What were you doing before you started reading this? Were you fully focused on another article? Or eating breakfast? Organizing your day? Or were you staring out of the window, feeling restless and bored? It is likely to have been the latter. Brief moments of boredom are universal, and are frequently what drives us to stop what we are doing and move to something that we hope will be more exciting. But although boredom is common, it is neither unimportant nor favorable, according to Dr John Eastwood, a psychologist at York University, Toronto. Eastwood is the joint author ofThe Unengaged Mind, a major new paper on the theory of boredom. Boredom, he points out in the paper, has been connected with overeating, depression, anxiety, and an increased risk of making mistakes. Mistakes at work might not be a matter of life and death for most of us, but if you are an air traffic controller, pilot or nuclear power plant operator, they most certainly can be. Commercial polo Sami Franks confirms that boredom can make pilots lose attention. "When you fly a lengthy distance, there are two pilots, one of whom is monitoring all the screens while the other does the paperwork, talks to air traffic control and so on. You need to be alert  for landing and takeoff, but once you're 500 ft above the runway, the plane's on autopilot  and it can be very quiet and boring. In a study I saw of pilots who woke up after a short sleep. 30% of them reported seeing the other pilot asleep too," said Franks. However, Dr Esther Priyadharshini, a senior lecturer in education at the university of East Anglia, has studied boredom and says it can be seen in a positive light. "We can't prevent boredom--it's an unavoidable human emotion. We have to accept it and find ways to control it. We all need downtime. There's no need to be fully busy with work at all times." she says. Children who complain that they have nothing to do on rainy holidays may try to find other things to focus on. The artist Grayson Perry has reportedly spoken of how long periods of boredom in childhood may have improved his creativity. "We all need vacant time to mull  things over," says Priyadharshini. We can learn from Eastwood that   _  .
boredom can be potentially   dangerous air traffic controllers usually feel bored brief moments of boredom are not common making mistakes is a major cause of boredom