Boredom is your hidden superpower

You see those superheroes on the big screens? Like them? Wouldn’t you want to have a superpower of your own? Impossible? Too hard? Something ordinary people can’t achieve? Well, let’s think about it.

What’s stopping you from gaining a superpower?

Obviously, if you don't live in the Marvel universe, acquiring a superpower requires some effort, because the chances of becoming Odin's son or being bitten by a mutant spider are extremely low. Now, my friend, let's look at the situation from a detached perspective, as if we're observers rather than participants.

What happens when your avatar starts feeling bored? - Immediately, the squad of social media comes to the rescue – videos, beautiful pictures of a beautiful life, dancing women with beautiful shapes, or men, depending on what interests you more. Sports shows, for every taste. Can't stand silence? Terabytes of music are at your service, of any genre, style, and mood. Want to know what's happening in the world? No problem – news about everything and nothing (politics, celebrity life, finances, markets, achievements, moon flights, earthquakes, climate change, plandemics, wars, etc.), just watch, my friend, and don’t get bored. Boredom can also be neutralized by watching porn, oh, these sites with hot stuff are available with just a few clicks, any search queries and fantasies are within arm’s reach, enjoy yourself without making any effort, just – DON'T GET BORED.

This is far from a complete list of ways to eliminate boredom; I’ve only mentioned a few examples. You know better than I do which methods work best for you.

Think it’s all free? – HUGE mistake, and let’s hope it doesn’t turn out to be fatal for you.

In most cases, you don’t pay with money, but you give away a far more valuable resource – your attention and time. Your time and attention are limited. While you can always earn money, you can’t buy time, and attention is a resource of time – time is the trump card, and TIME IS LIMITED.

To make sure this isn’t just another piece of reading material that you’ll forget five minutes after reading, and that you won’t be able to apply in practice, let’s try to increase the impact.

Imagine your last moments in this world, as your strength leaves your body on your last breath… Thoughts? Did you do everything right? Did you use your allotted time rationally? Where did you direct most of your attention? If in this hypothetical scenario, you don’t feel discomfort, then everything’s fine – you’re doing everything right. The main thing is that when the time comes, you won’t regret the hours/days/months spent scrolling through crappy news on your smartphone or even more time burned in online video games, where one fool proves his superiority to another fool.

I like the introduction... but what does boredom have to do with a superpower, you thought, didn’t you? You did think about that, right?

How boredom can and should be used, being bored is beneficial

A dopamine release into the body = pleasure. When you consume entertainment content on the internet (yeah, dude, the news is also entertainment content because it serves no other purpose), dopamine and other neurotransmitters are released into your body, putting you in a certain state. This happens day after day. You become addicted without realizing it. To experience pleasure, all you need to do is press buttons – by the way, this reminds me of the Pavlov dog experiments or the rat experiments where they pressed a button to receive pleasure from the electrical stimulation of their brains.

This is a problem of a consumer society. If you only consume and produce nothing, who are you? Who operates on the same principles? – Parasites. Do you want to be a parasite? I don’t think so. Of course, it's a matter of choice, but the choice should be conscious. If you're asleep, it's better to wake up and analyze the situation.

What about boredom? 😁 It's fine, actually. It can lead you to a state of balance. For example:

Bob decided to change his life. Up until that point, his entire existence was limited to going to a hated job, consuming news in massive amounts in the evening, playing online video games, and watching porn before bed. Bob decides to study a foreign language and acquire programming skills in his free time. Here’s the dilemma: he needs to free up time for this, which means he has to eliminate news, video games, and porn (just an example). Great, with initial enthusiasm, Bob manages everything, creates a daily schedule, and for the first few days, he sticks to the plan. But soon, Bob faces a problem… He stops getting the dopamine hits in the amounts he had gotten used to before.

Bob’s body tells him – dude, why are you wasting time studying a language and programming? This is hard, and it doesn’t provide quick satisfaction (like we’re used to). Forget about it, let’s go back to getting our dopamine hits the way we used to, it’s easier – just sit in your worn-out chair, grab your smartphone, swipe your finger across the screen, and feel pleasure. Bob faces a difficult choice – get pleasure here and now, or work hard without satisfaction to achieve long-term results. I think the choice Bob would make in this situation is pretty obvious…

And now, boredom comes into play.

Under normal circumstances, Bob doesn’t derive pleasure from learning new skills, as dopamine is not released because it’s work. But, Bob decides to eliminate the usual distractions in his life that provide no benefit. Instead of reading the news, Bob chooses to feel bored, engage in routine tasks that are useful. For example, hammering a nail into the wall to hang a picture, fixing a household appliance that has been gathering dust in the garage for years, or doing repairs around the house, and so on. While Bob is engaged in routine tasks and feeling bored, boredom fills him, balances him, and changes his perception of events.

Once Bob experiences enough boredom, a new activity, like learning a foreign language, will start to bring him pleasure. It will break up his boredom, which guarantees a release of dopamine and other neurotransmitters responsible for pleasure and positive emotions.

Let’s imagine a hypothetical situation – you find yourself in a situation where you are placed in a police cell for a few days and deprived of your smartphone. All your daily activities are reduced to pacing around the cell, eating, using the toilet, and sleeping. You can’t do anything except these 4 activities. After a few days, just the thought of studying programming on a computer will bring you pleasure. Think about it – not the process, but just the thought. And if you were to sit in such conditions for a week, being rewarded with even one hour of programming lessons on a PC would feel like some incredible adventure.

Once again – Can boredom change the balance in the perception of the same actions by the endocrine system of your body? – You answer this question yourself.

In conclusion

So, boredom is an excellent tool for balancing your perception of various actions and events. What actions those will be is up to you. Actions that provide instant gratification and pleasure are usually destructive and deplete the body's endocrine system without offering any real benefit. Actions that require long-term effort generally pay off in the long run and provide a true dopamine reward, where not only chemical processes occur in the brain, but the overall quality of life changes.

Acquiring any skills is linked to persistent effort. In familiar and comfortable conditions, most people will abandon the constructive path in favor of temporary pleasures – that’s how consumer society works. But with the help of boredom, you can balance your perception and set up a situation where acquiring new skills will be accompanied by pleasure. You do something useful – you get a reward. This can be very helpful in the phase when you are forming a new habit. Once the habit is formed, following a positive goal will become much easier.

It’s impossible to be both a consumer and a creator at the same time. If you spend all your free time only consuming what others have created, you simply won’t have the opportunity to create something of your own. Being a creator is at least cool. Being a parasite is a path to degradation and catastrophe.

I shake your hand if you’ve read this far 🤝. Leave your thoughts in the comments.