Boredom

A Storyteller Overland-commissioned study provides a fascinating glimpse into the nation’s adventurous spirit. “Looking at the data, it’s clear Americans are craving a break from their everyday routine,” says Summer Trammell, chief engagement officer at Storyteller Overland.

The survey revealed that over a quarter of Americans (27%) feel they’ve fallen into a rut, with one in four respondents admitting their life is a bit boring. In fact, the average respondent fantasizes about going on an adventure four times every day, but only 10% felt they could be adventurous in their current life on any given day.

When asked how they’d define “an adventure,” most described it as anything outside of their daily routine and an experience (46%) that makes them appreciate life more (30%). The top three things that stir adventurous urges are a dose of warm weather (34%), seeing the same mundane surroundings every day (33%), and seeing friends and family go on trips (33%).

As for the perfect adventure, most respondents said it should last six days, with the average person willing to travel upwards of 2,700 miles for a break. Hawaii, California, Florida, Alaska, and Colorado were the top destinations on their bucket lists.

The survey also uncovered heartwarming advice from respondents on how to live more adventurously. One respondent said, “It doesn’t have to be thrilling or dangerous! It can be anything that provides you happiness.”

“Just do it. You’re not getting any younger, so if you can afford it by making a few sacrifices, just make the plan and do it. My best adventures were solo trips, so don’t wait on anyone,” another traveler urges.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Boredom; Calling; Purpose; Will of God - By investing your energy in purposeful adventures—big or small—you can overcome boredom, discover new facets of yourself, and move closer to the life and purpose to which God called you. Volunteer for a new ministry at church or serve on a short-term mission, even if it is outside of your comfort zone.

Boredom is a universally dreaded feeling. Being bored means wanting to be engaged when you can’t. Boredom is a different experience from the idleness of downtime or relaxation. Being bored means wanting to be engaged when you can’t, which is an uncomfortable feeling.

In one famous experiment, people were asked to sit quietly for 15 minutes in a room with nothing but their own thoughts. They also had the option to hit a button and give themselves an electric shock.

Getting physically shocked is unpleasant, but many people preferred it to the emotional discomfort of boredom. Out of 42 participants, nearly half opted to press the button at least once, even though they had experienced the shock earlier in the study and reported they would pay money to avoid experiencing it again.

Social psychologist Erin Westgate said, “Boredom is sort of an emotional dashboard light that goes off saying, like, ‘Hey, you’re not on track. It is this signal that whatever it is we’re doing either isn’t meaningful to us, or we’re not able to successfully engage with this.”

Boredom plays a valuable role in how people set and achieve goals. It acts as a catalyst by bringing together different parts of our brain — social, cognitive, emotional, or experiential memory. So, when we’re firing on all neurons, we’re at our most imaginative and making connections we otherwise never would have.

So go be bored, and encourage your kids to be bored too. Maybe you’ll find a new and creative “Eureka!” moment in your life, or imagine a great big new future for yourself or the world. Boredom is a worthwhile adventure.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Boredom can play a valuable role in how you set and achieve goals. Use it to motive you to action! 1) Meditation; Prayer - Don’t reach for your smartphone or the streaming device the next time you are forced to wait. Instead, use this time to set your mind on God: Read the Word, pray, meditate on God as revealed in nature. Destress yourself by centering your thoughts on God. 2) Help; Loving others; Service - You can also shift your focus toward others and their needs. Who can you help today?

In today’s digital age, entertainment is always at our fingertips. Whether it’s the endless scroll on TikTok or jumping from one YouTube video to another, the way we consume media has drastically changed in recent years. But is this content stream of entertainment really entertaining us? A new study finds that scrolling through videos online to cure your boredom can actually make you even more bored!

Researchers from the University of Toronto delved into the curious phenomenon where our attempts to avoid boredom by rapidly swiping through digital content might actually be making things worse. The findings reveal a counterintuitive outcome: the very behavior meant to stave off boredom — quickly moving through entertaining videos — ends up intensifying it.

Digital platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Netflix have revolutionized how we consume media. With just a swipe or a click, we can skip over content that doesn’t immediately capture our interest. This behavior, known as “digital switching,” is when users switch between different videos or fast-forward through parts of a video in search of something more stimulating. At first glance, this seems like an efficient way to maximize enjoyment and avoid dull moments. However, research suggests that this behavior might be doing the opposite of what we intend.

You might wonder why switching between content would make you more bored. After all, if you’re skipping the “boring” parts, shouldn’t that make the overall experience better?

When you engage deeply with a video, your attention is focused, and you’re more likely to find the content meaningful. However, when you constantly switch, your attention is fragmented. This fragmented attention doesn’t allow you to become fully absorbed in what you’re watching, leading to a feedback loop where you’re constantly seeking something better but never fully satisfied and therefore more bored.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Not only does endlessly swiping from one video to another lead to wasting time and boredom, it can also open the door to the temptation to view inappropriate content for an emotional high.

Blogger Stephanie Duncan Smith describes the awe she felt watching a total solar eclipse:

[My husband] Zach and I hiked up to a ridge with our supernova glasses. I won’t forget the way the sun just … dimmed, snuffed out, the way the birds swooped in confusion thinking it was nightfall, the magic of witnessing this cosmic event together.

Though not everyone felt that way. I am paraphrasing from memory, but a high-profile CEO tweeted at the time that while everyone else might be staring at the sky through their cereal boxes that day, she would be in the office making millions.

Imagine being bored by the thought of beholding something bigger than yourself, something wild and other and alive. Imagine considering yourself “above” the cosmic orbit in which you make your creaturely home. This executive considered herself too busy to be bothered by the wonder of a world outside herself. She was opting for the security of the measurable, the predictable, all that can be calculated and forecast and scaled. Yet by doing so, she was opting out of the sheer gift of being wowed.

It is human nature to want to be wowed. Environmentalist Paul Hawken once said, “Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course … We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.”

Every night! There is a cosmic event. Every night, an invitation to participate in what psychologists refer to as the experience of “perceived vastness,” or awe. As Hawken highlights here, we tend to tune out the familiar.

The pandemic has brought many changes to businesses, schools, and churches. Another way the pandemic altered America: It has created what might be called the “Introvert Economy.” Data from studies appears to show that most people’s social lives continue to dwindle.

During the pandemic, a lot of Americans had to stay home—and many discovered that they preferred staying in to going out. And odds are it will stick: It is the youngest adults who are going out less, and when they do go out, it is earlier.

Technology has also speeded changes in social habits. There is evidence that TV schedules once had a big impact on people’s schedules. Now that more content is streamed on demand, people may be thinking about their time differently. More choices of at-home-entertainment also may decrease the desire to go out or stay out. This is another trend accelerated by the pandemic—perhaps because when more people work from home, they save time on commuting and can go out to dinner earlier.

There was a bit of a bump in socializing in 2022, probably in response to years of pandemic isolation. Yet the long-term trend is clear: More time watching TV or playing video games at home.

Possible Preaching Angle:

One small upside to the data. Chances are everyone else is having just as uneventful of a weekend as you are. Your friends aren’t all that busy and would love to hang out with you.

An insightful Aperture video reveals the sad reality that our happiness, or lack of, is always at a regular baseline. It only fluctuates slightly despite all our attempts at bliss and euphoria.

You wake up in the morning and go to work. You spend eight hours working away at your desk on a job you once loved but now kind of just tolerate. It's 5:00 p.m., you go home, eat dinner, and watch TV, only to do it all over again the next day. You play sports or catch up with friends on the weekend and life's good, but you still feel like something is missing.

Now imagine you get that well deserved promotion and a healthy raise and suddenly you're going on those vacations you once dreamt of. Driving a nicer car, receiving more status and respect in the workplace. Your quality of life has been significantly upgraded and finally you feel like you're fulfilling your potential. Fancy restaurants, rubbing elbows with influential people, your life feels new and almost foreign compared to where you came from.

Yet in a year or so your once brand-new Porsche just becomes your daily driver. All the imported sushi starts to taste the same and while you still frequent white sandy beaches and pristine ski slopes, these places have lost their allure.

You've completely changed your life but you're still in the same position you were in before you got the promotion. Those things that used to excite you have become stale, mundane, and boring. The reason why you'll never be happy is called “hedonic adaptation.” Hedonic adaptation is the tendency to return to a base level of happiness even when undergoing profound periods of positive or negative change.

Worldwide, 60 million people die annually from any or all causes. That's about two deaths every second. In his most recent book, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson asks whether it is good and preferable for human beings to potentially live forever:

It's better to be alive than dead. Though more often than not, we take being alive for granted. The question remains, if you could live forever, would you? To live forever is to have all the time in the world to do anything you ever wanted.

Knowing that we will die may force us to live fuller lives:

If you live forever, then what's the hurry? Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow? There is perhaps no greater de-motivating force than the knowledge you will live forever. If true, then knowledge of your mortality may also be a force unto life itself - the urge to achieve, and the need to express love and affection now, not later. Mathematically, if death gives meaning to life, then to live forever is to live a life with no meaning at all. For these reasons death may be more important to our state of mind than we are willing to recognize.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sin brought a curse (Gen. 3:16-19) and our current fallen state (Rom. 3:10). God did not want us to live forever in that condition (Gen. 3:22). Christ came to give us eternal life so that we might live forever in heaven, renewed and restored (1 Cor. 15:46-49).

In an issue of CT magazine, Megan Hill tells her unremarkable conversion story which initially left her with doubts of its genuineness.

Megan has no memory of becoming a Christian. She says, “I didn’t pray a prayer, or walk down an aisle, or have a eureka moment. My Christian testimony of how I came to faith, is downright boring.”

She was raised by godly Presbyterian parents, gave thanks before meals, and recited prayers at bedtime from the children’s catechism. Church attendance shaped the weekly rhythms of her life. By the time she was age three or four she embraced the knowledge that God was her Creator, Jesus was her Savior, the Spirit was her helper, and the Bible was her rule. Megan writes, “But it took me most of my life to appreciate just how extraordinary was the grace I had received in ordinary circumstances.”

In fifth grade, I began to attend a school where dramatic testimonies were a regular part of morning chapel. Week after week, speakers—a drug addict, a party girl, an atheist—told of God’s rescue. But I am baffled that I never once heard a testimony like my own. And so I began to fear that I hadn’t really been saved … at all. Perhaps I was floating on other people’s convictions, happily living in a Christian environment without actually being a Christian.

Yet I was thankful for the church that had validated my testimony. In December 1989, I approached the elders of the church and asked to become a member. They, who had heard all kinds of stories from all kinds of people, declared my testimony to be a work of God. A few weeks later, I stood in front of the congregation and received the right hand of fellowship from those who had been lost but now were found. My testimony may have been boring, but it was welcomed. And I was also thankful for grace.

It wasn’t until I became a parent, at 27, that I began to see that in all testimonies, it is not the outward circumstances that are amazing. It’s the grace. There is no dull salvation. The Son of God took on flesh to suffer and die, purchasing a people for his glory. As Gloria Furman writes, “The idea that anyone’s testimony of blood-bought salvation could be uninteresting or unspectacular is a defamation of the work of Christ.”

For myself, I cannot point to a specific day of spiritual awakening. I can point only to my Lord, who says, “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37). My Jesus, I come. Every day in need of grace. And I find myself not cast out.

Tens of millions of people devour true-crime shows on TV, cable, streaming services, radio, podcasts, and in books. This is deeply personal for author Lisa Nikolidakis and her 2022 book No One Crosses the Wolf. She was 27 in 2003, when her father murdered his girlfriend, her teenage daughter, and committed suicide. She experienced the inevitable trauma and "inherited his crime scene of a house." For 17 years she plodded along writing the book about her shock, confusion, and her emotional wounds.

In recent years she "escaped" from her "darkness" by watching endless streaming TV shows that depicted "bizarre murders, cults, kidnappings, rapes, conspiracies. Bodies dismembered and disappeared and defiled, eccentric townsfolk and investigators each with their own secrets.

The upside for this strange choice was that good usually wins, and there are heroes who pay a price. She writes:

I found comfort in following detectives and prosecutors who care. That’s it, really. Someone cared. In real life, we know this often isn’t the case. But fictional characters pursuing The Big Bad are so invested, they pay for it in their personal lives: failed marriages, mental breakdowns, angry children, demotion. They care at their own peril.

She admits: "I can’t stop asking why? When our world news is often so dark, why on earth do we seek out more?" Some of the common reasons:

Voyeurism is a cheap ticket to a thrill-ride – the allure of our own dark sides. There is also the “could I get away with it” curiosity. Would we make better criminals than the ones who are caught? The criminals fascinate us, and we get to peak in their doors from the safety of our triple bolted ones. The world may be dangerous, but there is comfort in our streaming safety. We remain safe.

Evil as entertainment remains deeply problematic, and it raises for me images of families attending public hangings. We look back at that as macabre spectacle, but I am not so sure that what we are doing now is all that different.

Possible Preaching Angles:

The popularity of true crime shows indicates the needs of human nature: 1) Vicarious sin - People delight in imagining themselves breaking the law and getting away with it. 2) Justice; Penalty for sin – People want to see justice done in an increasingly capricious world where criminals go free; 3) Protection and Comfort – We want to feel safe and protected even while entertaining ourselves with the danger of the world.

Smartphones have changed the way we inhabit public space and more specifically, how we fill our time while waiting. Consequently, day-dreaming, thinking, speculating, observing, and people-watching are diminishing arts. So, what happens when you put down your phone, look up and start noticing?

Though hotly contested, the social, physical, and cognitive effects of our slavish devotion to the smartphone are said to include symptoms and risk factors such as neck problems, limited attention span, interrupted sleep, anti-social behavior, accidents, and other health risks.

Rarely mentioned in this litany of side effects is how phone use has changed the way we inhabit public space and, more specifically, how we fill our time while waiting. Every moment of potential boredom can now be ameliorated or avoided by all manner of tasks, modes of entertainment or other distractions conveniently provided courtesy of our minicomputer.

Some years back, in response to my own smartphone symptoms, I decided to look up from my screen and look around. We constantly use electronic devices to distract ourselves from the tedium associated with waiting. Instead, we could see boredom as an invitation to look up and then look around, to people watch, daydream, or take the time to observe and develop our own [observation of the beauty of the world] beyond hyperlinks and tags.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Make a New Year’s resolution: Don’t reach for your smartphone the next time you are forced to wait. Instead, use this time to set your mind on God: Read the Word, pray, meditate on God as revealed in nature, destress yourself by centering your thoughts on God.

Stephanie is a young mother with four children. Her typical day includes waking up at dawn, diapering and feeding one child while clothing another, preparing lunches for the rest, doing a couple loads of laundry, cooking dinner, and putting the kids to bed—all before falling into bed herself, exhausted. The exhaustion runs deep. Aren’t there more important things I should be doing? she asks, lamenting that she doesn’t have the energy for prayer and study. Many days, she suffers quietly and alone.

For all of us who struggle to find spiritual meaning in our daily work, Stephanie’s story resonates. And the longer we stay rutted in our routines, the more pressing our questions become: How is this work shaping my heart and mind? Is it strengthening my relationship with God and others? Does it even matter in the world?

Author Bradley Nassif writes:

Mundane duties (are) like God’s heavenly sandpaper. They (can) mold character, cleanse away impurity, and transfigure a person to reflect the beauty of Christ. Where we labor is where our character is formed and we are made Christlike. Much of our work, especially the more menial tasks, teaches us to repent and die daily to our sins. Our highest vocation is not the kind of work we do, but the kind of people we become doing it.

In 2021, several psychologists made an in-depth study into what drives people to political and social extremes. This can result in beliefs in a wide range of unsubstantiated and sometimes harmful conspiracy theories. The research paper was titled “Some People Just Want to Watch the World Burn.”

According to the study, bout 5% of Americans are considered "chaos-seekers." They feel marginalized and have "an intense need for social dominance; they’re angry that they’re not on top." There is a growing sense of anxiety that in a time of rapid change, ideological conflicts, and social unrest, they "feel their prospects in life have tanked. People who believe the system isn't working for them." They gravitate toward extremist views and include those on the political Right and Left.

The researchers named the model for extremism a “significance quest.” Many Americans "need to feel they matter and that their lives have purpose. These needs intensify when they feel powerless, as in times of stress and uncertainty or after a serious loss or humiliation. People will do nearly anything to restore meaning in their lives. All too often, meaning comes in extremist packaging."

Many of the people studied reported being simply bored with their lives. "People who are adrift are likelier to seek exciting, risky pursuits that give them a sense of purpose and meaning. Diehard ideologies fit the bill." The search for meaning led some to be "more sensation-seeking and more willing to support ideological violence."

Four-year-old Landry’s reaction to another Monday was video recorded by his home’s outdoor security camera. The lens is focused on the driveway and the street in front of the home. It’s a sunny but cold winter’s day, there are no leaves on the trees, and the lawn is brown.

There is a yellow school bus waiting at the end of the driveway. Then we see four-year-old Landry bundled up in his coat with his backpack, walking down the driveway toward the bus. When he reaches the end of the driveway, he suddenly stops, plops backwards on the driveway, and just lays there. He is apparently exasperated that it was Monday again. The bus attendant comes down the bus stairs and reaches down to help Landry to his feet, and they get on the bus together.

His dad Jason explained, “When he’s really tired, he gets a bit grumpy and then gets way overdramatic. I saw somebody comment that growing up is learning how to do that in your head instead of in physical form. And that’s exactly right. I think we all feel like this on Monday, and I think that’s why it’s so relatable, to see the bus and be like, ‘I can’t do it today.’”

You can view the short video here.

Paris. The Grand Canyon. The Great Barrier Reef. The Pyramids of Giza. According to a TV show a few years ago, these are four of the fifty things you must see before you die. Not only was this BBC show popular, but books with titles like that have been on best-seller lists ever since.

In fact, the show seems to have spawned an entire new genre. As well as things to see before death, there's a host of other things to add to the list: "100 things to Do Before You Die," which includes milking a cow; "100 Things to Eat Before You Die," such as crocodile. Dozens of books and websites urge you to complete their lists, offering albums to listen to, movies to watch, sensations to experience. And the lists go on.

That this genre has all been so successful reveals something sig­nificant about us. It highlights what has become a great concern for many. We want to experience the best of what's out there before it's too late. It's a first-world problem: for those of us who don't worry about putting a roof over our heads or food on the table, our greatest fear seems to be getting to the end of life and feeling we've not gotten our money's worth.

And it's all feeding into the ever-growing pathology, fear of miss­ing out (FOMO) an anxiety prevalent enough to be the subject of study by psychologists. We're increasingly desperate not to miss the best of what's out there and plagued by the fear that we might be. Life is short. The world is big. We only get one shot.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The perspective of the Bible is very different. Yes, the world is big. And, yes, this life is short. But this life is not all there is. For believers, this brief life on earth is only the entry way into an eternity filled with joy and fulfillment beyond what our hearts can imagine, “what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9).

The Good Place is a popular comedy TV show that follows four humans and their experience in an imagined afterlife. People accumulate points based on their good and bad actions on earth and then they’re sent to either “the good place” (heaven) or “the bad place” (hell).

But the characters soon realize that there is a problem in heaven—everything is wonderful, but no one seems happy. One of the Good Place’s residents says, “You get here, and you realize that anything is possible, and you do everything and then you’re done. But you still have infinity left. This place kills fun, and passion, and excitement and love.”

In the show’s final season, to counter the boredom of an eternal existence, the characters decide that the best solution is to give people an escape. The main character explains:

When you feel happy, and satisfied and complete and you want to leave the Good Place for good, you can just walk through [a door leading out of heaven] and your time in the universe will end. You don’t have to go through it if you don’t want to, but you can. And hopefully knowing that you don’t have to be here forever will help you feel happier while you are.

When one of the residents of the Good Place asks what will happen when they pass through this door, the main character says he’s not sure: “All we know is it will be peaceful, and your journey will be over.” They encourage them to have the time of their lives, and then, “when you’re ready, walk through one last door and be at peace.” The show’s argument, then, is that when heaven becomes unbearable, people should have the choice to end their time there on their own terms and in a peaceful manner.

Will heaven consist of eternal boredom? Some unbelieving thinkers assume it will. For example, in his best-selling book, Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia, atheist Michael Shermer wonders if there are tennis courts and golf courses in heaven. Shermer explains:

In other words, are there any challenges? If there is no disease, sickness, aging, or death in heaven, if there are no obstacles to overcome and nothing to work for, what is there to do? Forever is a long time to be blissfully bored. If the Christian version of heaven is correct and you get to spend eternity with an omniscient and omnipotent deity who knows and controls everything you think, do, and say, then as Christopher Hitchens famously opined, that would make heaven a “celestial North Korea” from which “you would never be able to escape,” a “place of endless praise and adoration, limitless (self-denial) and (depreciation) of self.”

As Hitchens told an audience in one of his last public speeches just shortly before his death in 2011:

It will happen to all of us that at some point you get tapped on the shoulder and told not just that the party’s over, but that the party is going on and you have to leave. That’s the reflection I think that most upsets people about their demise. Alright, then, let’s pretend the opposite. Instead you’ll get tapped on the shoulder and told there’s great news. The party’s going on forever and you can’t leave!

Possible Preaching Angle: Joy; Heaven; Hope; Meaning; Christians do not need to “pretend there will be good news” of a meaningful life after death. Scripture reveals the reality of heaven where there is no death, pain, or sorrow (Rev 21:4). Where there is “fullness of joy with eternal pleasures at your right hand” (Ps. 16:11), in the joyful company of saints and angels (Heb. 12:22).

Josh and Sean McDowell write in “The Resurrection and You”:

Science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov expressed the attitude many have about heaven when he wrote, "I don't believe in the afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.”

Sadly, a similar view of the afterlife is common even among Christians. Our vision of heaven is often limited to an extended, boring, uninspiring church service. Many see it as a place where we will mosey about among clouds in long white gowns while strumming on harps. Somehow our image of heaven has become grotesquely distorted, and the prospect of life after death has not captured our imaginations or transformed our lives.

I (Sean) recently asked my students what they would do if they had only three days left to live before they died and went to heaven. How would they spend those few remaining days? Answers included skydiving, traveling, surfing, and (of course) having sex. I followed up with a simple question: "So, you think there may be pleasures and experiences in this life that if you don't do them before you die, you will miss out on altogether because they won't exist in heaven?" All but two students answered yes. The prospect of heaven dismayed and disappointed them.

Country music icon Merle Haggard (1937-2016), had 38 of his albums appear on Billboard's country-music top 10 charts (more than a dozen made it to Number One). He also had 38 Number One singles. Haggard also had five wives and spent time in San Quentin Prison. Haggard had said, "There is a restlessness in my soul that I've never conquered, not with motion, marriages or meaning ... It's still there to a degree. And it will be till the day I die."

How do Silicon Valley tech gurus design a successful app, an app that will hook consumers and then keep them hooked so they keep coming back to the app? Some app designers call this process "captology," or the art of capturing people's attention and making it hard for them to escape. In his book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Product, Nir Eyal, a game designer and professor at Stanford, explains why applications like Facebook are so effective. A successful app, he writes, creates a "persistent routine" or behavioral loop. The app both triggers a need and provides the momentary solution to it. Eyal writes:

Feelings of boredom, loneliness, frustration, confusion, and indecisiveness often instigate a slight pain or irritation and prompt an almost instantaneous and often mindless action to quell the negative sensation. Gradually, these bonds cement into a habit as users turn to your product when experiencing certain internal triggers.

Possible Preaching Angles: Spiritual bondage; Sin; Temptation; Idol; Idolatry—Is this not a description of sin? We feel a deep need, then we turn to some sinful behavior to meet that need. When we do it often enough it becomes a habit and then we're hooked.