When was the last time you felt utterly, stupefyingly, mind-numbingly bored? It might’ve been when you languished in the waiting room at a doctor’s office for 10 minutes too long. Or you felt your eyes glaze over in the middle of a philosophy class. Perhaps it was on a never-ending drive wherein your toddler insisted on hearing the same song over and over and over again. Maybe you are exceedingly bored right now (in which case, I’m sorry, and I hope to recapture your attention).

Boredom is a common occurrence in the ebb and flow of life. It’s usually marked by a feeling of restlessness and agitation, says James Danckert, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo and the co-author of Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom. A hunch that you must get out of here immediately.

There is a functional aspect to boredom, though. The emotion is motivating, meant to spur you to action: This thing you’re doing is not fulfilling or meaningful, so go find something else that is. Some are better at listening to that alarm than others, Danckert says, and those who say they never get bored are probably more skilled at dealing with it. Those who respond productively to the messages boredom sends have the power to make changes in their lives, big and small, which is great for you and bad for boredom. “Boredom doesn’t do the hard work of telling you what to do,” Danckert says. “It just tells you you need to do something else.” It’s up to you to figure out what that is.

A desire for something different

While you’ve surely experienced boredom at some point or another, have you stopped to consider why? Erin Westgate, an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of Florida who studies boredom, defines the feeling as one in which we don’t want to or can’t engage with what we’re doing, either because we lack the attention to do it — because the task is too easy or too difficult — or it lacks meaning. Boredom can........

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