I’m bored
Ethan L Sanford, MD
Original article
Brosowsky NP, Barr N, Mugon J, Scholer AA, Seli P, Danckert J. Creativity, Boredom Proneness and Well-Being in the Pandemic. Behav Sci (Basel). 2022 Mar 2;12(3):68. doi: 10.3390/bs12030068. PMID: 35323387; PMCID: PMC8945222.
Today’s PAAD deviates into areas I am no expert in. I apologize for naivety, but in a state of boredom, I was inspired. For context, I am rarely bored. In between work, family, and the bottomless pit of available media, it is rare that I find myself sitting around with want for something to fill my brain. I worry this is a problem.
The authors of today’s PAAD, Brosowsky NP et al.,1 explore this possibility in their work entitled Creativity, Boredom Proneness and Well-Being in the Pandemic. It turns out that boredom is incredibly complex. First, how do we define being bored? The authors describe boredom proneness as the tendency to experience boredom more frequently and intensely. This may be distinct from state boredom which is induced by lack of available activities or forced mundane tasks. This may be analogous to the distinction between someone suffering from depression versus someone who experiences acute depression after a traumatic negative life event.
Boredom proneness seems to negatively impact one’s life as it is associated with failure to engage in creative processes and action, poor mental health outcomes, rule-breaking, and poor well-being. State boredom, on the other hand, has been associated with increased creativity. A fascinating experiment assigned participants to standard activities vs copying lines from a phone book vs reading a phone book (I hope they were well paid) at whatever pace desired. Afterwards, the participants were given tasks requiring creative thinking. The phone book readers performed the best, the copiers second best, and the standard group was worst!2
Knowing this data, the authors assessed whether to access to and engagement in creative activities pre and post pandemic was associated with better or worse well-being outcomes. Both the raw availability of creative activities and an increase in activities during the pandemic were associated with better well-being metrics. This isn’t surprising. The authors speculate on why some people may be boredom prone while others may utilize a state of boredom to become more creative and active. A key differentiator may be agency/autonomy. The authors theorize that actual or perceived loss of agency during the pandemic could lead to negative affect and unproductive boredom proneness. Alternatively, people who retain agency could use state boredom (not having anything to do) to generate new ideas and engage in creative activities.
How can we promote agency to enrich our experiences of boredom in anesthesia? The answers may be controversial. Standardization of practice and protocol driven care may be linked to loss of agency in medicine.3 While such protocols serve to create more consistently good care, it does so at the risk of creating dogma and, maybe, boredom with practice. When attending conferences, I’m frequently struck by the lack of experimental data to support practice which contrasts with the confidence with which protocols are created in every realm of practice. Can we safely promote creativity and agency to creatively challenge dogmas? Is the creation of a protocol which lacks any supporting evidence a good thing? Perhaps we can both champion clinical protocols while encouraging faculty to be skeptical of them.
On an individual basis, maybe we should clear the clutter of meaningless activities in order to manifest state boredom. Instead of doom scrolling or listening to podcasts during drives or exercise, maybe we can let our minds wonder for some time. The digital age allows constant access, but maybe our brains would do well with some free time. Learning how to manage this time and focus it on creative endeavors is almost certainly good for us. Each time my kids complain of boredom I pejoratively wish I had the same problem. Perhaps I’m just doing a bad job of noticing.
What do you do when you are bored? Do you think time allotment without distinct tasks could improve creativity at work? Do you think agency over your own practice is making you boredom prone? Send your thoughts and comments to Myron who will post in a Friday reader response.
References
1. Brosowsky NP, Barr N, Mugon J, Scholer AA, Seli P, Danckert J. Creativity, Boredom Proneness and Well-Being in the Pandemic. Behav Sci (Basel) 2022;12(3) (In eng). DOI: 10.3390/bs12030068.
2. Mann S, Cadman R. Does Being Bored Make Us More Creative? Creativity Research Journal 2014;26(2):165-173. DOI: 10.1080/10400419.2014.901073.
3. Sinsky CA, Bavafa H, Roberts RG, Beasley JW. Standardization vs Customization: Finding the Right Balance. Annals of family medicine 2021;19(2):171-177. (In eng). DOI: 10.1370/afm.2654.