new project, look for a new job or make other major moves.

To make the most of it, don't just flee from boredom, but be more mindful in your approach to it. "Don't panic, slow down and rather than focusing on making the feeling go away, focus on trying to find what will bring you a sense of meaning and a sense of purpose and a sense of satisfying engagement with the world," Eastwood says. "And the byproduct of that will be an absence of boredom."

Michael Schroeder is a health editor at U.S. News. He covers a wide array of topics ranging from cancer to depression and prevention to overtreatment. He's been reporting on health since 2005. You can follow him on Twitter or email him at mschroeder@usnews.com.