14th October 2019
Everybody experiences boredom at some point or another. It’s that feeling of time seeming to slow down and a lack of interest in what you are doing or supposed to be doing. It’s the point of procrastination, when you have things to do but you are unable to muster the motivation to do them. It’s the feeling that whatever situation you are in will drag on and on and will never end. It’s not a positive emotion as it prevents you from making the most of your time and achieving the things you might need or want to do.
So the question I was once asked was, do Autistic people experience boredom more or less then neurotypical people? I can only speak for my own experience of boredom as a single individual on the Spectrum. I thought about this, and yes, I do have bouts of boredom but it tends to be during periods when my time is not my own to do what I want.
For example, I might feel bored at work if I have a particular task to do that is not peaking my interest. I have to do this task as it’s part of my job and my work responsibilities. Failure to do it could result in me being put on a performance review, disciplined, or if it often happens, even to me losing my job. Therefore I have to force myself to push through the feeling of boredom and get through the task as quickly as possible. Then I can move onto a more interesting piece of work. The whole time I am doing it though, I might experience frustration, time dragging and a general feeling of “urgh”.
Luckily I work in job which involves doing multiple things and working on different projects. Therefore if I am bored working on something one day, there is good chance the next objective will be more interesting.
Other times I might experience boredom, is during periods where I am waiting. A good example would be at a hospital appointment. I am quite a patient person but if I have nothing to do while waiting, then the feelings of time dragging and ennui get worse. I guess this is the same for everyone in these situations though, so the level of boredom has nothing to do with with whether you are Autistic or not.
So when do I not experience boredom? When my time is my own to do what I want with. I have so many different special interests that I could occupy my time happily for years. For example, one of my special interests is origami. I have loads of books full or models I would like to fold but I just don’t have the time. Other interests of mine are also very time consuming including making videos, writing blogs, studying geometry, reading, cubing, walking, photography, exercising and many more things. I would also like to pick up some old activities such as guitar playing, which I did a lot when I was young but hardly ever now.
The fact that I am Autistic and I have all these interests that I can get super absorbed in, is where I think I might differ, but only slightly. I have heard many people say that they are bored during periods where they are free to do what they want (note I am only including absolute free time here – where you have literally no chores, tasks, responsibilities to do with your time other than what you choose to do). With so many interests and things I want to do, I don’t really feel boredom in that way.
Also I know a few retired people who often say they are bored or have been bored during the day. I don’t really understand this. As a person who has limited free personal time, I am quite envious of them. I wish I had more time to achieve the things I want to and indulge in my special interests. I can’t imagine that I would ever get bored! Maybe this is wishful thinking and if I am retired then I might find that I was wrong and I do experience boredom more. Who knows, but I hope I get the chance to find out when I am older.
I also just want to say also that I know that some people have a lot of free time forced on them through things like unemployment. I can’t speak on behalf of these people, so I don’t know if they experience greater levels of boredom. I don’t wish to offend anybody in these situations. In similar circumstances I might experience boredom more. I don’t know. I can only work from this point in time and my own situations. In conclusion, we are all different but I think we all experience boredom as an emotion in many different ways based on who we are, the situations we are in and the aspirations we might have for the future. It’s a personal thing.
I wonder how you used to manage boredom when you were of school age e.g. getting through lessons that did not interest you.
I was quite fortunate that most of my lessons were interesting to me, the best part of school. When I did get bored though, I think my mind used to just wander. I always had a rough notebook that I used to doodle and draw a lot. I think in retrospect that was the splitting of two activities that I do now to alleviate boredom, without losing full concentration on what I am supposed to be doing. It doesn’t work for everyone but thinking about two separate things does help. Anymore than two though becomes stressfull.
As a person whose body eventually became defective enough that I became too disabled to work any more and now has lots of free time I can tell you that in my case there are times of boredom when that defective body gets in the way of doing things, be those things housework or hobbies.
There are rather more times of boredom now than when I was healthy enough to be working.
I don’t like that, but that is life with these diseases.