Battling Boredom

Battling Boredom

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By 2014, I was bored of investing.

I had been an active investor in Indian equities since 2003, rode the boom till 2007, and made some sharp money anticipating the financial crash of 2008. When I reviewed my performance at Diwali 2014, returns were holding up well, but I also realised I was bored.

Investing was falling into a pattern, I knew what I was looking for, and was screening companies in a cursory manner. I could - and should - dig deeper, I thought, but somehow the thought was not exciting. 

Between 1977 and 2005, I had launched at least one significant initiative every decade, three between 1985 and 1995. But now I was 58, and the thought of a new venture was just too daunting. All of that Diwali morning, I felt trapped by inertia - dissatisfied with my current state of affairs, yet unable to find the energy to break out of it. This, I later learned, was pretty close to a textbook definition of boredom -

 “The aversive experience of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity*” 

That week, as the Diwali smog reluctantly cleared, I parried with my unrest, accepted my inability to make a major jump, yet refused to accept the status quo. The compromise that began to form was to invest some of my time and money in the emerging landscape of start-ups. This turned out to be the best professional decision I have ever made, not because it made me rich (the jury of profitable exits is still out), but because it energised me into eight years of deep engagement and learning with bright and passionate young minds.

The battle against boredom is never ending, but I staved off nearly a decade of existential boredom by switching gears. 

There is a school of thought which believes that boredom is creative, that we can use it as an opportunity to discover the true nature of one’s desires. Eastwood and his co-writers, quoted above, discovered little empirical evidence that boredom leads to enhanced creativity. Yet, I wouldn’t dismiss the connection - the link between boredom and creativity is the willingness to introspect, and this is often missing.

I asked the good Rajiv Mehrotra** to send me some Buddhist writings on boredom, and in a talk by Josh Korda at Dharmapunx NYC, I found these lovely words, “The Buddha’s practice with discomfort is to turn toward it, to investigate it, to look beneath it - to really take it apart and examine what’s present, The more we take boredom apart, the more interesting it becomes.”

Instead, too often we seek distraction, easily found on the large screens that hang on our walls, the mid-sized screens that perch on our laps, or the little screens that we now know way better than the back of our hands. They are extremely effective - boredom is associated with reduced levels of dopamine in the brain, and texting, to take one example, stimulates the brain to produce dopamine, which triggers a feeling of happiness. This sets off a loop of dependence and repetition which I know only too well. 

Korda warns, “Our smartphones only provide a simulation of human connection. As a result, we can have an underlying feeling of dissatisfaction and anxiety, which in turn can evoke cravings for stimulation”

Humans turn in many directions to find that stimulation. 

There’s the fridge; all eating produces dopamine, but sweet and fatty foods excel. Luckily, my love of chocolate, ice-cream, and chocolate ice-cream is balanced by the joy I find in exercise, which also produces a steady flow of feel-good chemicals through the brain. 

Shopping, too, but the average man tires of it much faster than the average woman, and my own hormonal system rates it as an odious chore. Alcohol, recreational drugs, sex, all spark the manufacture of dopamine, so the bouquet of choices to fight boredom is very diverse. 

The problem, though, with repeated stimulation is habituation, when the same stimulus fails to produce the same level of excitement. In her book, The Science of Boredom, Sandi Mann documents extreme examples of bored minds seeking ever increased levels of stimulation - gambling, arson, rioting and murder.

Caffeine, though, is in a category of its own, ‘magical’ at slowing down the rate of habituation, by binding itself to the receptors in the brain which inhibit the release of dopamine. TS Eliot had it figured - “I measure my life in coffee spoons”. Unfortunately, my intestines refuse to cooperate, and my default mode for combating boredom is a long walk, or a longer cycle ride.

This morning, after an early ride out to Gurgaon, I took a break on the flower-lined lawns of Shantipath. A runner lowered himself onto the grass and took off his shoes. We shared an energy bar, and he told me he had qualified for the Boston Marathon. I asked about his early life. He had dropped out of school because of the family’s finances, and wrote his 10th class exams through the National Open School. An Australian missionary helped him to graduate, and he now works for a major embassy.

 “Life was hard’, he reflected, “but maybe it was good, it made me strong.”

The warm glow of that conversation carried through to lunch, when I talked of him to my wife. The runner was gracious in his openness. I remembered my grand-father’s words, “Every man is worth the consideration you give him.” Perhaps there is a deeper meaning there - in the attention you give another man, lies food for your own soul. 

Above all, in the attention you give yourself. In another piece Rajiv sent me, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche writes of the benefit of meditation in helping one befriend oneself, in cultivating a ‘cool boredom’ that is spacious, and “creates softness and sympathy towards ourselves”.

May we all find that softness.

*Eastwood, J.D., Frischen, A., Fenske, M.J. & Smilek, D. (2012). The unengaged mind. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(5), 482-495.

** Rajiv Mehrotra, Hon. Secretary and Trustee, The Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness The Dalai Lama