Military boredom has been studied since World War II by a variety of researchers. A common conclusion is that boredom leads to alienation and then resentment and anger.
The findings of the current study take on added significance given the “non-kinetic” nature of much of the Marines’ counter-insurgency mission in Afghanistan.
Few troops will see active combat. But nearly all will be assigned tasks — standing post, providing security for convoys, repairing vehicles or other equipment, manning communication gear, handling administrative chores — that, while important, are not the kind of activities that attract young men and women to enlist in the Marine Corps.
The challenge, the researchers said, is for commanders to maintain the morale of their troops by emphasizing the importance of the mission. Highfill-McRoy is a specialist in the methodology of health research; Booth-Kewley is a psychologist.
How am I choosing to use boredom? Recent research reveals that our brains need a certain amount of downtime, that is, boredom, in order to be productive. Those moments when our minds wander are the moments that give us breakthrough thinking, insight and innovation. Reaching for the Blackberry when you’re stuck in a line-up, or processing e-mail during tedious meetings: these activities displace the former vacancies from which aha! moments once emerged. This is the year to commit to a minimum RDA of boredom, to foster habits that keep you from filling every moment with productive or engaging activity.
Now this is interesting. I have found two schools of thought in regards to boredom and I think they both have application to this industry.
The first connection I wanted to make was how some of today’s veterans that seek work as security contractors in this industry expect to be involved in the same kind of combat or kinetic operations that they were in in the military. The truth of the matter is is that most security contracting is exactly what would be classified as boring to the Marines in the study mentioned in the quote up top. “Standing post, providing security for convoys, repairing vehicles or other equipment, manning communication gear, handling administrative chores” are exactly the kinds of jobs that contractors are hired to perform.
The industry also seeks out individuals with extensive combat histories and highly specialized backgrounds, and yet they are only required to stand guard at some FOB or remote site, be a shift leader for TCN or LN guard forces, or perform basic convoy operations. For some guys, this is a nice break from their prior deployments in the military, but for others, you can just tell that security contracting is not for them. lol
Another group of contractors you might see would be former military folks or non-military with very little to no combat history, or they might be one of those types similar to the Marines mentioned in this first article. Because they were so aggravated in the military or past job by their non-kinetic operations (or their extremely boring post), that they come to the security contracting industry expecting something different with more action. When they see that it is actually more boring than they experienced in their prior deployments in the military or whatever job, you can only imagine what kinds of behavior you might expect with that kind of combination. Some learn to adjust, but others fail.
So does this mix of personalities and low-kinetic environments in war zones lead to possible incidents within our industry? Maybe. It is an interesting thought, and it would be interesting to do a similar study about the current wartime security contracting industry. Because this might explain why we continue to see embarrassing incidents arise from time to time due to contractors behaving badly out there. It could also explain some of the issues contractors have at the home front. (divorces, money issues, etc.)
Now for the good part of boredom. Often times out in the field, guys will fill the down time with activity on their computers. But they still have to be out on post or on a convoy for their duties, far from access to a computer. Plus their attention needs to be focused on some gate or the road or whatever. These are the mindless activities that require discipline, vigilance and focus, and yet lead to some serious boredom. Just staring out into the desert or ocean, or at some gate or warehouse for hours on end….. Pure boredom.
What is good about this boredom though is that guys are able to have those ‘a ha’ moments, because that duty actually allows them to have the “breakthrough thinking, insight and innovation”. It is really cool for those of us that are constantly online reading, researching, writing a blog, gaming, or doing online classes. You can really keep busy if you are immersed in all that technology. Having a break can be nice and it can allow you to think.
For this blog I often come up with all sorts of things when I have down time or doing some kind of boring activity. I think of stuff while on post, driving, running, you name it. But like the quote mentioned, you have to make time for boredom if you want your brain to process. At home or even overseas, that can be tough when you have a smart phone in your pocket, or a computer in your bag that you can always browse with or play games with.
So for those contractors out there reading this, the time spent on your lonely post or doing road work, could actually be a good thing if you are able to look at in a ‘glass half full’ kind of way. You are not only focused on providing security or driving, but you are also allowing your brain to ‘incubate, illuminate‘. Because the ‘saturation’ phase might have happened the night before or whenever.
In other words, that non-kinetic security contractor job that might seem boring, could actually be a perfect opportunity for you to innovate, create, and come up with some amazing solutions to complex problems. Or you can let the boredom of your job get to you, and you do something stupid on the job or act out aggressively in order to alleviate that boredom or lack of action on your contract. Stuff to think about and as Sun Tzu says “know yourself“. –Matt
War zone boredom for Marines can lead to misbehavior when they return home, study finds
Social Medai in 2011: Six Choices You Need to Make
War zone boredom for Marines can lead to misbehavior when they return home, study finds
By Tony Perry
May 21, 2010
It’s long been assumed — correctly — that a Marine who experiences the psychological trauma of combat in Iraq or Afghanistan has an increased chance of getting into trouble when he comes home.
But two researchers at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego have found another deployment experience that can be an even greater precursor of future bad behavior: boredom.
A survey of 1,543 Marines at Camp Pendleton, Twentynine Palms and the Marine base in Okinawa, Japan, found that the Marine most likely to disobey orders, get into physical confrontations, neglect his family or run afoul of the police is the one who reports that his war zone deployment was marked by boredom.
Dr. Stephanie Booth-Kewley and Robyn Highfill-McRoy, of the research center’s behavioral sciences and epidemiology department, reported on their study to the Navy and Marine Corps Combat & Operational Stress Conference this week in San Diego. Their findings may later be published in the journal Aggressive Behavior.
Of the Marines surveyed, the researchers said, fully one-quarter had had repeated instances of misconduct/misbehavior in the months after returning from deployment; 17.1% screened positive for possible post-traumatic stress disorder.
For both PTSD and misbehavior, what the researchers called “deployment-related stressors” were a greater factor than combat.
Marines who said their deployment was marked by boredom, monotony, lack of privacy and lack of days off are three times more likely to engage in antisocial behavior than those with different experiences, the researchers found. Other stressors include family worries, money problems and run-ins with deployed leadership.
The study also concluded that divorced Marines, younger Marines and those with mild traumatic-brain injury are also more likely to display such behavior when they return. The average age of the Marines in the survey was 26 years; 46% had had multiple deployments.
Military boredom has been studied since World War II by a variety of researchers. A common conclusion is that boredom leads to alienation and then resentment and anger.
The findings of the current study take on added significance given the “non-kinetic” nature of much of the Marines’ counter-insurgency mission in Afghanistan.
Few troops will see active combat. But nearly all will be assigned tasks — standing post, providing security for convoys, repairing vehicles or other equipment, manning communication gear, handling administrative chores — that, while important, are not the kind of activities that attract young men and women to enlist in the Marine Corps.
The challenge, the researchers said, is for commanders to maintain the morale of their troops by emphasizing the importance of the mission. Highfill-McRoy is a specialist in the methodology of health research; Booth-Kewley is a psychologist.
Navy Capt. Paul Hammer, director of the Naval Center for Combat & Operational Stress Control at Naval Medical Center San Diego, said the finding about boredom leading to antisocial behavior is not altogether surprising.
“What’s the best way to stop being bored?” he asked rhetorically. “Get into some trouble.”
Story here.
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Social Medai in 2011: Six Choices You Need to Make
By Alexandra Samuel
January 4, 2011
2011. This is the year that will shape the future of our lives online.
After all, 2010 was the year we woke up and started asking the tough questions about our always-on, connected lifestyle. Questions like “What kind of brain is the Web giving us?” And does “juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information..change how people think and behave”?
In the big picture, this was a reasonably quick wake-up call; we’re already examining the social web’s effect on us and most of us have only been on Facebook for 3-4 years, have carried an iPhone for 2-3 years (and a Droid for less), and have been on our BlackBerries for, at most, 8 years. We’re still in the early days of creating a new society in which our lives are lived online as much as face-to-face. This is the year for us to start making choices about what we want that society to look like.
Here are the 6 most important choices for you to make this year — the choices that will determine both the quality of your life online and of your relationships offline:
What am I choosing to do on the Web? Imagine turning your computer off every time you turn away from it, and then using the next boot-up cycle to think about what you want to accomplish when you get back online. I’m not advocating that kind of wear and tear on your on/off switch, but I know that our lives online would be infinitely more satisfying if we each took 30 seconds to stop and think about what we want to experience or achieve each time we go back to the Internet.
The pace of our online lives intensifies the need for absolutely clarity about our personal and professional goals: the Internet hurls so many tasks, distractions and genuine opportunities our way that it’s easy to get blown off course. But if you’re clear about what you want the web to do for you — the kinds of relationships you want to build, the conversations you want to have, the ideas you want to express — your time online can actually support and sharpen your vision for a fulfilling life. Make 2011 the year in which the web becomes a means of pursuing your personal and professional priorities, rather than an end in itself.
Who am I choosing to be online? Anyone who has played a video game or hung out in Second Life has encountered the temptation to reinvent oneself as a seven-foot tall werewolf or a voluptuous cheerleader. But you don’t need a salacious fantasy to craft an online persona that is subtly or even dramatically different from your offline self. Your offline self is lumbered with a job, a set of expectations from friends, family and colleagues, and maybe some body image neuroses. Your online self can be anyone you’ve dreamed of being, or someone you already secretly are. And since the persona you create for yourself online inevitably bleeds over to your life offline, creating the best version of yourself online will invariably help you become the person you want to be, online and off. Start bringing that online person to life now.
What problems am I choosing to fix with the help of the Internet? The village that needs a new water pump. The prospect of climate change. The aunt who needs a new beau. The creative vacuum left by the implosion of your garage band. Whether it’s a problem for you, your community or the world, the Internet can help you fix it. Tithing 10% of your time online — from micro-volunteering to online activism to writing a heartfelt note to a lonely friend — is a structured way to ensure that the Internet becomes part of the solution instead of part of the problem. This can be the year in which you get serious about the Internet as the single most promising problem-solver in a world that faces many fast-growing problems.
Am I choosing to be a brand or a person online? Much attention has been paid to “personal brand management” or “reputation management” online. You can choose to live your online life as a brand, and commit yourself to a strategic online presence that is based on maximizing the ROI of your every online utterance. Or you can choose to be a person, committed to online authenticity not because it’s a best practice for social media marketing, but because it’s an extension of your offline integrity. You get to choose whether you live in an online world that’s made up of the interaction among brands or one that’s made up of interaction among people. The way you (and the rest of us) engage online in 2011 will set the pattern for our future.
How am I choosing to use boredom? Recent research reveals that our brains need a certain amount of downtime, that is, boredom, in order to be productive. Those moments when our minds wander are the moments that give us breakthrough thinking, insight and innovation. Reaching for the Blackberry when you’re stuck in a line-up, or processing e-mail during tedious meetings: these activities displace the former vacancies from which aha! moments once emerged. This is the year to commit to a minimum RDA of boredom, to foster habits that keep you from filling every moment with productive or engaging activity.
How am I choosing to live online? Your time online is full of frustrations, from web sites that crash to people who write flames instead of comments. You can let these frustrations turn you off of social media. But remember that in 2011, as in every previous year, the amount of time you spend online will increase. The Internet is woven into the fabric of your daily life. In a very real way, you live there. It’s up to you, to each of us, to make the choices that will make it a good place to live.
Where are you going to ask for help online?We’re all struggling with the choices that the web now asks us to make on a daily basis: choices that were unimaginable even a decade ago. Identifying the challenges where you need some support, and the specific networks or communities where you are going to look for it, is crucial to moving forward in your life online.
What are the online challenges you’re facing? Leave a comment so that we can start tackling them right here.
Alexandra Samuel is the Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University and the co-founder of Social Signal.
Story here.
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Psychology of Boredom (Wikipedia)
Boredom has been defined by C. D. Fisher in terms of its central psychological processes: “an unpleasant, transient affective state in which the individual feels a pervasive lack of interest in and difficulty concentrating on the current activity.” M. R. Leary and others describe boredom as “an affective experience associated with cognitive attentional processes.” In positive psychology, boredom is described as a response to a moderate challenge for which the subject has more than enough skill.
There are three types of boredom, all of which involve problems of engagement of attention. These include times when we are prevented from engaging in some wanted activity, when we are forced to engage in some unwanted activity, or when we are simply unable, for no apparent reason, to maintain engagement in any activity or spectacle. Boredom proneness is a tendency to experience boredom of all types. This is typically assessed by the Boredom Proneness Scale. Consistent with the definition provided above, recent research has found that boredom proneness is clearly and consistently associated with failures of attention. Boredom and boredom proneness are both theoretically and empirically linked to depression and depressive symptoms. Nonetheless, boredom proneness has been found to be as strongly correlated with attentional lapses as with depression. Although boredom is often viewed as a trivial and mild irritant, proneness to boredom has been linked to a very diverse range of possible psychological, physical, educational, and social problems.
Philosophy
Boredom is a condition characterized by perception of one’s environment as dull, tedious, and lacking in stimulation. This can result from leisure and a lack of aesthetic interests. Labor, however, and even art may be alienated and passive, or immersed in tedium. There is an inherent anxiety in boredom; people will expend considerable effort to prevent or remedy it, yet in many circumstances, it is accepted as suffering to be endured. Common passive ways to escape boredom are to sleep or to think creative thoughts (daydream). Typical active solutions consist in an intentional activity of some sort, often something new, as familiarity and repetition lead to the tedious.
Boredom also plays a role in existentialist thought. In contexts where one is confined, spatially or otherwise, boredom may be met with various religious activities, not because religion would want to associate itself with tedium, but rather, partly because boredom may be taken as the essential human condition, to which God, wisdom, or morality are the ultimate answers. Boredom is in fact taken in this sense by virtually all existentialist philosophers as well as by Schopenhauer. Heidegger wrote about boredom in two texts available in English, in the 1929/30 semester lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, and again in the essay What is Metaphysics? published in the same year. In the lecture, Heidegger included about 100 pages on boredom, probably the most extensive philosophical treatment ever of the subject. He focused on waiting at train stations in particular as a major context of boredom. In Kierkegaard’s remark in Either/Or, that “patience cannot be depicted” visually, there is a sense that any immediate moment of life may be fundamentally tedious. Blaise Pascal in the Pensées discusses the human condition in saying “we seek rest in a struggle against some obstacles. And when we have overcome these, rest proves unbearable because of the boredom it produces”, and later states that “only an infinite and immutable object – that is, God himself – can fill this infinite abyss.”
Without stimulus or focus, the individual is confronted with nothingness, the meaninglessness of existence, and experiences existential anxiety. Heidegger states this idea nicely: “Profound boredom, drifting here and there in the abysses of our existence like a muffling fog, removes all things and men and oneself along with it into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals being as a whole.” Arthur Schopenhauer used the existence of boredom in an attempt to prove the vanity of human existence, stating, “…for if life, in the desire for which our essence and existence consists, possessed in itself a positive value and real content, there would be no such thing as boredom: mere existence would fulfil and satisfy us.”
Erich Fromm and other thinkers of critical theory speak of boredom as a common psychological response to industrial society, where people are required to engage in alienated labor. According to Fromm, boredom is “perhaps the most important source of aggression and destructiveness today.” For Fromm, the search for thrills and novelty that characterizes consumer culture are not solutions to boredom, but mere distractions from boredom which, he argues, continues unconsciously. Above and beyond taste and character, the universal case of boredom consists in any instance of waiting, as Heidegger noted, such as in line, for someone else to arrive or finish a task, or while one is travelling somewhere. The automobile requires fast reflexes, making its operator busy and hence, perhaps for other reasons as well, making the ride more tedious despite being over sooner.
Causes and effects
Although it has not been widely studied, research on boredom suggests that boredom is a major factor impacting diverse areas of a person’s life. People ranked low on a boredom-proneness scale were found to have better performance in a wide variety of aspects of their lives, including career, education, and autonomy. Boredom can be a symptom of clinical depression. Boredom can be a form of learned helplessness, a phenomenon closely related to depression. Some philosophies of parenting propose that if children are raised in an environment devoid of stimuli, and are not allowed or encouraged to interact with their environment, they will fail to develop the mental capacities to do so.
In a learning environment, a common cause of boredom is lack of understanding; for instance, if one is not following or connecting to the material in a class or lecture, it will usually seem boring. However, the opposite can also be true; something that is too easily understood, simple or transparent, can also be boring. Boredom is often inversely related to learning, and in school it may be a sign that a student is not challenged enough, or too challenged. An activity that is predictable to the students is likely to bore them.
A study of 1989 indicated that an individual’s impression of boredom may be influenced by the individual’s degree of attention, as a higher acoustic level of distraction from the environment correlated with higher reportings of boredom.
Boredom has been studied as being related to drug abuse among teens. Boredom has been proposed as a cause of pathological gambling behavior. A study found results consistent with the hypothesis that pathological gamblers seek stimulation to avoid states of boredom and depression.
Since the advent of the internet and other communicative means, access to curing boredom has new mediums. Video games and web pages have all provide the end user a different experience in their attempt to cure boredom.
Wikipedia for Boredom here.