I’m Bored!

Entertainment is all around us but, is too much stimulation boring?

Did you know that our attention spans are now thought to be less than that of a goldfish (8 seconds).  We’re hard wired to seek everything that is “new”.  It gives us that little hit of dopamine and it feels oh so good!  Then it’s no longer new and now we’re bored again.  So, we go about looking for new forms of entertainment.  Let’s face it, we’re addicts in a perpetual loop.

Why?  100’s of TV channels, 24-hour shopping, texting, apps, social media, the internet, you get the picture … we’re bored.  Our kids are bored.

We have forgotten how to use our brains.  How to create, imagine, read, think …just “be”.

Chronic boredom is to blame for our negative outcomes, overeating, gambling, truancy, antisocial behavior, drug use, accidents, risk taking and oh so much more!

But here’s the real danger!

We are in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution and it is faster, broader and more impactful than any of those that preceded it.

We are literally lurching from one global catastrophe to the next.  Pandemic, war, extreme political division, cost of living crises, and climate change – the challenges are coming from every direction.  But we will adapt, right?  Isn’t that what we humans have done through time? 

This time we’re switching between four responses:

• Fight – people are raising their voices against the injustice of it all.
• Flight – people are looking for options, entertainment/distractions.
• Focus – people are just trying to focus on what they can control.
• Freeze – some of us are just turning everything off and checking out completely.

According to The World Economic Forum, Deloitte, and McKinsey, creativity is in the top 3 most sought-after skills needed to survive the 4th Industrial Revolution since it is a cognitive skill that simply cannot be automated. In fact, McKinsey estimates that it is now even more important than complex information processing and interpretation, as well as advanced literacy and writing skills, in that the demand for skills involving a high degree of creativity is anticipated to increase by approximately 14 percent in Europe and 19 percent in the United States in the near future.

We need: Creative Thinking – for original ideas and unique ways to solve our problems.

Do you see the problem? Or, did I lose you in the second paragraph?