How do you conclude whether you have liked a training program or not? The trainer may be highly knowledgeable but if he is not able to engage the audience; the feedback is considered to be negative confirming you have not liked the training program.  The different techniques trainers employ to engage the audience include ice breakers, fun session, individual and group activities , case studies, role plays,  exercises etc. Particularly during the post-lunch or the graveyard session, the relevance of  activities becomes very critical. With a sense of humour coupled with interesting videos, all the stakeholders viz. the participants, the HR manager and the trainer feel happy. Such programs are relevant for topics like sales, negotiation, team building, communication etc. for conceptual understanding and are called as pragmatic programs.

Imagine a training program where there is absolutely no  audience engagement; be it the ice breakers, videos, or group activities. To add insult to the injury, the trainer talks in a drab monotonous tone; session after session. He will ask you to watch your breath and after a few days to watch sensations on your body. Your constant companion during the sessions may be boredom. And if this is not sufficient, the trainer does not even bother to take a feedback at the program conclusion.  Let us call such programs as the reflective type. Would there be any takers for such type of programs vis-à-vis the pragmatic programs discussed earlier?

I have been conducting the conventional pragmatic programs on Sales, Negotiation, Emotional Intelligence etc. for corporate clients since 1995. However the program which contributed immensely to my personal growth was Vipassana, a ten-day course in noble silence, a program of the reflective type. The essential difference between pragmatic and the reflective type is the way boredom is perceived. In case of the former, boredom is treated as a ‘bad’ or as an unwanted emotion and has to be done away with at all costs. In case of the latter (like sensitivity training ) it is treated as a valuable emotion in knowing oneself.

If you watch your mind, you will observe three types of thoughts which are:

1. Pleasant Thoughts: These include the positive thoughts indicating happiness, success, achievement, pleasant memories etc.
2. Painful Thoughts: These include undesirable situations like losing a job or an order leading to anxiety, anger, uncertainty etc.
3. Neutral Thoughts: Beyond the pleasant and painful thoughts, the majority of thoughts are neutral which do not produce any emotions boredom being the major one. Human beings are programmed to chase the pleasant thoughts, run away from the painful thoughts and ignore the neutral thoughts. It is estimated that hardly 10% of the thoughts belong to the pleasant and the painful category and the balance 90% to the last category.

So the moment a feeling of boredom arises,  people generally start looking at WhatsApp,  switch the TV channel, hardly realizing that it is akin to running on a treadmill either chasing a pleasant thought or running away from a painful one and in turn getting exhausted being at the same place.

Like any other positive emotion like happiness, joy, contentment or the ‘negative’ emotions like anger, fear, jealousy; boredom has its own validity. It can make you reinvent yourself, look within and also become creative. Doris Lessing an eminent writer and Nobel Winner in Literature says, ”If you really want to do something fundamental in life; you should embrace solitude and boredom to such an extent that they engulf you.” Pablo Picasso, the great sculptor and painter says, “without solitude no great work is possible.” Beyond developing creativity, utter boredom can also lead a person to self-actualization. (Refer to the Award winning speech by the writer titled The Purpose of Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amF_V_FaSuA )

Those of you who have watched serials like Buniyad, Hum Log, Ramayan Or Yeh Jo Hai Jindagi in the late 80s will realize that the serials were not exceptional per se. Apart from a reasonably good content, one of the major reasons for their popularity was the audience’s threshold to boredom was much higher then( Doordarshan being the only choice) vis-à-vis the current times. Would you agree that with  1000+ TV  channels clubbed with internet related options like youtube, Netflix, Amazon prime etc. our threshold to boredom has come down significantly?

Can boredom help us to be more creative? While watching a Hindi movie on Netflix or Amazon prime, the moment a song sequence appears; there is a tendency to fast-forward due to our antipathy to boredom. How to deal with such a boring situation?

Think of a Hindi movie song  where the hero is carrying the corpulent heroine in his lap or on his  back and ponder over  the possibility  that the shot might have taken at least 10-15 retakes including a full day of shooting. Just visualize the fatigue and exhaustion the hero might have undergone! On similar lines when they were rolling down the hill or drenching in the rains think of the likely spinal injuries or the possibility of catching a flu.

When the hero is running around trees or performing weird postures ( a la Govinda and Karishma )in a group  of 100 extras dancing to the tune of the choreographer; simply mute the audio; you will start enjoying the scene in a hilarious way. You may also develop compassion for the hero and the heroine and realize what Buddha meant by his first noble truth that life is suffering.

Anyone while dating has undertaken such exercises to coax and cajole his sweetheart in real life?  And then you start looking at the song sequence symbolizing  the utter meaninglessness of  life as conveyed in a play called Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.

It is a tragicomedy that focuses on the meaninglessness of life. It centres around two tramps waiting for someone called Godot. We are not told who or what Godot is – a man or a God who will solve all their problems; a change in their circumstances; or death. The tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, do not know who Godot is either. They meet each day near a tree and wait, experiencing cold, hunger and pain. They try to distract themselves from the endless wait by arguing over trivial things; sleeping; chatting with the only two passersby – Lucky and Pozzo.  Each night, a boy arrives to tell them that Godot will again not be coming that day but will surely come the next day.

In the end, the reader or spectator suspects that Godot represents the emptiness that the writer sees at the centre of human existence. Like the tramps, we go through life, waiting for we don’t know what. We pass the time in work and other activities; and we continue to wait; for Godot.

When we fast-forward a song sequence; we are trying to avoid boredom (like Vladimir and Estragon) hoping to complete the movie faster in spite of the predictable climax of the hero and heroine getting married against all odds and living happily ever after! (which may be a myth after all!) Instead, why not embrace boredom and start enjoying the inane song? Boredom may also lead you from the temporal to the eternal aspects of life and you start enjoying the present moment! The pragmatic programs may help you earn a living, the reflective ones- the so called boring ones may help you realize who you are! Both of them have their own validity.

P.S. If you find this blog article boring, please rest assured it has served its purpose!