5.30pm: Do Nothing – Be Bored
Being bored; a dying art form that’s effectively removing the free flowing, fun and creative headspace that it offers. Nobody reaches peak boredom anymore. In fact, as soon as the slightest hint of tedium comes our way, we’ll whip out a screen-based device to fixate on.
If you’re lucky enough to have experienced the era before phone addiction, you’ll likely remember all the fun that boredom brings. This is a result of your brain striving to come up with entertaining, productive, or just plain ridiculous ideas.
And that is what we’re missing out now. An unstimulated, idle mind, working its cognitive and creative magic. The purest form of idea generation.
Scheduled boredom
In a recent episode of the DesignThinkers podcast, keynote speaker and global design leader, Stephen Gates, said that he schedules time in his daily to-do list to become bored. This got me thinking, why aren’t more of us doing this?
I will literally put blocks of time that just say ‘be bored’, and it’s an hour-long meeting.
Of course, I thought I’d give it a go, mainly for nostalgic purposes, but also as an experiment. What will happen? How comfortable or uncomfortable will it be? Will I actually be able to nothing at all?
I think most of us have become accustomed to always doing something, no matter how small. In his podcast interview, Stephen says he reads or listens to music during his allocated boredom slot. Still a nice departure from an otherwise hectic schedule, but I wanted to remove any and all forms of mental stimulation.
So, at around 5.30pm each day, I’ve been setting a 30-minute timer, leaving my phone in the next room, and doing nothing. Nothing at all, other than sitting on the sofa and looking around like some sort of psychopath.
In a way, it’s a little like meditation, except also the complete opposite. In this practice, the mind is freely encouraged to go absolutely wild. Observed, unobserved, conscious, subconscious, daydreams, they’re all fair game.
Yikes! You need to do this, this, this and this
The first thing to pipe up is nearly always a barrage of things you need to do the instant your thirty minutes is up. Often useful, but equally unnecessary.
For example, I’ve often thought of things that needed doing that I’d completely forgotten to put on that day’s to-do list. On the flip side, most things you think you need to do straight after your boredom sesh can usually wait.
In a series of studies, researchers found that subjects who were asked to do mundane, boredom-inducing tasks were more creative afterward. Boredom is a “variety-driving emotion,” meaning that it primes us to seek out new and different — therefore creative — experiences and solutions.
Fighting the urge
Once I’ve settled in and let my brain wander, the real challenge begins; fighting the impulsive urge to get up and do something. This is really quite fascinating. Why can’t we just sit for a while and enjoy the time out?
It’s genuinely a pretty uncomfortable feeling to start with.
Stick it out
Following several stern words with yourself, the time spent doing nothing does actually become enjoyable. I’d go as far as calling it refreshing. In contrast to our normal day-to-day activities, it’s just nice to know you don’t need to do anything for a short while.
Thoughts come and go, ideas emerge, stories unravel, and creative explorations start to form. Relaxation even starts to creep in. Bonus!
Boredom has been scientifically proven to be a precursor for creative thinking, which is why many creatives find that their best ideas come when they’re engaged in mundane tasks, such as doing laundry or taking a walk. Boredom relaxes the brain and turns off its usual filters, allowing it to explore new ideas without the constraints of usual thought patterns.
The longest 30 minutes ever
I’ve cracked it. I know how to slow down time. Sit and do nothing for thirty minutes. It will feel like thirty years. A slight over-exaggeration, but still, this half hour is looooooooooong! Surely I’ve forgotten to set the timer?
As the years fly by quicker than ever, maybe boredom is the remedy? Or, at least, a slower pace with fewer distractions. I guess, at its core, we could whittle this down to two things.
More time out
Less screen time
Sorry, I’m busy being bored that night
Boredom is a creative superpower, and yet so many of us (myself included) have been neglecting it. We’re feeding our brains constant stimulation for every minute of every hour that we’re awake.
What if we could regain a portion of our headspace back, by simply sitting and doing nothing? Not meditating, not reading, not pacing, just pure nothingness.
This little experiment reconnected me with the idle mind. A creative zone where big, small, pointless and meaningful ideas happen. A drastically underused mental space with huge potential.
Who knows how this will pan out. Maybe I’ll eventually get bored of being bored, but for the time being, it’s on every day’s to-do list. 5.30pm – Do nothing – Be bored. If I’m honest, I’m really rather enjoying it. Maybe you will too?
