Prisons, classrooms, boardrooms, hospitals, and senior care facilities have little in common. Yet to our brains, they are virtually indistinguishable in one important respect: They are all boring. It may seem that boredom would be the least of someone’s worries in prison, but as Lorena Rivera (re-entry entitlement specialist for imprisoned women with mental illness) told us in an interview for our book, boredom is one of the toughest aspects of doing time.