The Loose Connections Recommender #18

On Boredom, Distraction & Hacking Our Attention Spans

Apr 20, 2024

Only boring people get bored.

My Grade 3 school teacher told me this and it really stuck. If what you’re doing or not doing is boring you, find something else to do. The world is full of things to do! Rearrange the furniture. Go for walk. Make a point of observing small things. Watch a bird. Watch a cooking show. Cook something experimental. Write something outrageous. Send a postcard. Listen to music you’ve never heard before. Meditate. Learn how to count to ten in Italian. Go to the museum. Go to a book store and inhale all the ideas in there!

Sometimes it feels as though the constant content parade of entertainment that sails by us at all times is eating our brains and making it harder to entertain ourselves. It’s a slow creep. It’s also evil algorithms. As someone that has never sought out or enjoyed the slow chum churn of never ending Facebook videos/Instagram reels I can feel my resistance being worn down and without making any active choice to do so, I’ll find I’ve been watching non stop Taylor Swift talk show interviews for ten minutes. I hate it! Time is precious and I don’t want to waste it. I want to actively participate in life rather than absorb other people’s offcuts. Rail against the dying of the light! I also find it disturbing that everything is broken down into bite size chunks, ready for faster consumption, just the good bits thanks. The disturbing bit is that it’s so irresistible, there’s so much satisfying, fun stuff to watch. My eyes hurt. My attention span is growing shorter. My brain is more filled with constant entertainment but there’s less room for wonder.

The other day when I was out walking I was struck by the focussed attention this young girl was showing to the footpath. It was weirdly mesmerising - what the hell was she looking at? The longer she looked, the longer I watched her. I really wanted to know what was so engaging. She walked off eventually, and I started heading towards ‘the spot’. She turned round and came back for another last lingering look before setting off again. I heading over and discovered she had been staring in awe at a beautiful little frog. I stared in awe at it for five minutes too. I keep finding myself thinking about the frog, more than two weeks later. It was more entertaining than some of the television I’ve watched recently and all it did was exist and breathe in the sunshine.

I’ve always enjoyed multitasking, aka attempting to do multiple things at the same time. I find it stimulating. Having to sit still for long periods of time is torturous for me. Even if I’m settling for a cosy night watching TV, I get up and down constantly, do leg exercises, note down ideas or half heartedly work on projects, flick through books, my phone, answer emails. I’m flighty. I need to move! I fell asleep in a Zoom workshop I enrolled in cos I just had to sit there. I fall asleep in action movies within the first ten minutes, I fall asleep at the theatre. I even fell asleep at my son’s school high school welcome assembly because I couldn’t move. I’m sure that made a great impression.

I’ve been trying to finish a kind of sassy Nashville-by-numbers type song called ‘Short Attention Span’ for years but I can never force myself to knuckle down long enough to do it. The reason likely being that there is little point to it, it’s not really a song I want to sing and I never managed to work out how to sell songs to those that are looking for them. I have also been meaning to read Johann Hari’s book ‘Stolen Focus’ about this very thing but…… wait is that a rainbow? I have to be obsessive about something in order to stay still long enough to focus and get to the finish line. Luckily for me I am quite obsessive about a multitude of things so I do get these things done, cos I get in a state of ‘flow’ - its that place where meaning meets purpose and you can get lost inside the world of possibilities you are creating. It’s deep attention, and it’s easy, because it’s stimulating. One of my favourite things about the world is that there’s so many ways to find satisfaction, from climbing mountains to collecting china thimbles.

I have read articles describing boredom as a warning signal from your brain, that what you’re engaged in is not meaningful enough to you to hold your attention. It’s a warning that we need to find meaning. So how do we find meaning? Look at the boredom as a way to identify what is not serving you. If its a monotonous job and you just have to do it, see if there’s anyway to game-ify your dull duties; try to beat your own times, imagine yourself as the protagonist of a book, imagine you’re undercover, create an inner world. There’s something to be said for endurance and rewarding yourself for surviving something hard. If you’re bored by your actual life, you do have multitudes of options, even if you’re broke and stuck, you just have to push through towards something that will shake you up a little, to challenge yourself. The trouble is when you’re bored and down in the dumps, its so damn hard to move. But it doesn’t have to be major or overwhelmingly different, even tiny changes can be exhilarating. Breaking habits that no longer bring you happiness will revolutionise your soul.

Remember, we are the masters of our own universes. Also, music can change everything, even moods. Music can take you on a journey, even if you can’t leave your bed. Recognise that boredom is simply a symptom of your brain being under stimulated, and that distraction from that issue is never going to solve it. We need mental stimulation and that only really comes from challenge and/or pleasure - mental and physical. If you’re stuck and can’t think of anything to do about it, doing something nice for someone else is always going to make you feel good.

The Loose Connections Recommender #18

On Boredom, Distraction & Hacking Our Attention Spans

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