My new year’s anti-resolution: to embrace glorious boredom

I don’t believe in new year’s resolutions. That never seems to stop them accumulating in furtive, ill-fated notes in my phone, but it’s always a handy excuse when I don’t stick to them.

Usually the list of resolutions I pretend not to make and don’t manage to keep looks something like this: Choose water over wine, at least occasionally. Master the use of liquid eyeliner, pulses and mobile banking. Train myself to enjoy fish. Become a person who wakes up at 4am to run 5k on the treadmill, write 600 pithy words and then prepare the children a breakfast of homemade granola with sugar-free yogurt and fresh fruit. Have the kind of children who would eat homemade granola with sugar-free yogurt and fresh fruit.

It’s never going to happen. I’m tired, defeated and craving carbohydrates already.

January in the northern hemisphere is a hard enough month without using it as an occasion to dream up absurd new ways to punish ourselves for the temerity of being alive. January is about vanishing days; a general air of anti-climax and self-flagellation; anxiety about the future and regret about the past; alarmist headlines about the winter vomiting bug; shops full of tat they couldn’t sell the other 11 months; vast expanses of time until the next bank holiday weekend; flirting with gym memberships that will, by March, have become just another thing to beat yourself up about; gloom, gloom and unrelenting gloom.

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Learning how to do nothing in an economy where your attention is the most valuable resource takes work

January is also well-intentioned, but annoying, email greetings. "I hope you had a good break and have returned to work rejuvenated!" Is there a word in the English language more irritating, more smacking of beauty treatments endorsed by Gwyneth Paltrow, more destined to end in dashed hope, than "rejuvenated"?

Creative sandwich

The honest answer to this would be: “Thanks for your hope and jaunty exclamation mark, but what kind of denial-mongering, wheatgrass-eating narcissist returns to work after Christmas “rejuvenated”? Yes, I have returned to work in the sense that I am physically sitting at my desk facing into the bleak vista of 7,341 unanswered emails, but my mind is still prone on the sofa, staring dead-eyed at Indiana Jones, mainlining Quality Street and wondering whether turkey, parsnips, gravy and Tayto would make a passably edible sandwich.”

There is one thing I am determined to do better this year. A single anti-resolution that anyone can attempt. It is to spend more time doing nothing.

Nobody has yet figured out a way to make money out of you doing nothing, which is why you don’t tend to hear as much about its benefits as, say, nut milk yogurt or moringa tree bark. On the other hand some of the world’s most powerful companies have been built on their success at keeping you constantly scrolling, clicking, liking and swiping. So learning how to do nothing in an economy where your attention is the most valuable resource takes work.

If you google it, there is some advice out there about how to do nothing. A lot of it sounds suspiciously like doing something. There are instructions about meditation, breathing, muscle relaxation, and something called DIY sensory deprivation. There are apps you can download; books you can buy; classes you can attend. But really, why would you bother?

It doesn’t have to be that complicated. Doing nothing really just means becoming comfortable with the idea that you don’t always have to be busy; that you don’t have to spend every minute occupied in something useful. It means finding a new definition of “useful” that doesn’t equate to “working more to earn more to buy more stuff”.

January, the month of self-flagellation and unrelenting gloom, is the perfect time to experience boredom

It means learning to be content in the now, instead of constantly looking for ways to escape it. It means revelling in the quiet instead of always reaching for your phone to fill it with noise and distraction. It means allowing yourself time to walk, to daydream, to listen to music, to be alone, to be aimless, to be bored.

Frightened of boredom

As a society we are terminally frightened of boredom. There are studies linking it to depression and self-destruction, and other studies showing it to be a predictor of alcohol, cigarette and cannabis use among teenagers (any teenager or former teenager in existence could probably have saved them the trouble). The dictionary offers “apathy”, “frustration” and “disengagement” as synonyms for the word.

But in a culture where our time, attention and emotional capital are being commodified and sold, boredom is also a rapidly depleting luxury. Philosophers and psychologists have argued for decades that it is essential to creativity – that our brains need downtime to process and problem solve. Neuroscientists have shown that we need time to process that data we’re deluged with, to consolidate memory and reinforce learning. You could argue that it’s being constantly switched on, rather than occasionally bored, that is the biggest predictor of apathy, disengagement and frustration; that as a species, we’re not wired for the constant barrage of stimulation we subject ourselves to.

So here’s my anti-resolution for 2018. Do less. Be more. Switch off, slow down, sleep. Embrace aimlessness. January, the month of self-flagellation and unrelenting gloom, is the perfect time to experience boredom. God help us, you might even find it rejuvenating.