Harvard Video - You Need to be Bored, Here’s Why

Video link: You Need to Be Bored. Here’s Why. Harvard Business Review: You Need to Be Bored. Here’s Why.

Video is by Professor Arthur C. Brooks

Notes

When you’re bored, your brain switches over our thinking to use the Default Mode Network.

Book - The Happiness Files by Author C. Brooks and his colleague Dan Gilbert did an experiment where they told people to sit in a room for 15 minutes with instructions to do nothing, except there was a button to push which would give them an electric shock.

A big majority of the participants chose to shock themselves instead of doing nothing.

This is because the Default Mode Network makes us think about things that are uncomfortable. When you think about nothing, your mind wanders into asking big questions like “What does my life mean?” and other existential questions.

This, however, turns out to be incredibly important, incredibly good. One of the reasons we have such an explosion of depression and anxiety in our society today is because people actually don’t know the meaning of their lives, much less so in previous generations.

This is because we’ve found a way to eliminate boredom. We’ve been able to, almost completely, shut off the default mode network.

So practice being bored. Try not bring your phone to the gym, or doing things without your phone.