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boredom is an inherently fertile state of mind.
when we feel bored, our brains are strongly motivated to find a meaningful occupation. Thoughts are not directed or controlled and are therefore free to travel in unexpected directions.
of Downtime: Why Boredom Is Good,
The default network is integral to learning, insight, and imagination. If our minds never come to rest, there is never an opportunity to wander into new directions.
Focus is required for directed work, but idleness is necessary for reflection.
Since reflective thought is one of the most uniquely human activities in which we engage, one of the abilities that separates us from our simian cousins, it’s not much of a stretch to say that idleness helps make us more human.
It’s possible that too much work can separate us from our own humanity.
When our minds are idle, we allow ourselves to reconnect with our creativity and reengage with reflective thought—two activities that are esssential to progress.
Perverse is a perfect word to describe our belief in work for work’s sake. It is a perversion of what is best and most productive about humanity. Perhaps the time has come to remind ourselves of what is unique and wonderful about our species and to take stock of how and why we’ve left those qualities behind.
In the end, it’s not nature versus nurture, but nature and nurture.
Our natural abilities with language are also intertwined with the unique ways in which our minds work.
Perhaps we are able to think about abstract concepts like time and identity because we are able to articulate the ideas, using complicated vocabularies.
Conversation is our evolutionary heritage and our biological advantage.
Brain research shows we detect information and begin processing it less than fifty milliseconds after someone else begins to speak, and a vast amount of the information we relay to each other is sent and received subconsciously.
On a subconscious level, we make assumptions about the other person’s humanity based on the method they are using to communicate.
If we’re reading a blog online, we tend to think of the author as less human than ourselves.
Hearing someone’s voice helps us recognize them as human and therefore trea...
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Mentalizing is the neural basis for empathy, and it’s an ability that scientists believe is fairly unique to humankind.
This phenomenon is called speaker-listener neural coupling or, more simply, “mind meld.” Brain waves are essentially electrical impulses in the head. There’s no good explanation for how one person’s brain waves can mirror another person’s, but it happens when we listen closely.
To our animal brains, social isolation equates to increased risk of death.
Forty-two married couples between the ages of twenty-two and seventy-seven were given small blister wounds on their arms. (I know. I’m also surprised at what people are willing to do in order to further scientific knowledge.) It turns out, the couples who admitted there was hostility in their marriages took nearly twice as long to heal as those with supportive partners. In other words, being part of a healthy marriage or partnership can help your body heal.
Atul Gawande says, “Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic head injury.”
Empathy in service of belonging may be the underpinning of our basic moral code.
Empathy strengthens social bonds and helps to foster social inclusion, which makes it crucial in helping us fulfill our need to belong.
Empathy is crucial for the survival of our species, and so it is almost universally innate in humans.
The ecologist Marc Bekoff, who worked with Jane Goodall, says that when we are playing, “we are most fully human.”
We do things that are not good for us. Regularly. One of the most dangerous examples of this is our tendency to deny our need to belong by isolating ourselves from authentic human contact.
Loneliness and social isolation increase a person’s risk of death by 25 to 30 percent.
We have a fundamental need to belong, a hunger for community, and we are choosing to starve ourselves.
there’s nothing unnatural about technology. Is it unnatural for an otter to use a rock to crack open an oyster? For a beaver to build a dam, or an octopus to use coconut shells as a kind of armor? Chimps and gorillas use tools, as do crows and rats and many other creatures. Elephants have been known to craft fly swatters out of branches and drop logs onto electric fences in order to avoid injury.
Human beings have been using tools and technology since at least the Stone Age. Tech has been crucial to our survival.
Research even shows that when we pick up tools, our brains treat them as extensions of our bodies.
slowing your breathing doesn’t just relax your muscles—it can also have an effect on your brain. Coherent breathing is a method that trains people to slow respiration down to six breaths (or fewer) per minute. It turns out that slower breathing can improve your attention span, your decision making, and your cognitive function.
Turns out, the more interaction you have with your phone, the “noisier” your brain is. The noise I’m referring to here is called “neuronal variability.” It’s a term that describes a certain kind of extraneous, possibly distracting, electrical activity inside our skulls. It’s static interfering with our brain’s radio signals.
We are healthiest when we have a small number of confidants,
a slightly larger number of good friends, a larger number of acquaintances, and so on, not dozens and dozens of “friends” online and almost no intimate friendships.
The technical term for smartphone addiction is nomophobia, or the fear of being without your phone.
As our use of social media and tech has risen, so has loneliness, social isolation, and suicide.
It’s important to note the distinction between loneliness and being alone, by the way. People who interact regularly with others, who converse with coworkers and text their friends, may appear to have a fulfilling social life but may be secretly suffering the effects of social isolation.
Perceived isolation is loneliness, and the number of people who say they have no close friends is on the rise.
Loneliness is caused by a lack of intimate contacts,
Digital interaction is simply not the same as talking to someone or spending time with a real person, in the flesh.
An understanding of how our hours are spent is known as “time perception.” People who have little time perception spend more time watching TV or lingering on social media sites, and they often report feeling overwhelmed.
You may believe you can relax if you put in a few more hours and get ahead of your workload, but actually you’re more likely to reduce your stress level by taking a break.
higher pay is often associated with a lower sense of well-being and less enjoyment at work. That is one of the ironies of our current system: Pursuing higher salaries can bring less happiness, not more.
The more TV you watch, it turns out, the more likely you are to overestimate how much other people make and how many things they own.
Is it good? Forget how it looks in photographs and ask yourself if you like it. Does it work? Instead of worrying about whether you stayed at the office longer than anyone else, focus on what tasks you accomplished and how well you completed them. Don’t look at your friends’ vacation photos and juxtapose them with your own. Instead, ask whether they enjoyed their time off.
Trying to meet numerical goals is also not particularly inspiring to the human mind, and so metrics don’t encourage creative thought.
There are two kinds of rest: leisure and time off, or spare time. Spare time is not true rest.
what we call “spare time” is the minutes and hours we find in between the work we do. It’s inextricably tied to work and is meant to recharge our batteries so we can get back to work feeling refreshed.
