personal finance

Old Money: In praise of boredom


Boredom or overactivity? Which scares you the most?

Joseph Brodsky defended boredom as a way to stimulate activity, and explained that those who experience boredom in all its stultifying splendour will be spurred on to great things.

“When hit by boredom, let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: the sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. The idea here is to exact a full look at the worst. The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendour,” the Russian-American poet said in his commencement speech to students at Dartmouth College.

So when next you are enduring a badly-chaired meeting peopled by those without an off switch; when next you are faced with colleagues who feel that their contribution can be measured in monologue length, take comfort from Brodsky’s riff.

Take comfort, too, from Sir Edmund Hillary. “All of my life I’ve been afraid of having nothing to do, having no challenges to meet, being bored. The whole of my life has been a battle against boredom,” he said, 47 years after he climbed Everest.

Thousands trail in his footsteps so that they can boast an interesting, active and determined mindset, however ancient — witness Japan’s Yuichiro Miura of Japan, who reached the summit in 2013 at the age of 80.

I am in training to puff up Primrose Hill when I am 80. In the meantime I shall continue to revel in bouts of pure, undiluted boredom: the trance-like state induced when required to fill out internal company HR forms; waiting for a flight or train; or the termination of a recorded message assuring me how much my call is valued. Boredom allows the mind to go into neutral, to have a kip and saunter off into the sunset.

Unfortunately, it is getting increasingly difficult to achieve. The mind is no longer allowed to saunter off. Everyone is expected to appear to be engaged, focused, passionate about something. Instead of gawping at fellow travellers at airports and stations, for instance, social-media fingers on autodrive start posting gritty pictures of the rat on the rails or seductive ones of the seafood and Krug in the first-class lounge. Anything as long as activity is demonstrated.

Anyone who remains unconvinced about boredom’s merits needs to remember that it can play a key role in good investing for most of us who lack the knowledge, knowhow and, in my case, the urge to play the markets. When it comes to shares and funds, patience is a virtue that can deliver bigger rewards — or, at least, smaller losses.

Warren Buffett, the veteran US investor, shows exemplary perseverance with his investments. Generally, once invested, he keeps Berkshire Hathaway’s money in dull companies rather than disrupters and start-ups. That could be deemed boring but it’s a pretty successful kind of boring.

He is also a fan of tracker funds — a dull sort of investment if ever there were one. He told CNBC’s Squawk Box recently that if someone invested $10,000 in an index fund back in 1942, it would be worth $51m today. Seventy-six years is a long time to resist fiddling with investments but, by and large, probably worth every gloriously boring moment.

Another ideal moment to embrace true boredom is the holiday. Most of us spend trillions dashing about and getting away from wherever we have chosen to live. UK residents spent £45bn on overseas visits in 2018 and, even allowing for the odd business trip in those Office for National Statistics figures, that’s a lot to spend on down time.

For many baby boomers like me, the frantic posting of pictures showing The Latest Place or canyoning, whitewater rafting or sushi-making classes demonstrates herd-like unoriginality. Instead, disrupters need to break away by gazing into space and allowing boredom to overwhelm sans phone, sans laptop, sans activity. The delights of a vacant mind cannot be overestimated.

Don’t assume that the trend for “spiritual” holidays will address this need. A few years ago I thought I’d found a way to enjoy boredom while appearing to be gainfully employed by spending a yoga week at an ashram in Rishikesh on the Ganges. Too late, I discovered it was a silent retreat without alcohol, mobile phones or any other kind of electronic equipment. On top of yoga from the crack of dawn until sunset, we were dragooned into various “active meditations”: sweeping floors, washing up and going for walks.

My fellow guests were an equal mix of Indians and Europeans. The Europeans were full of worthy sentiments and determined to remain silent in keeping with the rules. The three Delhi princesses seemed more intent on fun, a stance I confess I found immediately appealing. On our daily meditative walks up the Ganges they would hide from our teacher behind boulders and whip out their mobiles to arrange their frenetic social lives.

Given the choice, I would have gone clubbing with them like a shot. For all its allure, even I have to admit that context is everything when it comes to boredom.

Jane Owen is an author and former deputy editor of FT Weekend. Email oldmoney@ft.com; Twitter: @Jane_Owen





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