Educational title for gifted and advanced learners.

A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of the Year A Guardian “Best Book about Ideas” of the Year No one likes to be bored. Two leading psychologists explain what causes boredom and how to listen to what it is telling you, so you can live a more engaged life. We avoid boredom at all costs. It makes us feel restless and agitated. Desperate for something to do, we play games on our phones, retie our shoes, or even count ceiling tiles. And if we escape it this time, eventually it will strike again. But what if we listened to boredom instead of banishing it? Psychologists James Danckert and John Eastwood contend that boredom isn’t bad for us. It’s just that we do a bad job of heeding its guidance. When we’re bored, our minds are telling us that whatever we are doing isn’t working—we’re failing to satisfy our basic psychological need to be engaged and effective. Too many of us respond poorly. We become prone to accidents, risky activities, loneliness, and ennui, and we waste ever more time on technological distractions. But, Danckert and Eastwood argue, we can let boredom have the opposite effect, motivating the change we need. The latest research suggests that an adaptive approach to boredom will help us avoid its troubling effects and, through its reminder to become aware and involved, might lead us to live fuller lives. Out of My Skull combines scientific findings with everyday observations to explain an experience we’d like to ignore, but from which we have a lot to learn. Boredom evolved to help us. It’s time we gave it a chance.

Whether we like it or not, boredom is a major part of human life. It permeates our personal, social, practical, and moral existence. It shapes our world by demarcating what is engaging, interesting, or meaningful from what is not. It also sets us in motion insofar as its presence can motivate us to act in a plethora of ways. Indeed, in our search for engagement, interest, or meaning, our responses to boredom straddle the line between the good and the bad, the beneficial and the harmful, the creative and the mundane. In this volume, world-renowned researchers come together to explore a neglected but crucially important aspect of boredom: its relationship to morality. Does boredom cause individuals to commit immoral acts? Does it affect our moral judgment? Does the frequent or chronic experience boredom make us worse people? Is the experience of boredom something that needs to be avoided at all costs? Or can boredom be, at least sometimes, a solution and a positive moral force? The Moral Psychology of Boredom sets out to answer these and other timely questions.

Are we living in an age where we are more boredom-prone? Or are other people boring us? Or could we be that boring person?! In our current information age, we are constantly connected to technology, and have so many varied ways to spend our leisure time that we should all surely never know what boredom feels like. Yet, boredom appears to be on the rise; it seems that the more we have to stimulate us, the more stimulation we crave. In a quest to relieve our boredom, we engage in dangerous risk-taking - from extreme sports to drugs to gambling to anti-social behaviour, or we overindulge in shopping or eating. The Upside of Downtime explores the causes and consequences of boredom in the fast-paced twenty-first century. Parents are desperate to keep their children entertained during every waking moment, the education system is geared towards interactivity, and attention spans are dropping as we use multiple devices at all times. But the world of work can be increasingly repetitive and routine, and we are losing the ability to tolerate this everyday tedium. Using Sandi Mann's own ground-breaking research into boredom, this book tells the story of how we act, react and cope when we are bored, and argues that there is a positive side to boredom. It can be a catalyst for humour, fun, reflection, creativity and inspiration. The radical solution to the 'boredom problem' is to harness it rather than try to avoid it. Allowing yourself time away from constant stimuli can enrich your life. We should all embrace our boredom and see the upside of our downtime.

Richard Winter's critique of our "culture of entertainment" explores the nature, causes and effects of boredom and counteracts it with practical suggestions for living with passion and wonder.

The authors estimate that 15 percent of office staff members are on the way to chronic boredom and demotivation in the workplace. Here they bring to light this newly recognized phenomenon and show executives and HR managers how to recognize boreout and avoid its consequences.

Benefit from the thought-provoking holy wisdom of more than 350 saints, and come away equipped with truly saintly solutions.