The time of confinement at home has been long, and it is inevitable that there will be changes in people's mentality. In addition to being busy, feeling bored and powerless is an emotion that people are prone to appear in special life situations, and eliminating boredom has become a daily need. The new book Why We Are Bored offers a prescription worth trying.
Boredom is because I see too much
Two Canadian psychologists, Dankett and Eastwood, explain the causes, sources, and spread of human boredom in their book Why We Are Bored. Originally titled "Out of my skull," the book literally translates as "Out of My Skull," and is a sharp description of the realism of the problem of boredom—the headache that contemporary people feel because of boredom.
The world is complex, and the digital fragments generated by the big explosion of information fill people's minds. Contemporary people have briefly spent the sweet time of mastering digital products and enjoying various pleasures, and then they have entered a long stalemate stage, dragged by technology and equipment.
Writer Ma Boyong asked everyone on social networks: "Last week, the use of mobile phone screens decreased by 33%, an average of 5 hours and 48 minutes a day, is this usage considered addictive?" Well-known football commentator Kehan responded that he spent up to 11 hours a day on his mobile phone screen last week. Luo Ming, editor-in-chief of Sports Weekly, spent 72 hours of mobile phone screen time last week, with an average of 79 hours per week.
Media people are clearly more dependent on mobile phones than writers, and looking at mobile phones for more than 10 hours a day is the norm. The reporter's own mobile phone screen usage time is 11 hours and 45 minutes a day. Receiving and sending messages at any time is both an act of active participation in life changes and a manifestation of being dragged along by changes.
In their book, Denkert and Eastwood point out: "Today we are overwhelmed by information, and when there is too much information, it becomes noise. When this happens, we lose a lot of interest and boredom follows. "During the epidemic, with the continuous updating of the progress of epidemic prevention and control on the Internet, at the same time, many people have updated their own observations and feelings on the Internet, and people's spare time at home has been quickly filled with this information.
People need a reasonable yardstick to balance two important aspects: understanding the changing situation and maintaining physical and mental health while staying at home.
The book cites psychologist and philosopher William James as saying that hopeless tedium is associated with an increase in the quantity of information rather than an improvement in the quality of information. The German writer and sociologist Krakauer blamed the media for producing too much information, "more news confuses our ability to distinguish between information and noise."
Sociologist Olin Klepp argues that "the lack of information makes monotonous things seem boring," and his views may be closer to contemporary life than James and Krakauer. When we are bored and anxious, we subconsciously brush our mobile phones, and it is the thin, repetitive, boring, exaggerated, and false inferior information that we continue to brush to make us truly perceive the existence of boredom. The more boring, the more you want to find a way to "break".
According to Klepp, "Boredom arises when the pace is getting faster and faster, the changes lack meaning, and the actions lack an end point." Too little information or too little change will appear monotonous, and too much information will make people feel controlled by change. There's a great example in the book: from one piece of breaking news to the next, we never stop to think carefully about what that information means to us.
For example, online shopping is a very common way of consumption, but online shopping addiction reaches the level of "chopping hands", which becomes a "time-killing" behavior. A study by Guizhou Normal University surveyed 604 college students with the level of self-control, online shopping addiction and boredom tendencies, and found that seniors had the biggest problems. These students have basically completed all the courses, have a lot of free time, "college life for them may have no freshness and fun, daily life is monotonous and tedious, they are mostly out of the family constraints, but the psychology is not yet mature, the control of their own behavior is weak", so it is easy to fall into "buying, buying and buying" and can not extricate themselves.
Some neighborhood committees have standardized the group buying behavior of the community and reminded residents to "rationally shop" in line with the principle of epidemic prevention first, and volunteer teams and residents' autonomous organizations have also responded. For some residents, buying more may be for more peace of mind, but also trying to actively create meaning through shopping to offset the boring emotions that appear from time to time in home life.
Having fun is also about creating meaning
Chen Ping, a resident of Changning District, has recently become addicted to plating. Her husband is a superb cook, and the two of them try to put their newly made dishes into interesting shapes every day, eggplant imitates boots, bell peppers and tomatoes carved into flowers, celery into peacocks, mung bean cakes and then carved flowers, watermelon inscriptions, melon seeds and dates and other snacks into paintings, and so on. Take a good picture and share it to the circle of friends, and then eat the "work" without wasting. In her words, since you can't go out to work, "there is nothing else to do every day, except cooking, eating, looking at your phone, sleeping, and adding some fun to yourself."
Using the limited time to go out to see the plants around you is also a good way to do it. Lin Xun, who lives in Minhang District, carefully examined the camphor flowers in the community on April 20, the day of gu rain. She told reporters: "The valley rain is temperate, and the mountain rain is coming." The fine fragrance emitted by the blossoming of the camphor is probably not noticed by people who are not bored. "She often goes to work in the mountainous areas of Anhui, Fujian and other places, so that she always has a thought about the natural changes in the distance." The slight natural changes around us will evoke people's memories of normal life. Observing such beauty has an encouraging effect on people.
Gu Yi, who lives in Hongkou District, sorted out the clothes and jewelry at home. Originally, she had the habit of taking selfies in the mirror and showing her clothes on social networks before going to work every day, but now although she can't go out, she still wears and takes selfies from time to time, this time in order to resell extra clothes and accessories second-hand. She is also a fitness enthusiast, and she also insists on indoor training every day during her stay at home, and shares some experiences and newly learned training methods with netizens.
In short, everyone is doing their best to walk on the extension line of their own lifestyle, hoping to find some fun for the days when the city is waiting to return to normal.
In the spring of 2020, East China Normal University Press produced a podcast " Psychological Protection Manual for Primary and Secondary School Students and Parents During the Anti-epidemic Period "Psychological Protection Manual for Primary and Secondary School Students and Parents", a total of 18 issues, proposing many countermeasures to maintain mental health. How to break the boring emptiness? The advice they give is to create more opportunities for the family to participate in hobbies-related activities under the premise of life rules. More free time, it is also suitable for doing some tidying work, take out the collection at the bottom of the pressure box to see.
The book Why We're Bored reminds us that when we're bored, it's also an opportunity to examine our environment. The book cites events aboard an Antarctic wintering ship in 1898 to interpret how "boredom in extreme environments" should be dealt with. At that time, the ship was frozen by the frozen sea for a long time, and the crew disagreed on what to do next, and one Belgian crew member could not even stay up and "wanted to walk back to Belgium".
Psychologists analyzing the "isolated and closed environment-type task" of Antarctic voyages proposed that at different stages, people will have different psychological characteristics. "Anxiety is characteristic of the earliest stages, accompanied by depression and boredom in the middle stages, and manifested in childish behavior and the ecstasy of victory in sight." Boredom is the uneasiness generated by people who are trapped in the environment but want to do something.
Commenting on the case, Dankert and Eastwood point out: "Nothing in isolation is bad. "People's personality traits are linked to their ability to cope with such environments and boredom, and they believe that people who have a lower need to embrace new experiences and external stimuli are less likely to be bored than people who are highly nervous and eager to change."
People who are interested in the internal environment and affairs of the family and can insist on doing things regularly are relatively more likely to endure the loneliness of long-term home.
Li Xiao is a teacher who teaches economics courses in vocational high schools and is also a reading promoter, recording a recommended book video every week, combining some common elements of family life to talk about the joy of reading and the truth of economics. During the pandemic, she kept her video updated once a week as usual, talking about vegetable prices, bartering among neighbors, nucleic acid testing from other places, cooking for young people living alone, and hydroponic vegetables. On May 1, her neighborhood became a precautionary zone, allowing a limited number of times and time to leave the neighborhood, and she stood on the side of the road to record the latest video recommending Camus's "Plague".
The final chapter of Why We're Bored, "Let It Be," suggests three ways to deal with boredom. In general, the first method is to concentrate on self-reporting mentality; the second method is to cultivate curiosity, satisfy interest, and give us more sensory stimulation. During the epidemic lockdown period, some people actively signed up to volunteer and serve the community, which is the first method chosen; some people continue to read, watch movies, listen to music, learn to cook, etc., and use time to develop hobbies, which is the second method chosen.
The third method is "idleness", that is, relaxation. Dankert and Eastwood tell us that "when we relax, those goal-oriented desires don't burden us" and "ideas float around as we please." This seemingly understatement may not be easy to do, somewhat abnormal, but it is worth trying. Reduce some desires, reduce some unnecessary stress, "accept the limitations of the self", do what can be done, boredom may no longer be a problem.
Why We're Bored
[plus] James Dankert, John M. by D. Eastwood
Yilin Publishing House February 2022 edition