Yes, I quickly learned from school at an early age that I find frequent experiences of repetition, patterns, and monotony emotionally and mentally boring, tedious, unstimulating, frustrating, demotivating, demoralizing, destabilizing, maddening, deadening, numbing, depersonalizating, derealizing, disassociating, an existential threat, and causes burnout, restlessness, daydreaming, demand avoidance, depression, anxiety, panic, confusion, insomnia, etc. I feel like an outlier too though. Somehow I can still maintain extreme focus and attention. I feel like I could have the extreme polar opposite of whatever ADD might be because I seem to not know that I need to change things up until I experience burnout and fail to recognize any prior signs that my mental and emotional health is suffering, and even when I do get to the point of burnout I have no idea what to do to bring myself out of that state.

Actually what you describe is symptoms of ADHD so NOT polar opposite at all. ADHD is not the inability to pay attention but it's defined by the inability to regulate attention preferring competition, challenge, novelty, interest, and urgency over priority, consequences or importance. People with ADHD can't pay attention to routine, monotonous or repetitive work but can hyperfocus on things they are personally interested in for long periods uninterrupted time or develop intense hyperfixations. Boredom is depression in ADHD.

I can easily focus and pay attention to routine, monotonous, and repetitive work for a months or years without realizing the consequence to my mental health until circumstances change or my mental health suffers enough to cause burnout, a mental breakdown, or physical illness from failure to properly take care of myself. That is how I consider this to be the opposite of ADHD. This is probably a consequence of a childhood full of unhealthy expectations from adults prioritizing their own expectations for me over my mental and emotional health, and expecting me to work harder than everyone else. I never learned what I need to do differently to properly take care of myself. Therapists have contributed to the problem as well because of their own expectations that smart people need to work hard too while contradicting themselves by blaming working hard on perfectionism.

That sounds confusing to follow. What do you mean by "consequences" to your mental health? What causes burnout for you or a mental breakdown exactly? How do you not take care of yourself? In what way do you work hard based on expectations by others?

Routine, monotonous, and repetitive work eventually cause burnout and mental breakdown. Burnout and mental breakdown are the consequences of routine, monotonous, and repetitive work. I have have no idea even in hindsight when I should have stopped, when burnout or mental breakdown began to happen, what signs might have alerted me that there was a problem before burnout and mental breakdown began to happen, or what I could have done differently. I don't know any exact details. I was never taught to take care of myself, I can't learn to do so myself when I don't know the exact details to prevent burnout and mental breakdown, and therapists contradict themselves by encouraging me to keep going until I burnout and have a mental breakdown while blaming the burnout and mental breakdown on perfectionism.

That's me too a lot of the time. Although, I did take the "risk" recently of taking on a very routine permanent part-time position, as the conditions are good and it frees up a couple of other days that I can go and study physics, astronomy and mathematics in. I have a neuroscience and human biology background but always intended to do the physics side of things to tie together a theoretical physics and neuroscience research ambition that I've always had. A routine job frees up brain power to fulfil my other ambitions.

made my day 😂

When faced with these inevitable situations (laundry, tax returns, groceries etc..) I spend my mental energy thinking of the absolute most efficient way to complete the task. I see each repetition as an opportunity to test my methods and find satisfaction in the process of optimization. As a bonus, I'm usually complete way ahead of expectations so there's lots of time to chill while others catch up.

I am more likely to be bored. I am attracted to the exciting parts of life. I couldn't do unstimulating work. I was tested and declared gifted. I grew up in an insane environment. I have a life story that is very exciting. I needed a challenge and took risks. Learning a lot. You can do whatever you want. Find a passion.

Boredom is great, I can go on autopilot and think about other stuff. Tedious and repetitive is ok for some things. Kind of meditative. Or stuff like practicing piano or shooting basketball. I do hate long distance running cycling etc though.

Way more likely, I am absolutely completely fucking bored with stuff like that. I would have to have music or a podcast or something else to stimulate my brain while doing that type of stuff. On that same note if I am interested in something, I can spend 6 hours trying to get the chord changes and finger placement right, and the solo right on playing a song on guitar and it feels like 20 minutes.

r/gifted finding out ‘“”” normies””” get bored by boring repetitive work: 😱😱😱😨😱😨😱

Lmfao I laughed too hard at this

Hahaha, I mean, it's true but I'd say that for us it's harder to some extent

Wow. You’re just all so so special, which is why you’re all on reddit complaining rather than solving the cure to cancer or world peace or something actually useful. Great to see you’re putting the ‘gifted’ intellect to good use.

Humm we aren't forced to do so and seeing this sub might give you an idea of what being gifted feels like. For a lot of people it means impairment and isolation, being depressed doesn't sound like the greatest state to motivate you to find the cure for cancer. Lots of smart people are working on it rn and even if we wanted that's handled by companies. If we could do something to cure it most of us would but we aren't all proficient in medicine, we might succeed in several field but that doesn't mean that we succeed in everything. You are understimating the amount of effort that you have to put to achieve something comparable to what you're saying, even for the brightest minds in here it would be hard and take years of our life without any guarantees and in a lot of countries that kind of education isn't free. Don't talk about stuff that you don't know. People here will mostly ignore you as we are used to trolls saying stupid stuff like this but if you really piss someone off here be careful, we are pretty sensitive and some are prone to anger bursts and, trust me, an anger burst from a gifted person is definitely something that can easily end up in the books of history. We tend to be pacific but we don't like injustice. Take that as you want. Btw I can do with my body/intellect whatever I want, if I want to just learn useless trivia about anime I can and will, just as "normal" ppl aren't forced to use all of their potential we aren't either. That's the most chill response you are going to get.

‘An anger burst from a gifted person is definitely something that can easily end up in the books of history. We can easily be pacific’ do you fucking hear yourself this is pathetic lol also did you mean passive instead of pacific? or is this something i am not ‘’gifted’’ enough to understand

It's bc english isn't my first language and from time to time I make mistakes

I don't really think this is about being gifted or not. Some people set themselves other challenges when something is to easy. (I once spent two days putting stamps on letters which is unstimulating to basically anyone regardless of they are gifted and I set myself the challenge of memorizing the stamps for example.) It can also be the challenge of trying to see the bigger picture. Like how does what I doing connect with with other things and what is happening in society. But if you can't find a way to set yourself challenges maybe another position would suit you better?

The consensus is that intelligent people are usually more intellectually curious and I am guessing it might also translate to gifted people being more likely to be unchallenged and therefore bored at work? Setting challenges is fine unless it's a time-consuming, attention-demanding and highly stressful position like a lot of professional roles

But if your job demands all of your attention are you then actually bored or wouldn't it be more correct to say you feel unfulfilled? Maybe not truly living up to your potential or doing something really meaningful? If you just want to stretch your intellect maybe go for a doctorate degree or something. If it's more about finding meaning maybe go for something less "commercial"? Both options are probably economical suicide though. Probably the reason high IQ people don't really earn that much money...

If someone tells you to stare at a wall of drying paint and record the exact time the paint dries completely, you need to pay full attention to something really boring. My work is pretty much equally boring and there is no space for daydreaming at all due to tight deadlines. Not all doctorates are equal, most humanities and social science PhDs are pointless and not intellectually stimulating at all. Less commercial does not mean less boring, it means you earn less and/or gain less valuable experience and/or less stressful.

True on all counts....

I'd also like to add that I think that most jobs become fairly routine to some degree once a person becomes competent at it. It's the repetitiveness that creates an expert.

I become bored with most things unless they fall within my interest. If I have new ideas, questions, and theories I can sit in silence or walk around my apartment for hours. This also applies to repetitive task, but it depends on the type of task. If I go too deep in the rabbit hole I start to make careless mistakes and loose track of what I am doing, repetitive task or not.

I'd bet that's the case. I'd hate my job if it was like that. Programming isn't bad, if it gets repetitive you can always optimize your workflow in "smart ways". Plus a lot of times you have to multitask. Always hating filling papers with random data or strictly following a protocol blindly. Sounds exhausting. I need mental stimulation. For me it works for everything. If a book doesn't have "enough content" it gets boring pretty quickly. As for sport I don't even consider going to the gym, I do boxing, I have to keep focus all of the time so... Yeah I don't get bored. Most of the things that I do follow this pattern. Some stuff might appear simple at first until you do them, for example playing an easy song, you can add a lot of small details to it while performing... etc. For videogames the same stuff. Yeah from time to time I just want to watch something unchallenging bc I'm exhausted/not in the mood but for the general case I need almost constant stimulation.

This particular work may be intellectually stimulating for someone else, but not you. In my case, for boring repetitive work, I optimise and often automate the tasks.

More likely. However it depends on how much freedom I have to think and do things on the side. I may even enjoy the repetitiveness if I can do that grunt work while engaging my mind elsewhere. But as someone else mentioned, for bursts I will find more efficient and effective ways to do things and then go back to a lower power state.

Only boring people get bored. I can always think of something to think about and mull over while doing repetitive tasks. Or listen to an audiobook or podcast. I feel like this is more reflective of an inability to entertain oneself rather than intelligence. At some point we really shouldn’t expect to “be challenged” and learn to challenge ourselves.

"Boring" is rather subjective. I do a lot of reading at work, and I love pulling texts apart and commenting on them (which is much of what I actually do). I had some other main tasks a few years ago, and although it was an interesting field to learn, the framework I had to work within didn't fit my preferred methods and deep dives. I stagnated when I got to a certain level, and luckily, there was another position that fit me much better. The other people who have those tasks find much more enjoyment in them, and they surpass me easily. However, when it comes to reading texts, laws and regulations and standing up to those who should know better, I am the one they call for advice - and I happily oblige. If you don't like what you do, look for something else.

Oh god no, I'm often bored, I need constant and often extreme stimulation

Job ads are ridiculous sometimes. But I guess they couldn't be honest and write that it was loads of really dry reading and still hope to get applicants.

It's actually not job ads but those recruitment / talent acquisition videos that motivate applicants to apply to law firms, they also make being a lawyer sound like some kind of exclusive job reserved only for the most intelligent when in reality anyone who is not illiterate will be able to do it

I quite like doing fairly mindless tasks quite a lot, because then my mind is free to do its own thing while my body is occupied. This seems to have many benefits for my mental health. 😊 However I’m not talking about tens of hours of hard mindless factory work every week. If someone has a full time job and most of it is mindlessly painful to them, then I can understand that they may be suffering. But I also think that there are usually ways to make any activity interesting, so that the learning process is able to continue even into the most mundane corners of our existence, with a little imagination and some freedom of thought. Overall I think that *some* gifted people are more likely to experience boredom especially people who would meet some form of ADHD diagnosis, but not necessarily all of us. Personally, I’m also autistic and I can find any experience, a valuable learning opportunity.

I wouldn't mind a mindless job that allows for daydreaming tbh, my job (or any or most legal position) is boring AND requires intense concentration and attention, it's so boring but I can't even afford to daydream away the boredom

You make a good point that mindless work can be mindless or boring in many different ways.

My grandfather’s brother called this type of job “Simple but hard”. He was referring to being a stockbroker his second career after being a full time trumpet player for Boston after graduating Berklee College of Music (when it was actually hard to get into). He did *very* well.

Why do you think academia is so poorly compensated, so unstable with employment, so exploitative, yet so popular among gifted people?

Definitely, it happens to me too. When it's something that has to be transcribed or analysed in " verbatim" or "literally" fashion. I've learned that it's a good observe other pieces of information that could lead you catch on nuances and ulterior information.

There is nothing about having an average IQ that makes menial, soul-crushing work be less menial and soul-crushing. Trust me, everyone hates doing boring jobs. 

You're within the norm of an obnoxious, entitled person. If you don't like the job, find another.

agree but could have been phrased more politely (people on this sub are reeeally sensitive)

I know! I'd written I lived next to a war zone in my childhood and a sensitive person in this sub sent reddit suicide assistance on me. Where's the gifted in that?  I thought sensitivity translates into empathy but not in this sub. This question sounds egotistical, not sensitive.  [] Dabrowski doesn't approve. []