Be Bored

Creativity Blossoms in Space

Though it might not be obvious, our bodies are designed to fast.

The proof is in the pudding (so to speak). Those fasting for the first time are are suprised to discover they do not keel over or collapse into a black hole of hangry. To the contrary, periods of caloric abstinence seem to do us a whole lot of good, sharpening our focus and bolstering our mood.

Some suggest there are greater health benefits, too, and the logic is tempting. Periods of metabolic respite may trigger regulatory mechanisms that are a boon to blood sugar levels, cellular health, and immune function.

This all makes for a juicy bit of irony. In order to maximize the benefit of food, it seems we ought to sometimes avoid it. Instead, we overindulge. Our wrong instincts given a surplus render the process of solving a major problem an act of also creating new ones.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a modern theme. And while it applies most obviously to food, the paradox is also found in other aspects of our day to day lives. Entertainment is similar to food in that abundance of both resources are circumstances our brains are not well equipped to deal with.

This post will explore how just as with fasting, the benefits of boredom in an age of stimulation may surprise the unhabituated.

First, however, it will be useful to briefly compare the relative difficulties of overconsumption.

Attention

The harm of abundant entertainment is foremost in its ability to capture our attention. A donut cased behind a glass window may be tempting, but at least it does not follow us around all day, vibrating in our pockets.

What’s more, while processed food triggers instincts underlying a major dimension of human experience, entertainment triggers, well… all of them.

The internet offers 24–7 servings of every conceivable sort of titillation; food, sex, sport, intimacy, generosity, Schadenfreude, you name it. This is done so systematically that your entertainment eventually knows you better than you know yourself.

We’re all familiar with Cinnabon’s tricks of the trade. In shopping malls, the chain arms their stores with a cinnamon scent contrived to lure you in. While that’s underhanded enough, imagine if instead of wafting a simple scent, Cinnabon instead peered into your brain, picked out your weaknesses, and then battered you with them in every waking moment. We might agree that this would be very good for Cinnabon and very bad for you.

That is exactly what social media apps do, and it’s why we’re so addicted to them. But that’s only the beginning of the problem.

Harm

There’s at least one good thing about overconsumption of food. When we’re overweight and/or out of shape, it’s hard to deny it; the consequences eventually affect us in a way that only the most dissonant can write off as benign.

Not so with technological overconsumption. One can have all the appearance of being perfectly healthy while maintaining a gluttonous relationship with entertainment.

I first noticed this when forced to be truly bored on a meditation retreat. I realized how lurching and neurotic my mind had become only after extended periods of doing nothing; for days, I caught myself glancing at my hand hoping to catch some fleeting burst of stimulation.

Without stretches of boredom, day to day life offers few obvious signs of the ambient levels of pathology we have settled into. Unlike with food, indulgence in tech does not stare back at us in the mirror.

Creativity

It is worth glancing at the difficulties of abundant entertainment so that we might steel ourselves to the challenge of overcoming it.

To trade a stick for a carrot, though, boredom is not just a medicine to prevent harm, but also a supplement to improve health. This is because our brains seem to be very good at working on hard problems when it seems like they’re doing nothing at all.

In a now famous (and free) online course called learning how to learn, new findings in neuroscience are translated into a set of practical applications for learning in the real world.

While the subject matter may seem prosaic, this is no normal study guide — it is a revolution.

In the course, they identify two “modes” of the brain:

The focus mode is where the mind concentrates on a specific task or problem. It involves directing attention to a particular thing, filtering out distractions, and using working memory to keep information in mind. This mode is associated with the prefrontal cortex and is the mode most commonly associated with learning in traditional educational settings.

The diffuse mode is when the mind is relaxed and thoughts wander freely. This mode is associated with the default mode network, a set of interconnected brain regions that become active when the mind is not engaged in focused thinking.

What’s compelling is not that the mind looks different when it wanders, but rather that according to the science, this daydreaming can be highly productive. In diffuse mode, the subconscious is able to recruit a broader swath of neural circuitry, giving rise to new solutions for problems that stump us in the spotlight of conscious attention.

The mechanism offers an explanation for Eureka moments in the shower and the clarity that comes after a relaxing vacation. It is productivity born from leisure; activity that flourishes in non-action.

While the idea might sound far out, it makes sense when you think about it. Most neural functions happen outside the scope of perception, and many are so complicated that they would instantly overwhelm our concious processor (e.g., facial recognition or driving a car).

Therefore, it stands to reason that allowing our subconscious machinery to go to work on our problems would result in better solutions.

But here’s the catch. If we don’t let our minds wander, we lose out on this latent ability. Focusing on even unrelated tasks suppresses the neural network responsible for creative problem solving. That means if our addiction to technology keeps our attention locked in an endless dance with cheap entertainment, we compromise our subconscious ability to process difficult questions.

In other words — if you refuse to be bored, you invite worse outcomes in any dimension of life that requires creativity in critical thinking (i.e., most of them). Your ability to be make good decisions may well be a direct product of your capacity to do nothing.

Don’t Starve; Fast

A few clarifying remarks should be made in conclusion.

The first is that diffuse mode activity need not be synonymous with boredom in an unpleasant sense. In fact, boredom may be better thought of as a gateway to deeper and more fulfilling experience as creativity is catalyzed. As with first time fasters who expect the worst, people who habitually avoid the diffuse mode simply have wrong expectations about how enjoyable it can be.

The second is that neither technology nor entertainment are objectively bad things — in fact, if anything they are both objectively good. Just as with food, the problem is not the object itself, but our behavior given a surplus of it. Refusing any consumption of tech while longing for simpler times is, at best, an overcorrection.

A better response than starvation is strategic fasting. Identifying opportunities to embrace the bore can create the space our brains need to be creative without sacrificing newfound advantages.

For me, these opportunities come naturally in transitional phases. Avoiding screens on airplanes (especially on short flights), spending the first few hours of the day without my phone, and leaving headphones behind on walks, runs, and commutes are easy ways to cultivate boredom and reap the fruits that it carries in tow.

As an extension of the modern irony, we need an ironic manifesto: be bored, and be bored often. The more bored we can manage to be, the less boring the world might just become.