In modern life, there is hardly a moment of quietness. Any moment of stagnation is immediately filled with one of endless sources of mind-breaking stimulation. Our entire lives are dictated by cheap dopamine from video games, movies, TV Shows, social media, instant messaging, email, and YouTube.
Not only do all of these things eat up large chunks of our time but they desensitise our system so that when we do things we once loved they lack the positive feelings that we used to enjoy because the most stimulation we get within a day came not from accomplishing things but from mindlessly consuming content or engaging in trivial digital interactions. The food we eat also plays a role in this. We consume foods which are highly palatable which may not be the best for our body but make all other natural food which has the nutrients we need taste bland in comparison.
But I believe we only unlock our full potential when we are bored, our mind comes up with its greatest ideas and solutions when it has nothing going on and not when it has unending information coming in.
The ancient Greeks took two positions when it came to boredom. The first was to get busy when you get bored so the feeling goes away. The second is to lean into boredom. To experience it to its fullest so that you can reset, allow your brain to settle and then have a higher level of focus on your tasks later. This also allows what would be otherwise devastatingly boring tasks to feel highly stimulating. This has been backed by research from the Flow Research Collective into how flow is activated and moments of boredom and stillness play a big role in our ability to get into flow. You can find out more in this video from co-founder Rian Doris. In the video, Rian relates a story of a silent retreat where he got no stimulation for a long period of time. When he was finally able to use his phone again the dopamine surge from responding to messages was almost euphoric but the benefits lasted longer than that, and when he arrived home a boring task which he had been putting off for a long time suddenly became very engaging and enjoyable and he instantly got into flow.
We don’t allow for this separation of time. We are either working or consuming content, and oftentimes we’re doing both. Listening to music or a podcast while we work. Having a tv show in the background while we study or even scrolling through social media while we wait for video game load screens to end. The thought of being bored for even a moment seems horrifying to many and we avoid it like the plague. And yes, unwanted boredom is horrible, but there is a benefit to scheduling time into your day to be bored. This can be in your breaks from work. Where you could stare at a wall, take a walk, or just drink some water instead of immediately opening social media to get a million tiny dopamine hits. Or in the morning when the first few hours of your day could be completely free of stimulation so that you can allow yourself to think before having information from the external world bombard your mind.
I spend a good deal of time consuming content because it helps me formulate new ideas eventually, but if I never have a moment of stillness I can never turn all that information into anything useful. And I have found my greatest ideas come not when I’m playing a video game or even working out, but when I’m making my coffee, cooking or just staring at the view. But the moment I try to occupy myself in these moments by having YouTube in the background or listening to a podcast, my ability to put ideas together completely falls away. So although the boredom of doing a singular task is uncomfortable, it is the thing that allows me to better create ideas.
I have also observed that if I spend my morning on social media, the rest of my day becomes harder to work, but if I stay bored throughout the morning by just living life without external stimulation my work in the day will be more focused and feel much more rewarding.
Finally, if you never give yourself time to think quietly, you’ll never know what your true opinions and ideas about things are. Instead, every opinion you have will have been recklessly curated for you by a series of algorithms of potentially extreme opinions which you will adopt as your own without even a thought as to whether you agree with them or not. And that makes you a tool instead of a well-thought-out individual. So it’s important to take time to figure out what you think about things away from the collective consciousness that is your social media feed.
So I’m proposing a challenge to all of you. Schedule 30 minutes to 1 hour of boredom every day for a week. It doesn’t have to be in a single block, it could be broken up into 3, 20-minute blocks or 6, 10-minute blocks. But give yourself some time without any stimulation. Stare at a wall, do breathing exercises, wash some dishes or fold your laundry, but have nothing else to keep you busy during this time and see whether your mind comes up with anything interesting and if it makes the moments in which you are working feel better.
Godspeed.
Great actionable insights - thank you!