Did you know that chronic boredom can negatively affect the quality of an individual’s work, interfere with their ability to manage anger, and make it difficult for them to function socially? In some cases, it can even lead to depression. Knowing the harm it can cause, it’s worth looking into ways to understand and cope with the feelings of boredom that most of us face during the typical workday. These three TED Talks, each with a respective point of view, will help you do just that:

Learn to Benefit from Boredom

In her lecture, How Boredom Can Lead To Your Most Brilliant Ideas, Manoush Zomorodi describes the importance of occasionally allowing your mind to drift from the task at hand. Zomorodi claims that by taking distraction-free pauses to let your conscious brain rest, you allow your mind to solve problems and produce creative thoughts. This TED Talk includes recent findings in neuroscience and cognitive psychology to support Zomorodi’s claim that letting yourself lose focus for a few minutes can be more effective than willing yourself through a mountain of tasks without a break.

How to Stay Focused

Amishi Jha’s TED Talk, How To Tame Your Wandering Mind, likens mental focus to physical exercise. Jha claims that by routinely practicing mindfulness, you can learn to keep your attention directed towards what you want to be doing. Essentially, by making an effort to be aware of your thought process, you can improve your ability to focus.

The Process of a Procrastinator

Providing an in-depth summary of his personal experiences with procrastination, Tim Urban’s Inside The Mind Of A Master Procrastinator humorously describes the typical cycle of putting off deadlines until the last minute and argues that we’re all procrastinators in some way or another. Although Urban’s lecture deals with a consequence of boredom more than the feeling itself, the insight he provides on the subject, in addition to the case he presents for why we should be aware of procrastination’s ability to prevent individuals from achieving many of their greater life goals, makes viewing it more than worthwhile.

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