Cal Newport makes an interesting case for the usefulness of boredom.
Newport suggests the discomfort of boredom is a good and necessary prompt, much the same way hunger is a good and necessary prompt to eat.
To what is boredom prompting us? Productive work, he says.
Newport frames this observation within the context of social media. He says engaging with social media neutralizes this prompt, but in an unhelpful way.
An analogy might be snacking on junk food, when hungry, instead of eating a healthy meal.
Not all interventions are equally authentic or right or helpful.
From a Christian perspective, I think this boredom theory can be corroborated by the biblical vision of what it means to be human.
The Genesis account portrays productive activity as fundamental to human nature.
- “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth'” (Genesis 1:28, ESV).
- “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15, ESV).
We are, by design, culture makers. (Genesis 1:28 is known as the “cultural mandate.”) This is why we make castles in the sand on vacation. We can’t help ourselves.
This type of productive activity and meaning-making is present in the world before sin. Sometimes people think all work is a result of sin, but the result of sin is, more precisely, toil (Genesis 3:17-19), which is futility and frustration in work. But there is a type of work that is very pleasing and good, and without it, we feel aimless and void.1
So I find Newport’s theory to be novel and insightful. Perhaps the discomfort of boredom is, in fact, akin to the discomfort of hunger. Perhaps we medicate it or trivialize it at our own peril.
Perhaps, as Newport suggests, we need to avoid petty distractions and feel bored so we can then get productive.
What say you?
Footnotes
- Brant Hansen says, “If you feel meaningless, it might be because you’re investing time and energy in meaningless things.” (p. 114, Hansen, B. (2022). The Men We Need: God’s Purpose for the Manly Man, the Avid Indoorsman, or Any Man Willing to Show Up. Baker Books.) ↩︎
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