showing how boredom produces fatigue. Dr. Barmack put a group of students through a
series of tests in which, he knew, they could have little interest. The result? The
students felt tired and sleepy, complained of headaches and eyestrain, felt irritable. In
some cases, even their stomachs were upset. Was it all "imagination"? No. Metabolism
tests were taken of these students. These tests showed that the blood pressure of the
body and the consumption of oxygen actually decrease when a person is bored, and
that the whole metabolism picks up immediately as soon as he begins to feel interest
and pleasure in his work!
We rarely get tired when we are doing something interesting and exciting. For example,
I recently took a vacation in the Canadian Rockies up around Lake Louise. I spent
several days trout fishing along Corral Creek, fighting my way through brush higher than
my head, stumbling over logs, struggling through fallen timber-yet after eight hours of
this, I was not exhausted. Why? Because I was excited, exhilarated. I had a sense of
high achievement: six cut-throat trout. But suppose I had been bored by fishing, then
how do you think I would have felt? I would have been worn out by such strenuous work
at an altitude of seven thousand feet.
Even in such exhausting activities as mountain climbing, boredom may tire you far more
than the strenuous work involved. For example, Mr. S. H. Kingman, president of the
Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank of Minneapolis, told me of an incident that is a
perfect illustration of that statement. In July, 1943, the Canadian government asked the
Canadian Alpine Club to furnish guides to train the members of the Prince of Wales
Rangers in mountain climbing. Mr. Kingman was one of the guides chosen to train these
soldiers. He told me how he and the other guides-men ranging from forty-two to fifty-
nine years of age-took these young army men on long hikes across glaciers and snow
fields and up a sheer cliff of forty feet, where they had to climb with ropes and tiny foot-
holds and precarious hand-holds. They climbed Michael's Peak, the Vice-President
Peak, and other unnamed peaks in the Little Yoho Valley in the Canadian Rockies. After
fifteen hours of mountain climbing, these young men, who were in the pink of condition
(they had just finished a six-week course in tough Commando training), were utterly
exhausted.
Was their fatigue caused by using muscles that had not been hardened by Commando
training? Any man who had ever been through Commando training would hoot at such a
ridiculous question! No, they were utterly exhausted because they were bored by
mountain climbing. They were so tarred, that many of them fell asleep without waiting to
eat. But the guides-men who were two and three times as old as the soldiers-were they
tired? Yes, but not exhausted. The guides ate dinner and stayed up for hours, talking
about the day's experiences. They were not exhausted because they were interested
When Dr. Edward Thorndike of Columbia was conducting experiments in fatigue, he
kept young men awake for almost a week by keeping them constantly interested. After
much investigation, Dr. Thorndike is reported to have said: "Boredom is the only real
cause of diminution of work."
If you are a mental worker, it is seldom the amount of work you do that makes you tired.
You may be tired by the amount of work you do not do. For example, remember the day
last week when you were constantly interrupted. No letters answered. Appointments
broken. Trouble here and there. Everything went wrong that day. You accomplished
nothing whatever, yet you went home exhausted-and with a splitting head.
The next day everything clicked at the office. You accomplished forty times more than
you did the previous day. Yet you went home fresh as a snowy-white gardenia. You
have had that experience. So have I.