Boredom

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Boredom is a state of mind in which one interprets one's environment as dull, tedious, and lacking stimuli. There is an inherent hopelessness in boredom; people will expend considerable effort to prevent or remedy it, yet in many circumstances it is accepted as an inevitable suffering to be endured. A common way to escape boredom is through creative thoughts or daydreaming.

Charles Dickens invented the word in his novel Bleak House in 1852.

Time often seems to move more slowly to someone who experiences boredom; this results from the way in which the human mind measures the passage of time, combined with the infrequency of events perceived as notable.

1 Effects
2 Philosophy
3 See also
4 References

[edit] Effects

Far from being a minor annoyance, boredom can have major negative impacts on people. Perhaps more importantly, boredom is often a symptom of deeper problems, such as depression, ineffective teaching, or ineffective management in a workplace. This can also be due to the fact that some people just communicate poorly.

Boredom in the workplace does more than just waste time. Studies in behavioral finance have shown that stock traders can enter into "overtrading" (buying or selling even without any objective reason to do so) because they feel bored when they have nothing "productive" to do. Boredom in the workplace also hurts peoples' sense of self-worth, which can cause them to work less effectively when their work is truly needed.

[edit] Philosophy

Arthur Schopenhauer used the existence of boredom in an attempt to prove the vanity of human existence, stating: "For if life, in the desire for which our essence and existence consists, possessed in itself a positive value and real content, there would be no such thing as boredom: mere existence would fulfill and satisfy us".^{[citation needed]}