The middle is a hard place to be.
The middle of a thesis or a book can be excruciating. Things are underway, but not finished. The end is in sight, but not yet reached. In the middle, it’s easy to lose faith in the direction you’re travelling. One of my PhD mentors, Dr Diane Mulcahy, used to talk about “the muddle of the middle” a lot, especially when it comes to data analysis. I’ve found even having a phrase like “the muddle of the middle” is helpful: name it to tame it, as my therapist says.
In some areas of life, the middle is shrinking. In this world of political extremes, I yearn for the middle ground, while realising it’s increasingly an untenable position on almost anything: Gaza, trans rights, tariffs, tax policy — you name it. The same polarising tendency is there. Take, as just one example, the recent Taylor Swift engagement story. Apparently one can only be on one side (“Finally! She deserves this!”) or another (“She’s a self-centred billionaire out to make a buck from her love life”). Even if you don’t particularly care, it can feel like you have to pick a side. When you do, be prepared to be judged and shamed if you take the “wrong” one.
I don’t know about you, but I am finding the lack of a middle exhausting. I blame the algorithms.
The more a person is online, the more extreme their views tend to get about a topic, one way or the other. Especially, ES-PECIALLY, when it comes to talking about AI in academia. Go on any social feed where there are academics, especially Bluesky, and the AI hate comes at you hard and fast. There’s always a couple of people countering with boosterism, which is somehow worse.
Some people don’t have patience to hear me out on my nuanced, middle ground positions, so I am often coded as an AI lover, despite my very publicly expressed misgivings. I complained on a recent On The Reg podcast that I can’t even talk to some friends about AI because it’s bound to lead to an argument. My friend Dr Jonathon O’Donnell compares the academic divide over AI to heated conflicts between Catholics and Protestants back in the day: it’s become an article of faith for some people. Certainly you can feel an Identity Politics vibe in the online echo chambers. In face of all the vitriol, I suspect most of us middling types just shut up. But shutting up is not my Brand, so I spoke up about the polarisation of the issue on Linkedin recently. The responses to the posts, and the messages I got afterwards suggested my middle position is more widely held than you might think.
In my more frustrated moments, I find myself thinking about AI hate as a kind of luxury complaint in academic circles. Good for you if you can be a hold out, but even if I wanted to resist teaching AI (which I don’t), it’s part of my job description as a research educator. At ANU, I am the person who is meant to tell PhD students about the AI rules and show them how to use it within those guidelines. If I want to be good at teaching AI, I need to incorporate it in every part of my teaching and research practice so I can stay current. This means I am, by necessity, a high AI user – but I would be lying if I didn’t say I also enjoy the challenge.
When I say I don’t have a choice about working with AI, that’s just facts, but some people have told me I should take a much more principled stand. Sure, I could say “no” to teaching AI, but what would that lead to… what exactly? Quitting?
(Braces herself for blow back)
The middle can also be boring, which makes it a tempting time to give up on a project. Most people quit their PhD after two years; a significant number quit closer to the three-year mark. That’s a long time to do a project without a reward. We don’t talk about boredom in academic work that much, but I have a private theory that the PhD is, at least in part, a test of tolerance for boredom. The sheer amount of reading you have to do for a PhD is daunting and, I say this with love, most academic writing is dull.
Like many of you, I spent most of the pandemic lockdowns feeling far more bored than terrified, which surprised me a bit if I’m honest. As it turns out though, boredom is one of the most common human emotions. You might think boredom only happens in monotonous tasks — not so. Research shows that boredom can occur while studying, working or doing “nothing in particular”. (If you’re wondering who these boredom researchers are, check out the interdisciplinary Boredom Conference, which has apparently been held nine times — but sadly seemed to stop in 2023.)
Boredom can cause accidents and mistakes, which warrants researcher attention and has resulted in a relatively small, but fascinating, collection of research (a worryingly large amount of it is on boredom of pilots on long-haul flights, which I do not recommend reading if you are about to take a trip). Here’s a list of reasons we get bored, thought about in terms of academic work:
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Repetitive, routine or undemanding tasks. Research is by nature demanding, but research also takes place in a large bureaucracy. Bureaucracies excel at supplying repetitive, routine tasks that, while untaxing, are anything but interesting. Related to routine boredom is a lack of task variety. Bench scientists will know the frustration of doing the same experimental procedure over and over. In my area — vaguely social science — coding a large set of similar texts will send me to Instagram for a dopamine hit faster than anything.
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Low autonomy or feeling trapped. Probably not a big problem for those of us who get to choose our research topic, but for people working on others’ pet projects, feelings of powerlessness over the direction of research can be a real morale killer. This boredom can tip over into anger and conflict if coupled with a supervisor who micro-manages you to within an inch of your life.
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Lack of meaning or values alignment. Even if the work itself is interesting, you can get bored if it feels meaningless or not aligned with your values. Even more reason to choose your topic carefully, but fair warning: even the most interesting topic can feel meaningless when done in PhD mode. The requirement to demonstrate attention to detail can lead to reams of text that no one — not even the author — wants to read. There were 30,000 words of my thesis that read like dry toast (lots of unproductive chewing for little joy) but, as one of my examiners pointed out, it had to be there because that’s the thesis genre.
Some researchers think boredom serves a functional purpose, driving us to seek change and novelty. This area of boredom research suggests that boredom is a coping strategy that kicks in when your brain is not being “fed” enough, kind of like food cravings. Until I started taking GLP1 agonists, I had a lot of “food noise”. Maybe boredom is a form of “brain noise” that you have to learn to manage while doing a PhD? I know that doing one for three years hugely improved my own capacity to stay with a task, to the point where it feels like a superpower sometimes.
But does this superpower have continuing value? In a future world, where workplace AI is likely to be part of our workflows (despite the wishes of the AI haters), will a tolerance for boredom be a valuable form of career capital? Or will boredom tolerance be like handwriting: largely obsolete. Perhaps super-fast, novelty-seeking behaviour supported by machines is going to be more adaptive?
I don’t have answers… but I am worried that the PhD as boredom-tolerance training may not last.
People have always struggled with the amount of reading that’s required for a PhD, but for the first time in my 20-year career in PhD training, I worry the coming generation genuinely lack reading skills. I don’t mean that they can’t understand words or form creative thoughts (most actually excel in this), just that they don’t have the ability to stay with the boredom academic reading requires. Many younger PhD students, who have grown up with smartphones, have rarely even known boredom. They also battle with addictive technology that steals their attention. And now they have another seductive technology to solve the problem: AI. Not so long ago one student asked me if it was OK that he doesn’t read the papers and relies on AI summaries instead.
I could only stare at him.
Look, I get it: being bored at work is an unpleasant experience. We all feel restlessness, frustration, and sometimes self-doubt when boredom hits. On-the-job boredom also carries a sting of guilt or anxiety: you feel like you should be doing something productive, but you just can’t be arsed. The low morale in my workplace at the moment is really affecting my productivity and often manifests as persistent boredom that I have to use every ounce of energy to fight. I’ve managed to do the minimum I’m paid for, but no extras (you may notice I haven’t blogged for months), and I’m exhausted at the end of the day. I often find myself in bed at 7 pm, scrolling Golden Retriever content on Instagram in an effort to lift my mood (a bad habit, I know, but better than doom-scrolling the news about That Fucking Guy).
Which brings me back to the middle: being bored and stuck is going to happen. So what can you do about it?
I’ve noticed many of my colleagues try to mask or suppress their boredom by pretending to be busy, or clinging to distractions — like fighting with each other about AI on LinkedIn. Better strategies are out there. The power move is learning to recognise the emotion in yourself and name it. Saying “I’m bored with this” out loud is surprisingly effective.
Try to identify why you are bored. Is it task repetition? Give yourself permission to satisfy your brain’s cravings and switch to something else. Delaying getting started because it already feels boring? Structured procrastination is a method I use effectively: so long as you procrastinate with something useful, it’s not a waste of time, therefore you don’t have to feel guilty! Having a couple of research “side quests” on the go does carry the risk of doing too much, but at least you have mental stimulation. In a similar vein, challenging yourself by taking on a stretch project can help. Recently I decided to teach myself how to make TikTok videos about academic writing: that shit is hard, but not boring (at least yet!).
And next time you find yourself in the Muddle of the Middle, cut yourself some slack. Middles? they’re hard.
So anyway, I wandered around a bit in this one, but I had fun breaking my writing drought. And I can assure you that this post was 100% grain-fed, organic, artisanal Inger content. OK, ChattieG deep research did do the heavy lifting on the boredom research, but the words in this post? All my own. Don’t @ me about the spelling mistakes.
With love
Inger
Crafted at the National Library of Australia, Winter 2025, Canberra.
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