The Need to Reclaim Our Brains

When was the last time you were bored?

We live in a world more connected and more distracting than ever before. We are constantly inundated with new content — emails, social media notifications, text messages, and Snapchats. There is more to consume than ever and, it seems, less and less time to do it.

Our minds are always on. Always working. To the point that we get to the end of a day and wonder where the hell that day went. Every spare moment we had was filled with phone checks, streamed TV, and internet scrolling.

We often forget to turn our brains off, to let our minds wander, to allow ourselves to be alone with our own thoughts.

In short, many of us have stopped allowing ourselves to be bored. The result? Our minds are cluttered and creative thinking is increasingly difficult.

It’s time to reclaim our brains.

Shower thoughts are a real thing.

Being bored is a good thing. Here’s why. You’ve heard the old adage that we have our best ideas in the shower.

It turns out, this has a lot of legitimacy to it. The science says our best ideas come in the shower for a few reasons.

We’re happy is the shower. Dopamine is released at high levels, and that happiness drives our creativity. We are in a relaxed state of mind, which allows us to turn our attention inwards. And we are distracted from normal tasks, which allows our minds to wander.

As cognitive scientist Scott Barry Kaufman puts it, “The relaxing, solitary, and non-judgmental shower environment may afford creative thinking by allowing the mind to wander freely, and causing people to be more open to their inner stream of consciousness and daydreams.”

These moments happen outside the shower, too.

But shower thoughts are not literally confined to the shower. The same combination of relaxation and distraction normally occurs at tiny moments throughout our days.

We have a 3-minute wait in line at the coffee shop. We arrive at the conference room 5 minutes early and the meeting hasn’t started yet. We are meeting a friend out for dinner and we are at the restaurant before they arrive.

It’s in these tiny, innocuous moments that creativity and innovation typically occur. It’s in these moments that our mind wanders back to the problem we couldn’t crack all day, that we see something and think of it differently, that the lightbulb goes off.

But we’re experiencing them less.

The problem? We are losing all of these little, seemingly meaningless moments to distraction. We can’t grab our coffee yet so we scroll through Facebook. The meeting hasn’t begun so we frantically try to reply to one more email before it starts. Our friend hasn’t shown yet so we watch Snapchat stories instead of looking awkward.

All of this constant engagement chokes off our brains’ ability to be creative.

Psychologist and author Ron Friedman has spent the last year interviewing subject matter experts on topics such as this for his new summit on peak work performance.

He gathered thoughts from some of the top minds in business and many repeat the same idea when it comes to fostering creative thinking. Todd Henry, author of The Accidental Creative, claims we are losing times of ‘white space.’

“If we’re squeezing all of the white space out of our lives by filling it with activity…then we’re not going to have the space that we need to innovate or think. We’re not going to have those moments of serendipity or those insights that are just hanging there. We have to manage our energy and create space in our lives. This allows us to bring the best of who we are to what we do.”

Friedman himself writes,

“You need to create that space in your life…those few moments when we’re not tied to our devices, so we have that extra space to find connections between ideas. If we’re not allowing that to happen in our lives, it’s just never going to work.”

And then there’s Simon Sinek talking about millennials, a video you’ve probably seen and you probably have a strong opinion about. Whether you agree with much of what Sinek says or not, his thoughts on creative thinking resonate.

“If you don’t have the phone, you just kind of enjoy the world. And that’s where ideas happen. The constant, constant, constant engagement is not where you have innovation and ideas. Ideas happen when our minds wander and we see something and we go, ‘I bet they could do that.’ That’s called innovation. But we’re taking away all of those little moments.”

How do we fix it?

I too often find myself guilty of leading a life of distraction. The phone, the computer, the TV — there is always something going on in the background. Blocking out the white space. Limiting the little moments in which my mind is free to wander.

I did a deep dive into experts offering their own thoughts and experiences on the subject of reclaiming your brain from the distractions we are forced to combat each day. I read dozens of articles, including this one from Julianne Wurm who turned off her phone service while traveling for 44 days and this one from Jordan Rosenfeld who realized who addiction to distraction was killing her creativity.

What are some real-world takeaways to help us take back our minds and be okay with being bored?

Reframe social expectations.

We categorize far too many things in life as urgent and we assume that people will not wait. During her travels, Julianne Wurm responded to emails once a week. To her surprise, not once did someone complain about the amount of time she took to return a message. Think about what is truly urgent and what can actually wait.

Recognize boredom as a benefit.

Jordan Rosenfeld cites a study that shows boredom increases our motivation to pursue new goals and new ways of thinking. After reading this, she retrained her brain to recognize boredom as a good thing. Whenever she found herself bored, she stayed with that uncomfortable feeling rather than turning to the nearest distraction. Her creativity soared.

Distance yourself from your phone.

The truth is that we are often not mentally strong enough to avoid the temptation of checking our phones. The most effective solution is to physically remove ourselves from it. Some simple ways to start?

As Sinek suggests, buy an alarm clock and charge your phone outside of your bedroom. Don’t bring a phone with you to meetings which should have your full attention regardless. When you go out to dinner with a group, only have one friend bring their phone. Enjoy each other’s company.

Track your phone use.

We’ve recommended it before, but I’ll recommend it again. Download a screen time tracking app such as Moment. The first week I used it, I was appalled by how much time I spent on my device. It serves as a constant reminder to keep screen time low.

Depend on your friends.

This may seem crazy, but have a conversation with your friends about each other’s phone use. Make a pact to call each other out when someone is distracted. Recognize that all of your relationships are losing value when we are not present with one another.

Let’s wrap this thing up.

Our constant need for engagement in an ever more distracting world is limiting our ability to think creatively, innovate, and enjoy the present moment.

Remember that it is okay, even good, to be bored. Seek out shower moments to increase your creativity. Recognize that not everything demands your urgent attention.

Life’s too short to go through it anything less than fully engaged.

Allow your mind to wander. Get lost. Here you will find your best self.