If you embrace the skill of boredom, you might get better at confronting life’s bigger questions around meaning, happiness, and work. When we are bored, our brain moves to its default mode network, which are structures that switch on when you don’t have anything else to think about. When this happens, your mind wanders and thinks about, for example, big questions of meaning in your life. This makes us uncomfortable, but this kind of thinking is beneficial. To begin, commute with nothing, not even the radio. Try phone-free periods of 15 minutes and longer. And have device-free meals with your family.
  • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    7 months ago

    Not sure, if he alludes to it with that:

    That’s a doom loop of meaning. If every time you’re slightly bored pull out your phone, it’s going to get harder and harder for you to find meaning, and that’s the recipe for depression and anxiety and a sense of hollowness

    …but I’ve found, it can also be a vicious cycle when you’re at the deeper end of depression. Like, I would have intrusive thoughts. And the bandaid fix to not have intrusive thoughts, is to distract yourself 24/7. Not ever being bored became a survival strategy.

    Over time, the circumstances changed and I’m kind of out of the depression. But I feel like I didn’t even notice for the longest time, because I never allowed myself to take a step back to think about it.
    And I still struggle with doing things to combat depressive tendencies, like building habits or doing meaningful things or even just listening to the needs of my body, because I still have the habit of never being bored as well as the low tolerance to it. Which, again, simply means I don’t take the step back to think about what would be good for my wellbeing just about now or what would be a meaningful thing to do.