Boredom v Novelty

Kids complain all the time about being bored. Adults complain far less on that front. Here’s an interesting explanation of why that might be the case.

The authors of The Power of Moments point out that the most important events in a person’s life fall overwhelmingly in a “relatively narrow window of time: roughly age 15 to 30”. Psychologists even have a term for this period of life, the “reminiscence bump”.

But why does such a narrow window “dominate our memories”? In her book, Time Warped, Claudia Hammond says the reason is that’s the “time for firsts”. First crush, first job, first time living away from home, first time we get to make choices about our lives. And novelty changes our perception of time. Anything new feels like it lasts last longer. Experiments show that when successive images are shown for the same time, say lots of brown shoe images with the odd alarm clock image inserted in between at random, people will insist that the alarm clock was shown longer. Yes, there’s a term for that too, the “oddball effect”.

And as we get older:

“Our lives become more routine and less novel… Now, that’s a depressing realization. Have we left our most memorable days behind us?”

And therein lies the contradictory pull, as the authors of Surprise wrote:

“We feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they’re not.”

Adults prefer the comfort of certainty; kids crave for novelty.

But as an adult, don’t go around shaking things up just to add surprise, just to break the script, warns The Power of Moments:

“Just divorce your spouse, quit your job, move to New Zealand, and become a shepherd. Plenty of novelty there, and you’re certain to write a rush of memories. But let’s not confuse memorability with wisdom.”

I guess that’s what boring adult can take solace in: he/she has wisdom. Though I can almost see my daughter rolling her eyes at that, smirking, “Sure, believe whatever makes you feel good about yourself”.