If pleasure does not last, should I stop doing things I enjoy?

No. In the same paper, a pleasant day predicted higher meaning and life satisfaction on that same day (B = .18 and B = .09, both p < .001). The less curious a person was by temperament, the more their well-being on a given day depended on how much pleasure it held. The finding is about shelf life: the lift from pleasure did not reach the next day, so treats can fill an evening but are a weak plan for a stretch of weeks.

Does this apply if I am not a curious person?

Partly. The same-day payoff of a curious day was clearest in people high in trait curiosity. But the lagged analysis, which asks what a day's curiosity does to tomorrow's meaning once today's meaning is accounted for, found a small positive carry-over for daily curiosity across the whole sample (B = .02, p = .02). Nobody in the study was assigned to practise curiosity, so the paper cannot say whether trying harder raises the trait.

What if everything feels flat and I cannot get interested in anything?

That is a different situation from the ordinary boredom of a routine week, and this study did not measure it. The sample was introductory psychology students with no clinical screening. Loss of interest in nearly everything for two weeks or more is a reason to talk to a doctor or therapist, not to add a hobby.

Why Is My Life So Boring? A 21-Day Diary Study Points at Curiosity, Not Fun

Q: Does this apply if I am not a curious person?

Partly. The same-day payoff of a curious day was clearest in people high in trait curiosity. But the lagged analysis, which asks what a day's curiosity does to tomorrow's meaning once today's meaning is accounted for, found a small positive carry-over for daily curiosity across the whole sample (B = .02, p = .02). Nobody in the study was assigned to practise curiosity, so the paper cannot say whether trying harder raises the trait.

Q: What if everything feels flat and I cannot get interested in anything?

That is a different situation from the ordinary boredom of a routine week, and this study did not measure it. The sample was introductory psychology students with no clinical screening. Loss of interest in nearly everything for two weeks or more is a reason to talk to a doctor or therapist, not to add a hobby.

Todd Kashdan and Michael Steger handed 97 college students a packet of 21 paper forms and one instruction: fill one out at the end of each day for three weeks. The forms asked how meaningful life felt that day, how satisfied the student was with it, how many growth-oriented things they had done, and how much they had been seeking out new information and experiences. Pleasure got its own questions. The results, published in Motivation and Emotion in 2007, are one of the cleaner answers on record to a question people type into search boxes all the time: why is my life so boring?

The short answer from this study is that “boring” may track curiosity more closely than it tracks fun. A day with plenty of pleasure raised well-being that day and then left no trace by the next one. A day in which students sought out something new carried a small boost in meaning into the following day.

What did the diaries measure?

I read the full paper, from the author’s copy on the George Mason University site. Of 111 introductory psychology students, 106 returned diaries and 97 were usable (33 men, 64 women, mean age 19.75), giving 1,976 daily assessments. Daily curiosity was four items rated from 1 to 7, for example “I was actively seeking as much information as I could in new situations” and “Everywhere I went, I was out looking for new things or experiences.” Daily meaning was two questions: how meaningful does your life feel, and how much does it feel like it has purpose.

Pleasure was measured narrowly, and the authors say so. The hedonistic behavior checklist included getting drunk, eating more than intended because it tasted good, and sex purely for pleasure. Massages, pets and relaxing walks were not on it.

Which kind of day lasted?

On days when students felt more curious, those high in trait curiosity reported more growth-oriented behavior (p = .02), more meaning (p = .05) and more life satisfaction (p = .02). Growth items included thanking someone, confiding something important, and writing out goals.

Then the authors did something most studies of this kind skip: they checked the next day. After accounting for the previous day’s meaning, a curious day predicted higher meaning the day after (B = .02, p = .02). A pleasant day did not predict next-day meaning or life satisfaction, and it predicted slightly less searching for meaning (p = .03). The reverse arrow was missing too: a meaningful day did not predict a more curious tomorrow. Mood did not explain any of this, nor did the Big Five personality traits.

Why would boredom and curiosity be linked?

A week of pleasant sameness can contain plenty of enjoyment and no open questions. George Loewenstein’s account of curiosity, covered in this post on information gaps, says the feeling needs a small, definite thing you know you do not know. Routine weeks tend to close those gaps, or never open them. And when nothing is open, people reach for stimulation of any kind: in Wilson and colleagues’ 2014 experiment, many participants gave themselves electric shocks rather than sit alone with their thoughts.

What can you do with a boring week?

The paper observed ordinary variation in people’s days. It did not assign anyone to be curious, so everything below is my extrapolation, not a tested protocol.

Open one gap before breakfast. Pick a question about something you pass daily: who owns that empty storefront, why that bus route bends where it does. Answer it by evening.
Ask one person something you cannot guess. Not “how was your day.” Something like “what did you do before this job?”
Score the day with the paper’s four items. Rate each from 1 to 7 at night. Two minutes. If three days in a row score low, the sameness is showing up in data, not only in your mood.
Keep pleasure, add a new input to it. Same dinner, new cookbook. Same walk, an unfamiliar street. The dopamine menu is a fine place to list treats; curiosity asks for one item you have never ticked.

What the study cannot tell you

The sample was young (mean age 19.75), 76% Caucasian, all introductory psychology students, followed for three weeks, reporting on themselves. The effects are small in raw terms. Curiosity and meaning could both be driven by something unmeasured on a given day. The authors also note their pleasure measure was thin, so “pleasure fades” applies to the sex, food and alcohol items they used, not to every enjoyable thing.

If tomorrow’s curiosity question needs you upright and moving early, DontSnooze is a free alarm app that gives you 30 seconds after the alarm to record a video, and sends a random camera-roll photo to friends you picked if you do not.

Curiosity is easier to sustain with company, and a weeknight plan built on a 2006 bonding study is one way to test that.

A boring week is rarely short of pleasant things. The diaries suggest asking how many questions were open that day.

What did the diaries measure?

Which kind of day lasted?

Why would boredom and curiosity be linked?

What can you do with a boring week?

What the study cannot tell you

Keep reading

Would you shock yourself rather than sit alone 15 minutes?

What Loewenstein's 1994 curiosity theory says about getting out of bed

What makes a life psychologically rich, and which experiences add it