我们为什么如此无聊？

It amazes me when people proclaim that they are bored. Actually, it amazes me that I am ever bored, or that any of us are. With so much to occupy us these days, boredom should be a relic of a bygone age – an age devoid of the internet, social media, multi-channel TV, 24-hour shopping, multiplex cinemas, game consoles, texting and whatever other myriad possibilities are available these days to entertain us.

每当有人对我说他感到无聊时，我都很惊讶。事实上，使我感到惊讶的是，我曾经感受过的无聊，每一个人都有。如今我们的生活被太多事情占据了，无聊感应该是过去那个年代的遗物了，过去那个没有互联网，社交媒体，电视频道，通宵购物，多厅电影院，游戏机，短信的年代，也没有现在这么多娱乐节目的年代。

Yet despite the plethora of high-intensity entertainment constantly at our disposal, we are still bored. Up to half of us are “often bored” at home or at school, while more than two- thirds of us are chronically bored at work. We are bored by paperwork, by the commute and by dull meetings. TV is boring, as is Facebook and other social media. We spend our weekends at dull parties, watching tedious films or listening to our spouses drone on about their day. Our kids are bored – bored of school, of homework and even of school holidays.

然而，尽管我们总是处在无数的极其有趣娱乐活动中，我们还是会感到无聊。高达二分之一的人表示，待在家里或学校里会经常感到无聊，三分之二的人表示工作就会使他们无聊。我们厌倦了文书工作、厌倦了上下班一成不变的路线、厌倦了枯燥乏味的工作会议。看电视是很无聊，同样的，面书之类的其他社交媒体也很无聊。周末，我们去参加无聊的派对，观看乏味的电影或者是听另一半唠唠叨叨的说着他们自己的事。我们的孩子也很无聊——他们厌倦学校，厌倦作业，甚至放假也使他们无聊。

There are a number of explanations for our ennui. This, in fact, is part of the problem – we are overstimulated. The more entertained we are the more entertainment we need in order to feel satisfied . The more we fill our world with fast-moving, high-intensity, ever-changing stimulation, the more we get used to that and the less tolerant we become of lower levels.

无聊的事情总很多。实际上，我们的部分问题在于——过度兴奋。我们越兴奋就越需要更大的兴奋，才能使我们感到自我满足。我们不断感受到快速、强烈、多变的兴奋，越来越习惯于这种兴奋，才越加不能接受这种兴奋感稍有退却。

Our attention spans are now thought to be less than that of a goldfish – eight seconds

现在，有人认为我们注意力的持续时间甚至不如8秒记忆的金鱼。

Thus slower-paced activities, such as reading reports, sitting in meetings, attending lectures or studying for exams, bore us because we are accustomed to faster-paced amusements.

因此，阅读报告，参加会议，聆听讲座，备战考试，这些慢节奏的行为总是让我们很乏味，我们已经习惯了快节奏的娱乐行为。

Our attention spans are now thought to be less than that of a goldfish (eight seconds). We are hard-wired to seek novelty, which produces a hit of dopamine, that feel-good chemical, in our brains. As soon as a new stimulus is noticed, however, it is no longer new, and after a while it bores us. To get that same pleasurable dopamine hit we seek fresh sources of distraction.

现在，有人认为我们注意力的持续时间比金鱼(8秒)还短.大脑中有一种能够产生愉悦感的化学物质多巴胺，我们本能的去寻找新奇的事物以刺激脑内多巴胺的生成。一旦发现了新的刺激，它就不再新奇，过一会儿我们就开始厌倦了。我们分散注意力去寻找其他新鲜感的来源，来维持多巴胺带来的那份愉悦感。

Our increasing reliance on screentime is also to blame. Although we seem to live in a varied and exciting world with a wealth of entertainment at our fingertips, this is actually the problem. Many of these amusements are obtained in remarkably similar ways – via our fingers. We spend much of our work life now tapping away at our keyboard. We then look for stimulation (watching movies, reading books, catching the news, interacting with friends) via the internet or our phone, which means more tapping. On average we spend six to seven hours in front of our phone, tablet, computer and TV screens every day.

我们与日俱增的屏幕依赖也值得批判。真正的问题在于，我们只是看上去生活在一个多彩，激情四射的世界里，动动手指就能带来无数乐趣。收获这一类乐趣有个明显的共同点——仅需动动手指。工作中，我们大部分时间都在键盘上打字。随后，我们又用手机或者网络寻求快乐（电影，看书，看新闻，朋友互动），意味着目视屏幕，敲击键盘的时间更多了。平均下来，我们每天会花6到7小时的时间在手机、平板、电脑和电视的屏幕上。

All this is simply becoming boring. Instead of performing varied activities that engage different neural systems (sport, knitting, painting, cooking, etc) to relieve our tedium, we fall back on the same screen-tapping schema for much of our day. The irony is that while our mobile devices should allow us to fill every moment, our means of obtaining that entertainment has become so repetitive and routine that it’s a source of boredom in itself.

所有这些很容易就变得无聊了。我们退回到了整天用触摸屏幕的方式来释放无聊的情绪，而不是去参加各种需要运用到我们神经系统不同部位的活动（运动、手工、绘画、烹饪等等）。讽刺的是，我们的移动设备本是充实我们生活每一个瞬间的，但是我们获取快乐的方式却变得如此一成不变，这或许就是乏味它本身的来源。

Does any of this matter? Research suggests that chronic boredom is responsible for a profusion of negative outcomes such as overeating, gambling, truancy, antisocial behaviour, drug use, accidents, risk taking and much more. We need less, not more, stimulation and novelty.

这种状态会有影响么？有研究表明长期感到无聊会引发暴饮暴食、赌博、逃学、反社会、吸毒、引发事故、追求风险等等，很多负面的行为。简单点，我们不需要那么多兴奋和猎奇。

It seems paradoxical, but feeling bored in the short term will make us less bored in the long term.

它看上去像是悖论，但是我们在眼前的生活中坚持枯燥，是为了整个人生中少一些空虚。