The Benefits of Boredom.

• Date: 01 July 2020
• Author: Cortellessa, Eric

Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom

by James Danckert and John D. Eastwood

Harvard University Press, 288 pp.

COVID-19 is going to last a long while. Here's the psychology behind making the best of it.

The novel coronavirus has killed hundreds of thousands of people. It has overwhelmed health care systems around the world and caused mass unemployment as governments have enacted physical-distancing measures to stop the spread of the disease. Simply put, life during the pandemic has been a hellish nightmare. But for many Americans--at least the ones who haven't fallen ill themselves or had a loved one fall ill--it has been something else: dreadfully boring.

A quick scan of the internet more or less confirms this. A Wired essay warned, "This pandemic is perilously boring." Forbes published a story on the "15 ways to fight boredom and anxiety." The Los Angeles Times ran a piece with the headline "You cancelled your travel and you're bored. Here's how to cope." CNN aggregated the "creative ways" people were combating the boredom of self-isolation.

The logic makes sense: Millions of people are restricted to their homes with little to do but binge-watch Netflix shows or finally take a crack at Anna Karenina. Even white-collar professionals who are lucky enough to be able to work from home are stuck in the same place all day, every day.

But the current situation could make you feel a lot of things--frustrated, angry, overwhelmed. The limitless digital content, even if unfulfilling, can theoretically keep us occupied. And the pandemic itself is perversely riveting. The nightly news includes segments that you might have once found only in a Ridley Scott film. If anything, this is one of the scariest moments any of us will ever live through. Why, then, has it triggered such a pervasive sense of boredom?

According to the psychologists James Danckert and John Eastwood, the answer is likely because it has stripped us of our agency. In a new book, Out of My Skull, they argue that boredom is more than just the feeling we get when our minds are insufficiently stimulated. It's a sign that our capacity to act as authors of our own lives has been challenged or constricted.

That can happen in tedious ways we all have experienced. You need to get your car registration renewed, so you go to the DMV but are forced to wait in line, and there's nothing you can do until they call your ticket. It can also happen in deeper ways. People who have jobs that don't interest them tend to feel existentially unfulfilled because they aren't doing what they believe they should be. In both cases, you can wind up filling in hours or simply going through the motions just to get things done. As Danckert and Eastwood point out, there's good reason why the...