TheStudyofLifeBoredom Bargdill JPP2000

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The study of life boredom
Article in Journal of Phenomenological Psychology · September 2000

DOI: 10.1163/15691620051090979
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THE STUDY OF LIFE BOREDOM1
RICHARD W. BARGDILL
Duquesne University
A B STRACT
This article extends the study of a phenomenological investigation (Bargdill,
R. W., 2000) in which six participants wrote protocols and gave interviews
describing the experience of being bored with their lives. This study found
that the participants gradually became bored after they had compromised
their life-projects for less desired projects. The participants felt emotionally
ambivalent because they were thematically angry with others involved in
their compromises while being pre-re ectively angry with themselves. The
participants non-thematically adopted passive and avoidant stances toward
their lives that allowed their boredom to spread to more aspects of their
lives. The participants’ boredom led them to identity issues because they
no longer were actively working toward projects. They felt empty and apa-
thetic because they felt every action led to boredom, and thus action was
futile. Preliminary distinctions between the experience of life boredom and
depression are considered.
The Study of Life Boredom

At some point in everyone’s life there is an experience of being bored.
We may nd ourselves bored by certain events such as a book, a job,
or by others. At times, we may even be bored with ourselves, com-
plaining that there is nothing for us to do or that nothing interests us.
While boredom is often attributed to the situation in which it arises,
evidence suggests that certain people are more prone to being bored
than others. These people describe themselves as being bored more fre-
quently and across a variety of situations. This habitual boredom sug-
gests a more serious psychological issue.
Psychological and social research demonstrates that a person experi-
encing boredom often attempts to alleviate this feeling. These attempts
can be associated with social ills, such as drug use, vandalism, gam-
bling, and other self-destructive behaviors. For example, drug abuse
journals report that boredom is a major factor in the abuse of drugs
(Iso et al., 1991; Johnston & O’Malley 1986; Samuels & Samuels, 1974).
A drug abuser is more likely to use drugs when bored and more likely
Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 31, No. 2, 2000, 188–219
188
LIFE BOREDOM 189
to leave treatment due to boredom (Sherman et al., 1989). In addition,

vandals, prisoners, and high school drop-outs (Farrell, 1988; Kirsch,
1986) all cite boredom as a main contributor to their behavior.
Similar ndings concerning addictive behavior note that pathological
gamblers roll the dice in order to avoid or relieve feelings of boredom
(Blasczynski et al., 1995). Other research associates boredom with eat-
ing disorders (Abramson & Stinson, 1977; Leon & Chamberlain, 1973),
excessive cigarette smoking (Ferguson, 1973), and increased drinking
(Forsyth & Hundleby, 1987). Furthermore, some authors (e.g., Boss,
1969) believe boredom and, in eVect, the social ills linked to it will be
an increasing problem in the future.
Because of the severe problems associated with habitual boredom,
this phenomenon warrants further study. Accordingly, I will review the
literature on boredom as a psychological issue as approached by psy-
chologists from diVerent paradigms. I will then describe an empirical
phenomenological study of the experience of life-boredom.
Literature R eview
Surprisingly, a majority of the research on boredom concentrates on
the situational determinants of boredom rather than the assessment of
those who experience boredom habitually. This literature review will
concentrate on studies that focus on habitual boredom, or the “bored
personality.”
Industrial and human factors research on boredom typically suggests
that physical monotony is seen as the necessary and suYcient condition
for the occurrence of boredom. However, O’Hanlon (1980) notes that
degrees of boredom reported by diVerent individuals in the same mono-
tonous working environment vary greatly. He suggests some workers
performing monotonous jobs are not bored at all, while others claim
they exert more ‘eVort’ to pay attention to their jobs than their co-
workers. O’Hanlon suggests that any task requires that an individual
have some interest in accomplishing the task and at the same time the
task requires the individual’s attention. EVort is a concept that alludes
to these subjective components of boredom. Thus, if the experience is
not “objective” (determined by the stimulus) then certain people could
experience boredom chronically.
Cognitive researchers nd that some people are bored all the time
regardless of the situation or the type of stimuli present in that situa-
tion. Smith (1981) notes that the most robust nding in cognitive research
is that extroverts seem much more likely to be bored than introverts.
This suggests that personality factors make extroverts more likely to be
190 RICHARD W. BARGDILL
situationally bored, and thus eventually make them more likely to be

habitually bored as well.
Larson and Richards (1991), educational researchers, note that the
same youths who report a high frequency of boredom during school-
work also experience high rates of boredom outside school. This sug-
gests that students who are most bored in school are not people who
have something tremendously exciting they would rather be doing. They
are youths who report boredom across many situations; this suggests
that boredom may be a trait.
In 1986, Farmer and Sundberg developed the Boredom Proneness
Scale to address the disposition of bored individuals. They state that
the boredom-prone individual is “one who experiences varying degrees
of depression, hopelessness, loneliness, and distractibility. . . . Boredom-
prone persons tend to be amotivating and display little evidence of
autonomous orientation . . .” (p. 14) Thus, Farmer and Sundberg sug-
gest that there is a group of people who are bored to a greater degree
than the rest of the population.
The psychodynamic literature provides a few theories about patients
who are habitually bored. Fenichel (1951) describes pathological bore-
dom as habitually occurring when drives or wishes exist, but their objects
or aims are repressed. In pathological boredom, Fenichel thinks people
experience the tension between instinctual impulses (drives) and unful-
lled grati cation (objects) as a longing for something without knowing
what it is they wish for. Therefore, people are left to do nothing and
experience a sense of aimlessness.
Wangh (1979) writes, “[T ]he bored person, being most inclined to
ascribe his state of mind and mood to outside circumstances, usually
feels superior, while the person who complains of emptiness, being basi-
cally depressed, is apt to feel inferior” (p. 519). For Wangh, boredom is
a transitory emotion, except in cases where boredom prevents the indi-
vidual from slipping in to more detrimental states such as depression.
In Neurosis and Human Growth, Horney (1950) describes the neurotic
personality style of “resignation”. The resigned personality shows famil-
iar symptoms of boredom such as repression of wish, disinterest in world,
and looking to the world for shallow enjoyment. The resigned type
shrinks away from life and growth by not facing this inner con ict.
The resigned type believes that life should be “easy, painless, and
eVortless.” So the resigned type has the absence of any serious strivings
and the aversion to putting forth an eVort. The resigned type appears
to dabble in many things but master none due to a lack of commitment.
The very essence of this solution is withdrawing from active living.
LIFE BOREDOM 191
Several existential authors think that people’s experience of being

bored with their lives is primarily a result of inability to create mean-
ingful existences. Sartre (1947) thinks that life has no a priori meaning,
and individuals create all the meaning in their lives. At each moment,
we are responsible for choosing the meaning of our situations. Thus,
bored persons nd themselves waiting for others to make their lives
meaningful.
O’Connor (1967) agrees with Sartre and feels that we usually avoid
boredom’s insight of freedom and responsibility because the require-
ment to create meaning and value is too overwhelming for us. Thus,
our choices remain largely passive and unre ective responses to envi-
ronmental pressures (p. 381). This also means that we generally accept
a theory of determinism, genetics, or environmental factors as having
control over us.
For Straus (1980) and Knowles (1986), boredom shows itself as the
blocking of the process of becoming. To become is to proceed toward
the future. In becoming, people have goals and then attempt to actual-
ize those possible goals. When becoming is blocked, Straus and Knowles
feel that people are unable to foresee meaningful futures; people no
longer experience themselves as a process. Instead, they experience them-
selves more as a determined object. Boredom reveals the present as cut
oV from the future.
Clive (1967) suggests that contemporary society provides the condi-
tions to make boredom a prevalent and habitual emotional experience.
Our times are plagued by profound disappointments and setbacks which
are the result of an irrepressible drive for change. The disappointments
arise because change is supposed to be change for the better, and Clive
feels that many societal changes simply create new problems and dis-
appointments.
This review reveals that there are many diVering perspectives on the
cause and meanings of habitual boredom. However, most of the treat-
ment of habitual boredom is speculative or theoretical. The theories of
habitual boredom are drawn from observations of clinicians or from
conclusions of research done on situational boredom. While Farmer and
Sundberg developed a scale to determine who is prone to boredom,
there is no research as to what conditions may lead to this tempera-
ment and the processes associated with it. In order to address this short-
coming, the present study goes to the source, to the people who consider
themselves bored with their life. This study explores the process that
leads to that boredom, the psychological experience of life boredom,
and the possibility of the resolution of that experience.
Method
participants
Six participants were recruited by advertising in wide-reaching news-
papers and by placing yers in a wide range of venues. They were cho-
sen based on their interest in the research, their diversity with respect
to age and gender, and their ability to articulate their experience.
The participants (P’s) can be characterized as follows:
P1 was a 28-year-old Caucasian female. She initially became bored work-
ing on her dissertation. Her advisors needed help on their research work
and oVered funding for working with them. She would not have chosen
their topic and soon could not bring herself to work on it. She avoided
her advisors for long periods of time because she was ashamed that she
had nothing to show them.
P2 was a 67-year-old Jewish mother of six. Her goal was to nd some-
one who loved her for who she is, yet, she has remained married to man
who she nds emotionally abusive and cold. Motherhood left her with
loads of work that she found unsatisfying, but when the children left she
suVered a complete loss of identity. She had attempted suicide because
she found her life empty and could nd no relief from her boredom.
P3 was a 33-year-old Caucasian male who became bored after being
hospitalized for a mental illness. He felt that subsequent hospital stays,
changes in high schools, and lost friendships had led him to life-bore-
dom and prevented him from getting a college degree.
P4 was a 40-year-old African-American female. She noticed she was
bored with her life because she had changed jobs every few years. She
liked a challenge, and so she made frequent, but super cial, changes in
her life. She was currently working toward a master’s degree; yet, she
felt she might become bored with that too.
P5 was a 49-year-old Caucasian male who originally wanted to be an
astronomer. However, he had problems with a math course in high school
and changed his focus to evangelical religion. In college, he lost his faith
in God and his faith in himself. Since that time, he has been bored with
his life. He has jumped from job to job never nishing what he has
started.
P6 was a 16-year-old Caucasian male who was bored with his school,
bored with his town, but most of all, bored with being treated as a kid.
His goal is to be treated like an adult although he has done little to
deserve that treatment. He felt his experience of boredom made him
underachieve as a student and had brought him to the borderline of
delinquency.
Procedures
The speci c method I employed was an empirical-phenomenological
method developed from the phenomenological psychological research
LIFE BOREDOM 193
tradition (Giorgi, 1975). In this method, researchers perform a qualita-

tive narrative analysis of peoples’ everyday accounts of the phenome-
non being studied. Through this method, researchers seek to interpret
psychological meanings from the everyday descriptions. These psycho-
logical meanings are inherent within the narrative, but only implicitly;
they emerge for the researcher in the course of interpretive analysis.
In this case the participants were asked to write a description of the
experience of feeling bored with their lives. In particular the researcher
requested that they provide a written protocol in response to the fol-
lowing question:
Please describe, in as much detail as possible, your experience of being bored with
your life. Please include how this experience arose, the experience itself, and how this
experience came to a resolution, if it did. Give enough detail so that someone who has
never experienced an event of this kind would know just what it was like for you.
After reading the protocols several times, interviews were conducted to

clarify any questions or ambiguities found in the written descriptions.
The integration of the written and transcribed interview provided the
material that formed the edited synthesis, the basis for each individual’s
case study.
the edited synthesis

The edited synthesis is the protocol combined with the interview minus
any information that would identify the participant. An example of an
edited synthesis for one of the participants is provided in Appendix I.
The participant received the following instructions for the interview. The
researcher (R) told the participant (P) that the researcher would read
the participant’s own written protocol to him or her. When the researcher
paused in his reading of the protocol, this would indicate that he would
like to know more about the proceeding events. Any pause would mean
“Could you tell me more about that?”. This approach was used in order
to avoid leading questions. Pauses and the participant’s responses were
marked oV from the original written protocol by brackets. Direct ques-
tions asked by the researcher also appeared in the bracketed text.
meaning units
Each edited synthesis was divided into smaller, numbered units, each
unit highlighting shifts in the participant’s meaning as the researcher
perceived these shifts. Giorgi (1985) writes,
[T]he meaning units that emerge as a consequence of the analysis are
spontaneously perceived discriminations within the subject’s description
arrived at when the researcher assumes a psychological attitude toward

the concrete description, and . . . becomes aware of a change of mean-
ing of the situation for the subject that appears to be psychologically sen-
sitive. ( p. 11)
Through this methodological move, the researcher became more attuned

to the meanings within the participant’s account. Giorgi writes, “Thus,
the method allows the lived sense of these terms to operate sponta-
neously rst and later tries to assess more precisely the meaning of the
key terms by analyzing the attitudes and set actually adopted” (p. 12).
Meaning units were delineated in preparation for the next step of elu-
cidating the central themes of these accounts.
central themes
Each meaning unit was re-examined, but this time in terms of its psy-
chological signi cance and relevance to the overall meaning of being
bored with one’s life. The relevance of material was judged by asking,
“How am I understanding this phenomenon such that this statement
reveals it?” Wertz (1983) writes of the researcher at this stage, “He now
takes a step back and wonders what this particular way of living the
situation is all about. Breaking his original fusion with the subject, he
readies himself to re ect, to think interestedly about where his subject
is, how he got there, what it means to be there, etc.” (p. 205). Giorgi
adds, “After the natural [meaning] units have been delineated, one tries
to state as simply as possible the theme that dominates the natural unit
within the same attitude that de ned the units” (1975, p. 87). This
transformation of the meaning units into psychologically signi cant themes
(also called constituents) prepared the data for a new synthesis.
individual situated narrative

The integration of the central themes and their mutual implication into
a descriptive statement formed the individual situated narrative. The
aim was to capture the meanings and signi cance of each participant’s
experience by moving from the everyday meaning to the psychological
meaning of the phenomenon (Wertz, 1983, p. 228). This individual sit-
uated narrative remained close to the participant’s speci c meanings,
while seeking a comprehensive psychological view of that individual’s
experience. The limitation of the individual situated narrative is that it
is only one example of a phenomenon. An individual situated narrative
was completed for each participant providing the base from which a
general structure can be derived.
LIFE BOREDOM 195
general psychological structure

Once all individual situated narratives were complete, the researcher
compared each one with the others. At this point, the researcher re ected
on those constituents and structures that were common to all individ-
ual situated narratives as well as any ways in which each structure could
be considered a variation of the others. The results of these compar-
isons produced the general psychological structure.
The general structure established the psychological dynamics of the
phenomenon that held true invariably across the speci c experiences
studied. Wertz (1983) writes that the general psychological structure
“involves understanding diverse individual cases as individual instances
of something more general and articulating this generality of which they
are particular instances” (p. 228). Later, Wertz describes the general
psychological structure as a formulation of “the essential, that is, both
the necessary and suYcient conditions, constituents, and structural rela-
tions which constitute the phenomenon in general, that is, in all instances
of the phenomenon under consideration” (p. 235). The general struc-
ture represents the major nding of this study.
Findings
In the following paragraphs I will summarize a general structure of life-
boredom. The general structure established the psychological dynamics
of life-boredom that held true invariably across the speci c experiences
studied. I have also included examples from the edited synthesis of var-
ious participants which help support the general themes being discussed.
the general structure of being bored with one’s life

The participants, who became bored with their lives, originally found
themselves to be active and interested in their lives. They had goals
and life-projects that they were striving toward. They anticipated that
their goals were reachable, and yet often underestimated the require-
ments of their goals. However, in the initial stages of their projects, the
participants found themselves stuck by an event that they constituted as
being beyond their control.
P3: “Basically I was good up to the ninth grade in school. I was skiing
and doing a lot of activities and things. I had a lot of friends and peo-
ple who wanted to do things with me. My grades were pretty good, so
I planned to go to college . . . There was always something to do before
the time I got sick.”
P5: “I was originally interested in scienti c work, speci cally, becoming
an astronomer way back in junior high school . . . I don’t know if it was
the material itself or the teacher I had trouble with but, in any case, I
stumbled pretty badly in the tenth grade and became a little disillusioned
with it.”
The participants relinquished their original goals, apparently without

much of a ght. The participants chose paths that avoided making
stands for their own desires. They compromised those goals for other
less desired projects, and justi ed these compromises as being paths of
least resistance or eventually claimed these compromises as forced upon
them. In any case, the modi ed goals were not something they would
have originally chosen.
P1: P had mixed emotions about her dissertation topic. On one hand,
the topic of P’s dissertation was not something that P would have cho-
sen. She was interested in another area of study. On the other hand,
P felt quite honored that her advisors had asked her to work on their
project.
P2: P suggested that her pregnancy was what kept her from pursuing
more education; however, her attempts to return to school were short
lived and her goal to be a biologist or doctor seem more of a fantasy
than an actual possibility.
P5: “So at that point I changed my focus to religion. I would not have
originally gone into religion, but there were certain in uences in high
school that led to that.”
The participants became emotionally ambivalent after they had com-

promised their life-projects. They experienced divided feelings directed
at themselves and others, and yet, they only seemed to recognize feel-
ings that were directed towards others. They were aware of anger
towards others who they felt had “forced” them to compromise their
original goals for their modi ed goals. The participants blamed these
others and considered them responsible for their situations. At the same
time, the participants did not seem to be aware of self-directed emo-
tions of anger and responsibility for giving up on their original goals so
easily. These self-directed feelings would be ignored or kept at a pre-
re ective level. However, the participants attempts to deny or hide these
feelings would lead to their intensi cation; some things grow in the dark.
P5: When selecting a college, P’s pastor and parents convinced him to
go to a mainstream religious college rather than a hard-line evangelical
college. P came to feel anger toward these people for this action; yet,
he was less aware of anger toward himself for not taking a stand.
P6: P blames the town for being “pretty lame. Our whole town just sucks
and the people around it just suck.” On the other hand, he resists tak-
ing responsibility for missing opportunities by sleeping in.
P2: P is still married to a man she describes as “still a beast, he’s still
LIFE BOREDOM 197
cruel, and he’s still heartless. Every time he saw something was making
me happy he had to cut if oV . . . I’m still married to him and see him
on weekends.”
The participants began working on their modi ed projects, and again

those projects became stymied in the initial stages. Since the partici-
pants were torn in two directions, they were unable to give their new
projects their full eVort. When the projects became impeded, they did
not experience the resolve to continue working on them. They found
themselves frustrated with these modi ed projects. They tried some
diVerent approaches in attempts to make progress on these projects, but
soon they could no longer see any new perspectives. They found them-
selves repeating the same approaches that had initially failed, which led
them back to the same dead-ends.
P1: “If I went to school I would sort of pick up this same book and
open it back up to the same page and look at it and still not get any
new ideas. I went on like that for a while.”
P3: P tried a few diVerent times to go to college but frequently took on
too much. “One time I was going to school part time, working two part
time jobs, and seeing a doctor once a week.”
P5: “So once again it looks like I’ve kind of hit a brick wall with regard
to vocation. It might be a rubber wall which keeps bouncing me back
to where I started.”
The participants recognized themselves as being bored with their modi ed

projects. They could no longer see themselves making progress toward
their futures. They felt overwhelmed and helpless in the face of their
projects. Yet, they did not gain the assistance of others. They would
fantasize about solutions to their boredom; they were passively hopeful.
They hoped to be saved by someone else’s actions rather than their
own. The participants’ stances toward their projects, and their lives,
would become passive and avoidant.
P2: “So many times my life was like a daydream. I would sit around
and think about how nice it would be if I could get a job where I could
travel and be the singer. I could dance. I was a real good dancer. Maybe
I could get a job with Lawrence Welk. So I fantasized that somebody
might discover me someday. I’d be somebody someday. It never hap-
pened though I’m still waiting.”
P5: “I felt kind of overwhelmed by the choices to the point where you
have to take a step back and shut it out for a while. At that point, life
temporarily loses meaning for me.”
P1: “So I avoided my advisors for six months. I wouldn’t go to school
a lot of the time. If I would go to school, I would hide out in my oYce
so I wouldn’t have to see my advisors.”
They began to nd themselves bored with more aspects of their lives.

They found themselves bored with activities that they had previously
enjoyed. The participants recognized that they were acting in ways that
were uncharacteristic of themselves; they would not have acted in these
ways before they had become bored. Although they had some ideas
about diVerent possible projects that might change their boredom, they
no longer felt con dent enough to try new activities. They anticipated
that potential projects would become boring, and so they decided not
to bother with them.
P4: “Presently, I am bored with my whole life. None of the old things
I used to do bring enjoyment to me anymore. Nothing. [Boredom] cov-
ers my social life. It covers school. It covers work. It covers going to the
grocery store . . . It covers a lot of things. My hair.”
P5: “I might think that I would become bored with whatever activity
I’m looking at. I project boredom. I’m looking ahead and saying ‘Oh
boy, it looks like it’s going to be boring after all.’ So I don’t even
start it.”
P3: “Too many ideas going through my mind . . . But I can’t stick to
things very long. Then you end up accomplishing nothing, and you’re
bored because you have all these ideas and they just don’t get done.”
The participants became aware of the self-directed feelings of anger,

doubt, and shame that had been hidden by ambivalence. These feel-
ings had intensi ed and could no longer be denied. Those self-directed
feelings had largely dissolved any previous feelings of con dence, desire,
and will that the participants had prior to their boredom. However,
when the participants became aware of these feelings they did not
attempt corrective actions, rather they continued a pattern of avoidance.
P1: P recognizes that ‘There’s a lot of self contempt.’ She acknowledges
that she wasted time avoiding her advisor and working on her project.
P5: P recognizes that boredom has led to a loss of “good self esteem . . .
and without it I become fragmented, un-focused, and that results in a
lack of will power to keep going in any given project.”
The participants found themselves questioning their own identities. These

questions centered around becoming self-aware of personal estrange-
ment. The participants no longer could understand themselves as being
the active, interested people they had been, nor were they actively work-
ing toward future goals. They wondered who they were. Although they
were passive and avoidant, they continued to become someone—some-
one they did not like.
P1: “I thought I wasn’t Ph.D. material or maybe I wasn’t cut out to do
this. I had all these doubts about whether I’d be able to do it.”
LIFE BOREDOM 199
P2: “Like you hear the young people today say ‘I’m trying to nd myself.
I’m looking for myself.’ I never found me. This person.”
P4: “But I’ve become more of a recluse over the past couple of years . . . I
used to be more of a people-person . . . I always have a scowl on my
face . . . It’s there without me even thinking about it. I don’t get any
enjoyment anymore. That bothers me.”
The participants’ questions of identity lead to feelings of emptiness. They
had no answers to their identity questions. While their pre-bored sense
of identity had burned up, nothing with a sense of vitality had devel-
oped to replace it. This left a vacuum. Nothingness. They no longer
knew what they wanted or what to do with themselves. They were no
longer throwing forward possibilities.
P1: “In the past, I have always been energetic in every area of my life.
But now, this problem I am having with my thesis work has had the
reverse eVect on my life. I felt like I couldn’t do anything, whereas before
I was sort of doing everything.”
P2: “But as I’m saying, for me as the one person myself, there was noth-
ing. There was really nothing. If you want to take it as a female reward,
raising your children. Fine. I had all that.”
P3: “I have memories in my head about how I was before it all broke
down. But I wish I could be like I was before I broke down. I can only
remember it, but I can’t feel how I was before I got sick.”
P5: “I lost my focus, and I lost the vision for my life and that former
excitement that I experienced.”
The participants had a sense of futility since they felt their actions would
not bring about the desired results. They were unable to hold the future
open; they were not able to see any direction in their lives. They lost
sight of a hopeful vision for their lives. They lost faith in themselves, in
terms of actively, willfully, and authentically in uencing their own lives.
Their limitations became more present to them than their possibilities.
P2: “It’s like you take a train, and you have a long ride, and you come
to the end, and where do you go? There’s nothing for you, nobody for
you. It’s like you’re in a big empty room. What do you do? Lay down
and die.”
P5: “When I lose my vision, I lose any idea or projection of what I want
to do in the future. I don’t have any distinct plans, or even an idea of
what I want to do and so I wanted to immerse myself more in the pre-
sent rather than projecting myself in the future, hoping that something
would work out in the near future.”
They could no longer envision a future that was diVerent from the pre-
sent. They began not to care. When participants were apathetic, they
tended to act in ways that they knew were not in their best interest,
in destructive ways.
P2: “So after so many years of loneliness and boredom, I thought, ‘What
now? It’s over with . . . So just end it.’”
P5: “Being in the disillusioned state I didn’t have the will power to be
disciplined. I knew what I was getting into, but I just didn’t care.”
P4: “I’ve found myself in precarious situations, with people I would oth-
erwise never be with if I wasn’t trying to avoid being bored. Just to have
something to do even if it’s negative. I mean sometimes I just go out
drinking if I’m bored.”
P6: When feeling bored and apathetic, P often resorted to teen mischief
which included drinking, buying and chewing tobacco, minor vandalism.
Not all participants resolved their experience of being bored. Those par-
ticipants who did, typically returned to having an active sense of agency
because someone else forced them to do so. Concerns such as lost jobs
or lost marriages placed new demands on the participants and made
them create new futures. This meant returning to active participation
in their lives.
P1: “I will have to make a decision about how to handle this, and soon,
for the university is not likely to let me sit here, staring at the walls, too
much longer.”
Participants began creating new goals by imagining new possibilities for

their lives. Unlike earlier fantastic solutions to their boredom, their new
solutions focused on possibilities that were within their active realm. By
creating new goals, new futures appeared. The participants who made
active choices at that point and experienced some initial success toward
those new goals did not currently see themselves as being bored.
P1: “I think it was diVerent because I picked it; actually against the
advice of other graduate students, who told me the same thing would
happen again . . . But that didn’t happen and I really got into this topic.”
P2: “But now I’m trying to nd myself. Now I’m taking piano lessons.
I’ve joined senior citizens, and I have a few lady friends.”
Discussion
This study found that the most important aspect in the experience of
life boredom was the development of emotional ambivalence. Ambivalent
feelings developed once the participants compromised their personal
goals for less desirable projects.
Whereas participants’ pre-bored selves appeared to be uni ed toward
their goals, they now were con icted and divided. They still desired
their original goals; however, in lieu of the obstacles of those goals the
participants chose to change or modify them. On a practical or ratio-
nal level, their decisions to modify their goals made sense to them. Yet,
LIFE BOREDOM 201
their decisions undermined the desires for their original goals. To some
degree, the participants understood that they were turning away from
their own-most selves, but felt compelled to work on these modi ed
projects that they soon found their hearts were not in. This turning
away from their own desires would become a repeated pattern of pas-
sivity and avoidance.
The participants were emotionally torn in two directions, and these
two similar but opposing emotional directions would develop simulta-
neously on two diVerent levels of awareness. Freud (1989) acknowledged
a similar structure, “Contrary thoughts are always closely connected
with each other and are often paired oV in such a way that the one
thought is excessively conscious while its counterpart is repressed and
unconscious” (p. 200).
On one hand, the participants would consciously feel anger and direct
blame towards the world and others. Ironically, the participants also
expected the solutions to their boredom to be provided by others. By
giving the world and others so much control over their lives, the partic-
ipants found themselves waiting for change instead of working towards it.
On the other hand, the participants pre-consciously felt anger and
directed blame toward themselves. Their attempts to deny, or ignore
their own self-directed feelings of anger, shame and doubt led to an
intensi cation of those feelings. Ignored feelings do not simply disap-
pear. Rather, they simmer, boil and burn. In this case, these feelings
burned up the participants former sense of con dence, will and active
living. When strengths atrophy and nothing new replaces those strengths,
the participants experienced feelings of emptiness.
This study is in agreement with the ndings of cognitive researchers
Larson and Richards (1991) who reported that the same youths expe-
rienced high rates of boredom inside and outside school. In this study,
the participants were initially bored with their modi ed projects, but
boredom spread to more aspects of their lives including activities that
they previously enjoyed. Instead of being open to the way the world
called forth particular emotional responses, the participants attuned them-
selves to a very limited set of emotional possibilities. Their experience
of being bored changed from a state to a trait.
Returning to the psychodynamic perspective, the participants in my
study appeared to be very similar to the resigned personality that Horney
(1950) described in Neurosis and Human Growth. Both Horney’s resigned
type and the participants experienced ambivalent con icts and withdrew
from active living.
In my study, I found no evidence that life boredom was the result
of instinctual impulses with repressed objects (Fenichel, 1951). However,

“repressed” objects may pertain more to situational boredom rather than
life boredom. Although Wangh (1979) felt that only depressed persons
would experience feelings of emptiness, I found that feelings of empti-
ness were also part of life boredom.
Some preliminary distinctions between boredom and depression are
in order. There are some signi cant diVerences between the experience
of life boredom and the cognitive triad of depression (Beck, 1967). The
rst aspect of the cognitive triad of depression is a negative view of
one’s self. According to Beck, depressed people totalize themselves as
being defective, deprived, or inadequate. They understand their nega-
tive experiences as a result of their own personal defects. Because of
these defects depressed people underestimate and criticize themselves,
believing that they are undesirable, worthless, and lack the psychologi-
cal necessities to be happy and content (Beck et al., 1979; p. 11).
In this study I found that the participants had a much diVerent expe-
rience of themselves. They began their original life projects with con dence
and expectations that their goals were well within their reach. In fact,
I believe that the participants were overcon dent and over-estimated
their own abilities. They expected to easily achieve their original goals.
For instance, regarding the beginning work on her dissertation ques-
tion, P1 said, “So I hoped that I would start in whatever direction, and
I guessed that when I started doing the research it would be obvious
to me what to do.”
Apparently initial troubles with life-projects did not immediately lead
the participants to doubt themselves, nor did they double their eVorts.
They tended to see the projects, instead of themselves, as less desirable
or unworthy. P5 said, “I don’t know if it was the material itself or the
teacher I had trouble with but in any case, I stumbled pretty badly in
the tenth grade and became a little disillusioned with [my original goal].”
Most of the participants could picture themselves as being happy, but
this happiness was usually dependent on the actions of others rather
than actions under their own control.
The second component of the cognitive triad consists of depressed
people’s tendency to interpret their ongoing experience negatively (Beck
et al., 1979; p. 11). The world is understood as making tremendous
demands or presenting insurmountable obstacles which keep them from
reaching their goals. Depressed people misinterpret their interactions
with the world and others in a way that leaves them feeling defeated
or deprived (p. 11).
The participants who experienced life boredom had similarities to this
second component as well as some subtle diVerences. The participants
LIFE BOREDOM 203
also ran into obstacles on the path to their projects. However, they felt
that they had the resources to overcome those obstacles. Yet, when it
came to using those resources, in the form of nding fresh perspectives
to their problems, the participants were unable to do so. They tried the
same approach over and over.
Instead of a series of tremendous demands, the bored participants
tended to believe there was one small hurdle that they tripped over.
Once they would get past their obstacles their lives would be back on
track. They underestimated the requirements of their goals. Moreover,
instead of seeking help when they became stuck, the participants often
avoided getting help from others. Not because they felt defeated rather
the participants felt too ashamed to ask for help. They thought they
should be able to accomplish the task on their own. In general, I tend
to think of shame as integral to life-boredom whereas guilt seems to be
more prominent in depression.
The third component of the cognitive triad is that depressed people
have a negative view of the future. They anticipate never-ending series
diYculties and perpetual suVering. Depressed people exhibit expecta-
tions of hardship, frustration, and deprivation. These expectations lead
the depressed people not to take up projects because they anticipate
that these projects will end in failure (Beck et al., 1979; p. 11).
The bored participants also tend to have a negative view of the future
even though initially their feelings were not as hopeless or pervasive as
in depression. I think that the participants felt they deserved and were
worthy of an interesting and active life. Although they did anticipate
boredom toward their own possibilities, they could fantasize or passively
hope for others to save them from their boredom. Fantasizing falls in
between the hopelessness of depression and imagining. Imagining or
active hope occurs when a person throws forward projects that are
within the realm of one’s real possibilities.
Several existential authors (e.g., Frankl, Boss, Clive) feel that con-
temporary society appears to have special factors which make people
particularly vulnerable to the agonies of boredom. In general, I found
no evidence to suggest that our culture has a large in uence in lead-
ing a person to boredom. The participants tended to blame others for
their situation, and under the broad category of others to blame, cul-
tural structures were mentioned. Yet, cultural structures only appeared
to be another target, in a series, toward which the participants directed
their anger. However, the method of protocol analysis utilized in this
study may not be the best method for uncovering cultural in uences
on the experience of boredom.
My ndings are in agreement with the perspectives of Knowles (1986)
and Straus (1980) in that the process of becoming was blocked by the
participants’ experiences of boredom. In addition, my study found that
although the participants’ active sense of becoming was blocked, they
passively continued to become—only they became people whom they
did not like. In time, the participants found that these passive, avoidant
aspects became a distinct, then dominant aspect of their identity. Therefore,
the bored participants were alienated from the future and estranged
from the past.
The existential position recognizes the need to create personal mean-
ing—which becomes the background for choice—to be a very impor-
tant feature of a person’s experience of boredom. In fact, I originally
thought boredom was a possible precursor to authenticity (Bargdill,
1999), providing an opportunity for people to take up their own most
possibilities. However, when faced with choosing the meaning for their
lives, people experientially appear to make ght, ight or freeze responses.
Boredom is equivalent to the freeze response. In this response, peo-
ple ignore the possibility of taking creative steps toward making their
lives meaningful. Instead, they wait for others—for outside assistance to
a very personal insight. Like a deer in the headlights, these people
freeze. They hope that the intrusive danger, meaninglessness, will dis-
appear and that they will be able to return to their daily lives. They
retain a passive hope; not a hope that leads to action, rather a hope
that someone will help them. They are between despair and joy. They
are in purgatory waiting and dependent on other people’s prayers. As
if they have seen Medusa, they stagnate, solidify. They are no longer
in motion. They are aware, but paralyzed. They are bored.
Appendix I: Edited Synthesis for P articipant One

“Margaret the Math G rad”
Until a few years ago, I had never really been bored with any
aspect of my life. [Well, I don’t think I have ever been in a situa-
tion where I had to do just one thing and nothing else. Through high
school, through college, I was always taking a bunch of diVerent classes.
Then, all of a sudden I had to do one thing, and I just got really bored
with it. Up until then, I had been doing lots of other diVerent things,
so maybe it was that. I had some of other things to go to. If I got tired
of the one subject I was studying I could go to something else.] School
interested me a great deal, and I was able to focus intently
upon all of my studies, and I achieved a measure of satisfac-
tion from doing so. [I think it was not only being satis ed with the
diVerent things I was doing and the being satis ed with the things I
LIFE BOREDOM 205
was learning in classes, but there somebody was teaching me, and I
always had immediate feedback from homework or exam grades or
something like that. But when I started doing my research, all of a sud-
den nobody was there teaching me anymore. So I was never sure how
much progress I was making. And I was not being evaluated right away.
So there wasn’t this immediate sense of satisfaction from research like
there was from class, I guess.] I nished all of my required course-
work for my Ph.D. approximately two years ago, and then
embarked upon a research project for my thesis work.
I fell into this project rather than choosing it, [I rst started
working with my advisors after they asked me to be a research assis-
tant, instead of being supported by teaching. So of course I said, “Yes.”
The project I started working on is the project which I ended up doing
my dissertation on—and that’s sort of how I fell into it. They had
money to support this work, and so, I started to work on this project
for them. Then, that was ne. But then when it came time to do my
work, I had been working on this project for a year. Instead of trying
to put something totally new together, they said, “Since you know so
much about this project, why don’t you just try to extend this research.”
It made sense to me at the time, and I suppose it still does make sense
to me. Sort of the direction they would lead me in, but that’s why I
sort of fell into it. It wasn’t like I had found out about it independently
and said, “That really interests me.” It sort of came about due to this
research position.] since at the time I was being supported by
research grants through my advisors, and this happened to be
the topic on which they needed work done. At rst, I was
excited about the project. [Well, rst of all I was excited that they
had come to me and ask me to do research with them. I felt like that
was a big honor. Most of the time you have to go seek out somebody
to do research with. So I was excited about that. I was also excited
about doing research, that’s what I went to grad school for. It is an
interesting topic. When it was rst presented, I thought: “Wow, this is
really great.” It’s something that’s really applicable. They were work-
ing with a company around the city, so we could go and see the results.
And I was going to be writing computer code, which I was really good
at. So I thought it would a good project.] Here was some original
work that they had written papers on and developed algo-
rithms for, and I was writing the computer programs that were
to test out the practical validity of their theories. It seemed
to me that this was what I had spent four years of graduate
study preparing to do—[I spent this time in graduate school taking
all these classes in applied math, and I was sort of focused in on applied
math. And I took all the classes with numerical algorithms, and by that
time, I had probably four or ve classes in numerical method. So here
is this project, an applied project, and I’m going to be testing out numer-
ical algorithms and that’s why I took all these classes: to be able to
something like this.] and in fact, I did it quite well. [They gave me
this project—and actually compared to how long it has taken me to do
my dissertation—they gave me this project to do: I had to write up this
computer program and test out all these diVerent cases, and so forth,
and I did it over the summer. So in three months, it was done and it
worked. We did some investigation and it just seemed so amazing, it
was done so fast.
R: Sounds like you were quite happy with it?
P: I think they were happy with what I’d done, and I was happy
with what I’d done, too.]
I nished my program, the numerical tests were done, and
I came out of it with my name on a jointly-published paper.
All a very good start for a edgling Ph.D. student in mathe-
matics. [Well, I think, “Yes, a very good start,” because I think at
that point I had passed all preliminary exams, I’d passed all my com-
prehensive exams, I was just about done with course-work. I started
working on this research project. I hadn’t done any original research
but had done these numerical tests, and I had my name on a paper—
a published paper in what was considered to be a very good refereed
journal. One of the things you need in order to get jobs when you
nish your Ph.D., is you have to have some record. It helps to have a
record of publication.]
Next came the time for us to decide what topic I should
pick for my original thesis work. This particular project is not
what I would have chosen, [I kind of think that is a big part of it,
of the problem. The advisors that I ended up working with, they are
the professors I would have chosen to work with. In fact, when I went
to school I knew ahead of time that I would probably want to work
with these people. But they work in a diVerent area of applied math,
which is what I thought I wanted to do research in. In fact, they had
a bunch of students at the same time as me and, everyone else was
working on their project except for me. I was working on this other
topic. If I had never started working with them on their research pro-
ject, I would probably ask them if I could work with them on this other
area of math, not the area I ended in.] but since I already knew
all of the background information, and since my advisors felt
LIFE BOREDOM 207
that there was further work to be done in the same area, it

was mutually agreed upon that I would try to further the
research that they had already done on this topic. [We talked
about what I was going to do my research on, and I had told them
that I was interested in this other area. We talked for a while about
what my options were, and the truth is that they told me that if I really
wanted to work in this other area, it would be ne with them. But that
I had already, in their opinion, spent a year and a half doing all the
background work on this area I was working on for them. So I would
sort of have to start over if I did work in a diVerent area. What they
said made a lot of sense to me at that time. I said, “Yeah, you’re prob-
ably right. I’ll see where I can go with this.” We discussed it, and all
agreed that this was going to be the fastest way for me to get nished.]
Again, I originally was excited and hoped that I would soon
be writing programs to test the new and improved theories
that I devised on my own. [In the beginning, I had a lot of enthu-
siasm. I had been successful in what I had done for them. So now it’s
time for me to work on my own thing, and I was thinking two years
and I’ll be done.
R: Was that part of the hope part?
P: Oh yeah. So I hoped that I would start in whatever direction,
and I guess that when I started doing research, it would be obvious to
me what to do. So I was kind of excited about it, and I thought I’m
just going to sit down and start doing it. In a couple years, I’ll gradu-
ate. I was excited and I was hoping that I would be done pretty soon.]
These new breakthroughs, however, were not so easily found.
[I thought I was going to sit there and it was all going to come to
me—how to go about solving this problem. Actually it wasn’t even a
matter of trying to solve the problem, it was a matter of trying to pose
the problem. I don’t know. Ideas were not coming to me, and I would
sit and read things over and over again and still not have any ideas
about where to go.] I began to nd myself despairing of ever
doing anything original on my own, [After not being able to come
up with anything, I just was thinking I have to create something out
of thin air. I have no idea of how to do that, and maybe I can’t do
that. For a long time I thought that way, and I thought that whatever
I came up with had to be something completely new, that nobody ever
thought of before. Which actually isn’t the case, but that’s what I thought
when I was rst trying to do this—I just had no idea.
R: Can you tell me more about this feeling of despairing?
P: I started having this feeling of despair, of never being able to do
it. I thought I wasn’t Ph.D. material or maybe I wasn’t a cut out to

do this. I had all these doubts about whether I’d be able to do it. And
I think that the more I sort of sat there and realized that there were
no ideas coming to me, the more I sort of got depressed about it. I
thought, “It’s never going to happen. I’m never going to come up with
anything that’s going to lead to a dissertation.”] because I had no
idea where to start. [That was the whole problem: I didn’t know
how to start coming up with ideas, and I didn’t know how to start
approaching the problem, how to start posing a problem. It was like I
was faced with this huge task, and I felt like I had to do it all in a
day. I thought I had to come up with the one big idea in a day, and
I didn’t know how to do that.] Eventually, my advisors wrote a
new grant proposal on the topic, in which they outlined sev-
eral directions that could be explored by further research. Now,
I had at least some idea of which way to head, [They wrote this
grant proposal. They took the problem, and what they did for me by
doing that is they posed several questions, like seven or eight diVerent
questions that they thought could lead to further research. So then we
sat down again after they wrote this, and we talked about some of the
questions. At least I had sort of a question and something to direct me.
So what I did, was after we talked about it, I picked one of questions
and this is what I’m going to try to work on.] and I began with
somewhat renewed enthusiasm to look for books and papers
on some of the topics. [Well, I felt like, “OK. Now I have a ques-
tion posed. So now I know where to look for answers.” I had renewed
enthusiasm because I felt like I know kind of where to start, so that
helps. So I went oV to the library and started looking up all this stuV,
started doing background research.
R: So just having a direction helped you?
P: Yeah, because I wasn’t looking for my own question anymore. I
had this question and it was like, OK now I have a question and can
go out and try to gure out how to answer it. At least I knew how to
start.] Unfortunately, these bursts of enthusiasm never seemed
to last for long. [(Laughing) When I rst looked at this proposal they
wrote, I picked out a question and then it was sort of going to lead
me into an area I had never studied. So with the renewed enthusiasm
I went out and got books on this area, and I started trying to teach
myself enough about it that I could gure out how to apply it to my
problem. That lasted for a while, I was reading through this book
making sure I understood what was going on. Then when it came to
trying to apply it to the problem we had, I got stuck every time. At
LIFE BOREDOM 209
that point, I started despairing again thinking, “Well, I can go out and
get this book and learn about this topic but I have no idea where to
go from there. I’m back in the same situation I was in before.”]
These days I nd myself sitting at my desk, on those occa-
sions when I force myself to go to school, staring at the book
from which I hope to nd ideas. [Well, this book I’m referring to
is on integral equations. I was teaching myself from it, and at that point,
I just did not know where to go. I wasn’t being supported by teach-
ing—I had a fellowship for a while. So I avoided my advisors for six
months. I wouldn’t go to school a lot of the time. If I would go to
school, I would hide out in my oYce so I wouldn’t have to see my
advisors. If I went to school, I would sort of pick up this same book
and open it back up to the same page and look at it and still not get
any new ideas. I went on like that for a while.
R: What was it about this book?
P: It was this book on integral equations and I was trying to take
and gure out how to apply it to this problem. I actually worked through
a lot of the book.] I rst checked out this book on March 1,
1996.
[R: What was it about having this book for a year?
P: What it is, is that I avoided it a lot of the time. I would look at
this book once or twice in the two months. I’d renew it, do the same
thing. I mean I really wasted a whole year by trying to avoid the whole
thing.] It is now almost one year later, and I still have not
nished working on the sections which I hope to apply to my
research. Every time I pick up the book, I leaf to the same
section, begin to reread the same chapter that I have read
maybe fty or sixty times, try to rewrite the theorems in the
context of my particular problem, come to the same dead end
and quit. [The same dead end, was that I would try to rewrite the
theorems in the context of my problem, and I would sort of always get
started. But I would work on the same thing and it never led anywhere.
But there was a problem, I got stuck at the same point and couldn’t
gure out how to get around it. So I would try the same approach or
a slightly diVerent approach, time after time, thinking that if I write
this down one more time, it’s going to come to me how I can get
around this problem, and I never could. In fact, I never did. I never
got around that problem.] I read it, but cannot seem to get excited
about it. [Every time I would read the book, it was never anything
that interested me a whole lot. It never interested me! When I tried to
teach it to myself from the book, it never interested me. I never got
excited. I don’t know if excited is the right word. I never really got
interested in the math that was going on.] I am positive that I could
do something with this, [At the time, I was sure that the problem
they had posed could be solved and that it could be done using this
method and that there should be some way to do it. I don’t know why
I was so positive about that, but for some reason I thought there has
to be a way to do it.] nd some breakthrough, but I cannot seem
to get past this barrier in my mind [I don’t know when the bar-
rier appeared, but at some point I had looked at the problem from the
same perspective for so long that I think there was just kind of this
wall. I felt like I just could never get past it. I would be like staring—
I guess I felt like there was something preventing me from seeing the
light. Like when I would read this stuV, I thought I was understand-
ing what I was reading and thought there would be some way it would
connect with my problem. I thought that I should see it and I never
saw it. I felt like there was something sort of preventing me from see-
ing the solution.] that is closing oV any kind of intellectual curios-
ity about this topic. [After a while I didn’t care. I wasn’t interested
in nding a solution. In the beginning, I thought, “Well, it’s kind of
interesting, and it would be neat if we solve it.” After a while I didn’t
care about it. I wasn’t curious if there was an answer. I was just sick
of looking at it.] I could do almost any other boring, mundane
activity and nd more interest in it than looking at these books
and papers for one more time. [Whenever I forced myself to go
to school, instead of working, I would sit there and get on the inter-
net and read inane chat groups that were going on. I read so many
newsgroups: I knew what was going on in the Simpson’s group and
would talk to these people for a hour, sometimes six hours a day. How
ridiculous is that?
R: How do you explain that?
P: I think I originally did it to avoid working, and I would go to
school out of guilt. Also, so that my advisors would know that I was
there. Then I would sit in my oYce and do no work. Sometimes I
would go in and try to do some work, but most of the time I would
try to stare at the stuV for a half an hour, then decide to take a break
and log on to the computer for a second. Then four hours later, I real-
ized I’ve been here for four hours, and it was time to go home and
make dinner. I would do that all the time.
R: Could you say more about being able to do any other activity?
P: It was the worst. I had no interest in it at all. I mean I would
do things like balance my check book, clean my oYce. Things I would
LIFE BOREDOM 211
never do otherwise just because I couldn’t stare at this stuV. I just

couldn’t stare at this stuV anymore. So I would look for any menial
task, or something to occupy myself as sort of a diversion from my
research.] In fact, I very often will come into school and sit
staring at the computer screen for hours, browsing the Internet,
and reading the most incredibly stupid news-groups rather
than attempt to do any work.
R: There sounds like some self-contempt there?
P: Oh Absolutely! There’s a lot of self-contempt. I thought it was
ridiculous that I did that. I still think I sort of wasted time; four to
eight hours a day reading these stupid little comments on the computer
screen. There’s no meaning in that. I thought it was stupid. My time
would have been much better spent reading a book. I was angry at
myself because I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere. I always felt that
every time I went to my advisors I had to have accomplished some-
thing. I had to have something to show them when I go see them. At
this point, I sort of kept spinning my wheels and never had anything
to show them. So I never went to see them. It turned into weeks, then
months, then six months between meetings with my advisors. That was
the longest period of time that it ever turned into. I was angry at myself.
I thought I was incompetent and I was depressed. I was convinced that
I was not going to be able to do this.] I even began writing this
protocol after lea ng through my research notes for ve
minutes.
This boredom is not something that I have ever experienced
in my life before. [I think it was a diVerent type of boredom because
it was so prolonged. Certainly, I have been bored in my life. I’ve met
some people and had some conversations that were boring or gone to
a party that was boring, but that might have lasted a couple of hours.
Then I got to leave and do something else. This was diVerent. It was
like every single day, I’d wake up and know that I was either going to
avoid doing this, or I was going to have to try to do this. It was just
like never-ending boredom. I didn’t see any end coming, and that, I
never experienced before. I never had a situation where I felt I couldn’t
get out of it. I couldn’t see it ending.] In the past, I have always
been energetic in every area of my life. [I’ve always been a per-
son who sort of takes on a million things and usually does a million
things pretty well. I have always had a lot of energy. I’ve always excelled
at school. I’ve always excelled at everything I did. I always was very
interested in what I was doing and had a lot of energy for it.] In fact,
people used to tell me that I took on too many things. [My
family always tried to tell me that I try to do too many things. Especially,
my grandma used to say, “You do too much, you do too much.” Even
professors would tell me that, because I always had a job and had a
full load of classes. Besides that, I would be in a choir and going out
with friends—always doing a lot of diVerent things.] But that never
bothered me; [It never bothered me that I had so many things going
on. I never felt like I was doing too many things. I never even remem-
ber feeling overwhelmed about all I was doing. It seemed to me then
and seems to me now that I have a million things going on and I seem
to get them all done. I actually get more done than if I have nothing
going on.] the more I took on, the more I accomplished. But
now, this problem I am having with my thesis work has had
the reverse eV ect on my life. [I felt like I couldn’t do anything,
whereas before I was sort of doing everything. Now all of sudden there
was one thing that I could not get past. Like there was this one obsta-
cle that I couldn’t overcome. I always felt guilty doing anything else
because I had one really important project to get done, and it wasn’t
getting done. So if I did other things, it was like taking away from
the one thing I was supposed to be doing the most. So I felt like I
couldn’t do anything. I think I felt guilty doing other things. For sure,
I didn’t enjoy the other things as much, even when I was doing them.
Even at work I felt guilty because I knew it was time away from my
research.] I feel weighed down by it, [Whatever I was doing, it was
sort of always in the back of my mind. That here’s this big problem
that I can’t get over, and it was always in the back of my mind some-
where. It was always this big burden I was carrying around. So I guess
that’s what I mean about “weighed-down by it”. It always bothered
me, it was always a presence that I thought about.] and it occupies
my mind, at least partly, most of the time. All of my energy
seems to go into thinking about getting my work done, and I
have no energy or patience for other aspects of my life. [Again,
because I always felt weighed-down by it, I always felt like I was car-
rying this around in the back of my mind. It occupied my mind a lot
of the time so I didn’t have a lot of mental energy for thinking about
other things. About patience too, I can remember trying to read books,
and I couldn’t because I didn’t have enough mental energy or patience
to concentrate on anything other than some inane book. Like anything
that would require thought or concentration to read, I couldn’t read. I
wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the same thing for a very long time.
I just wouldn’t have the patience to do that or I’d get sort of irritable
pretty easily. I certainly wasn’t in a very good disposition most of the
LIFE BOREDOM 213
time.] Because I feel guilty about it, I force myself to go into

school, dig out my research, and attempt some kind of work.
[The guilt came from myself because I felt I was letting myself down.
I knew I was doing things that were not characteristic of me. I also felt
like I was letting my parents down, letting advisors down, everyone in
my family who had supported me when I was an undergraduate—and
going to graduate school—and my friends. Every time someone would
ask me how my research was going, I would feel like this big guilt
wave, and would not want to give an answer. I’d try to change the
subject.] But inevitably I get nothing done, [It seemed inevitable
at the time. It seemed like this was never going to end; I was never
going to have a breakthrough and never nd an answer to this prob-
lem. I think it’s probably true that when I forced myself to go to school,
I never really believed I was going to get anything done. I sort of con-
vinced myself of that after a while, which is probably why I didn’t get
anywhere after a while.] sit staring blankly into space or at the
computer, [Boy, I sound really morbid don’t I?—Sitting staring blankly
into space. I would sit there staring at the open book. You start star-
ing at something and everything becomes blurred and you sit there star-
ing at nothing. I don’t even know if I was daydreaming or not. I was
just sitting there trying to work. You realized ten minutes have gone
by and you haven’t read a single word.] and go home with a sense
of utter failure. [Because at the end of the day I would realize that
I wasted another day sitting at school for eight hours getting absolutely
nothing done—sometimes not even really giving it a good eVort to get
anything done, sometimes not giving any eVort at all. I always felt every
single day of school, “You failed. You failed.”] I avoid talking about
school, I avoid my advisors, I avoid the voices in my head that
tell me that I am wasting valuable years of my life. [I told you
I avoided my advisors pretty successfully for six months. I avoided them
because I felt that I had to have something to show them. The longer
the period of time became since I had rst seen them, the more I felt
I should have to show them. After two months went by, I was just
petri ed by saying, “Two months have gone by and I have got noth-
ing.” So I continually avoided them. I avoided talking about school, I
certainly never brought it up, and if someone else brought it up I would
sort of say, “Yeah, things are going kind of slow,” and change the sub-
ject. There was always in the back of my mind this fear and this doubt
that I was never going to get anywhere. If I never got anywhere I
should just quit now and not just sort of spin my wheels in grad school
for four years. I’d gotten my master’s only after a year and a half, so
two and a half years would have been wasted if I didn’t get anywhere.]
Everyone else tells me that to quit now would be a waste—
but am I not already just wasting time? [I don’t know if I had
given quitting a serious consideration. I had talked about it, I talked to
friends about it. I don’t think I ever really sat down and thought about
what the consequences might be, or I certainly never sat down and
thought about what I would do if I quit. I don’t remember sitting down
and thinking, “Well, I’d apply for jobs here or I’d do this.” I always
felt like I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and this was the only way
to be able to do what I wanted to do. So I did talk about quitting, but
I don’t know that I would say that I seriously sat down and thought
about quitting.
R: When you were talking to others were you looking for some
response from them?
P: Probably. I knew they would probably say, “You shouldn’t quit.”
I was probably looking for some reassurance from people who knew
me well—to say, “You can do it.”—because I had sort of convinced
myself that, “No, I couldn’t do it.”] I know that if I could just get
past this and nish, [So I felt that if I could just get done and get
my Ph.D., then I would have the time to study the things I really
wanted; that if I want to read books, that my mind wouldn’t be so
obsessed with this one thing, and I would be able to go back to enjoy-
ing books like history and classics. If I nished this I could enjoy the
things I used to enjoy.] I would be free to study other things that
interest me. [I certainly felt like I wasn’t free, freed from this oblig-
ation, free from thinking that I had to work on this all the time or else
I’d have to feel guilty about it.]
I suppose that somewhere within my mind is the strength
of will, [I guess I thought I should have been strong enough to just
make myself do it.
R: So part of the problem of boredom is a problem of the will?
P: Yes, I guess I thought I wasn’t exerting my will strongly enough.
I felt I was sort of being weak by avoiding the whole thing; that I need
to focus on the one topic and nish my dissertation.] I know that I
am a strong person, [I mean I have the ability to go on even when
things happen that don’t go your way—or catastrophes, when bad things
happen in your life—or being able to continue even if the odds are
against you.] and I have already overcome many diY culties just
to get to this point. [I felt like I had accomplished a lot just to get
into graduate school. I went to college right out of high school, and I
dropped out in my second semester because I lost everything I owned
LIFE BOREDOM 215
in a house re. At that point I moved to my mothers house, then I

moved out. I started living on my own for the rst time. I was 18. I
worked for a couple years and I started going back to school. I went
to community college rst, on grants and student loans. I went to a
university on grants and students loans, as well as working to pay for
the rest and supporting myself while at school. I felt, and still feel, a
lot of pride that I was able to do that because it was hard for me to
do that. I worked 30 to 40 hours a week, and went to school full time,
and still graduated with honors, and I got into graduate school. I got
full support for grad school, and that’s why I thought I should be strong
and should’ve been able to do it. I felt like I had already overcome a
lot to even be here.] Reading back through some of what I have
already written, I suspect that part of my problem is that I
never have really been focused on only one thing in my life.
As I said, I have always had a bunch of projects going on at
one time. They all kept me interested and excited. [Maybe if
it had been one thing that really absorbed me and that I was really
interested in. I don’t know if that would have mattered or not. I had
other situations that I was bored in, but there was always an end. If it
was at the beginning of the semester, I knew there was going to be an
end. I think at that time I just didn’t see the end, other than quitting.]
Now that I am supposed to focus on this one big project—
which will require much time and single-mindedness—I nd
that I am bored. I have not been able to nd it within myself
to just do it. [What eventually happened is that, later, all I did is
work on my thesis. Now I’m into it and it’s the only thing I’m work-
ing on. I’m hardly even at home. I’m at school all the time and I’m
working really hard on it. I’m actually interested in it so maybe it’s not
that it was one topic. Maybe it’s that I really didn’t like doing it.]
Rather, I have procrastinated, [Yeah, it’s what I’ve been doing the
whole time. Sitting there getting on the Internet, looking for other stu-
pid little things to do. I was procrastinating working on it. I was pro-
crastinating seeing my advisors, and telling them that I didn’t think I
could get anywhere. That’s for sure. I always knew, “I should go. I
should go. I should go.” I told myself, “I’m gonna go tomorrow. I’m
gonna go tomorrow. I’m gonna go tomorrow.” I was afraid. I was afraid
they were going to think I was stupid. I was afraid they were going to
think I was unable to do the work. I was afraid of going and saying,
“Look I couldn’t get anywhere.”] looked for other interests, or sat
idly wondering how it could possibly get done on its own. [I
don’t know if I seriously sat wondering if it was going to get done on
it’s own, but maybe this is what I was thinking as I was sitting staring
blankly at the screen. Sometimes I would sit there and stare at it and
think how is this ever going to get done and how am I going to do
this.] Since such a miracle is not likely to occur,
[R: miracle?
P: The magnitude of the problem, I really felt like I would never
gure this out. It was going to take an act of God to put this thought
into my head for it to nally click. So I thought that it would take
miraculous divine intervention to get the answer—to make me see the
connection between the stuV I was reading and the problem I was try-
ing to solve.] I will have to make a decision about how to han-
dle this, and soon. For the university is not likely to let me
sit here staring at the walls for too much longer. [I felt like I
had to make a decision about what I was going to do—whether or not
I was going to think seriously about quitting or whether I should go
and talk to my advisors about it. I knew eventually I had to do some-
thing. I certainly wasn’t going to able to come in and sit in my oYce
because my fellowship was going to run out. I was going to have to
do something so I knew I just couldn’t sit here and do nothing.]
[P: Do you want to know what happened? This particular problem
that I started working is not what I ended up working on. After the
six months were up and I nally saw my advisors again, we sat down
and had a really, really long talk and we completely changed my prob-
lem. It was the same basic topic. It was the same area, just a diVerent
question—a diVerent one of the seven questions. I got much more inter-
ested in that, and I think I never originally felt frustration exactly because
I never cared that much. I was never interested in the rst question,
and I was never interested in the direction it was taking me. Whereas
the problem I ended up working on, I was interested in the direction
it was taking me. When things wouldn’t work out I would get frus-
trated, and I think the diVerence was that then I actually cared whether
or not I could get the answer.]
[R: When it came to picking the rst question did you pick it?
P: Actually no. I mean (Laughs), “we agreed.” It was something that
one of my advisors was interested in and I think, to be quite fair to
them, they thought was going to lead somewhere interesting. Since they
thought it was a particularly good question for a dissertation, and thought
it would lead to a lot of things, I think that’s why they picked it. At
the time I didn’t know enough about research to really argue with them,
and so I agreed and that’s what I started doing. Like they later said to
me, “Sometimes you try an avenue of research, and it doesn’t work out
LIFE BOREDOM 217
and that’s just what happens.” But like they told me, “You can’t dis-
appear for six months.”]
[R: What about the time you got excited about the new project. Was
that their choice too?
P: Actually no. What happened, after we had this meeting, was we
went over what my options were. So we looked back through their pro-
posal and they said, “Here are some other questions and there are some
options.” Then they also said that if I wanted to get out completely
and work on this other completely diVerent area—that I told you about—
they said I could still do that if I wanted to, but I had to realize that
it was going to take me longer. So they sort of gave me all these options,
and I went away and thought about it for a while. Then I came back
to them and said, I’d like to maybe work on the second problem. Again,
they seriously encouraged me not to change the major area of my
research because it would take me so much longer, but they gave me
an out.]
[R: When you came back and said, “Yes, I want to pursue this.” do
you think it had a big impact?
P: Yes I do. For one thing, I sort of felt like I had been forced into
the situation—like it wasn’t of my own choosing to work on this prob-
lem. In fact, I think I felt resentment toward them because I felt that
they sort of pushed me into this problem and it was easier for them,
and they wanted someone to work on it. So they picked me and why
did they have to pick me?
So I think it was diVerent because when I picked it, they gave me
all the options and I decided to do it—actually against the advice of
other graduate students, who told me the same thing would happen
again, and I’d be better going into the area that really interested me.
But that didn’t happen and I really got into this.
NOTES
1. Portions of this article originally appeared in the author’s doctoral dissertation, Being
bored with one’s life: an empirical phenomenological study, 1999.
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The study of life boredom

Article in Journal of Phenomenological Psychology · September 2000

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The Study of Life Boredom

Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 31, No. 2, 2000, 188–219

to leave treatment due to boredom (Sherman et al., 1989). In addition,

situationally bored, and thus eventually make them more likely to be

Several existential authors think that people’s experience of being

tradition (Giorgi, 1975). In this method, researchers perform a qualita-

After reading the protocols several times, interviews were conducted to

the edited synthesis

arrived at when the researcher assumes a psychological attitude toward

Through this methodological move, the researcher became more attuned

individual situated narrative

general psychological structure

the general structure of being bored with one’s life

The participants relinquished their original goals, apparently without

The participants became emotionally ambivalent after they had com-

The participants began working on their modi ed projects, and again

The participants recognized themselves as being bored with their modi ed

They began to  nd themselves bored with more aspects of their lives.

The participants became aware of the self-directed feelings of anger,

The participants found themselves questioning their own identities. These

Participants began creating new goals by imagining new possibilities for

of instinctual impulses with repressed objects (Fenichel, 1951). However,

Appendix I: Edited Synthesis for P articipant One

that there was further work to be done in the same area, it

it. I thought I wasn’t Ph.D. material or maybe I wasn’t a cut out to

never do otherwise just because I couldn’t stare at this stuV. I just

time.] Because I feel guilty about it, I force myself to go into

in a house  re. At that point I moved to my mothers house, then I

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The participants began working on their modi ed projects, and again

The participants recognized themselves as being bored with their modi ed

They began to nd themselves bored with more aspects of their lives.

in a house re. At that point I moved to my mothers house, then I