Beauty of Boredom — 7 Insightful Questions to Ask Yourself

When was the last time you put aside time to think? Just solely to think, to reflect with intention — not passively while being preoccupied by everyday occurrences. What frightens me is that we have gotten scared of embracing the boredom that feeds this.

In the past, before the ease of quick online connectivity, we would sit in a doctors office and look at the ceiling in sheer boredom.

This was the boredom that prompted deep thinking and reflecting that pushed our minds to think creatively, to mold that boredom into something.

Today, as soon as there is a moment of silence and boredom, we instinctively check our phone — almost anxiously. Every smartphone now having a sensor detecting movement, our phones light up with even a little tilt.

I have caught myself several times checking my notifications back to back in a couple minutes span. No, I was not waiting on some important message or alert. It was a passive instinct of mine to check the moment I had nothing else to do.

This creates a constant distraction from actually being able to delve into our own mind. This distraction is everywhere. No longer do you see people walking with their heads up, aware of their surroundings and passerby.

We are caught in a net of the shallow surface of our minds with a never-ending, unexplored, ocean below us. Boredom is a fuel that pushes us to explore the caves of our minds.

I am not sure if this is only my own experience, but I walk around seeing people with no depth, no character. A loss of originality seems to have surfaced where I find less and less people making any impression on me, but rather, more and more meshing into a blurred general pawn of society.

They seem as real as Sims characters on autopilot walking around. People have lost their personalities and I believe that this can be traced back to the lack of reflection.

Thinking is reflecting and that’s what makes your presence tangible.

The only thing setting humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is that we have the capacity to contemplate. As our contemplation digresses, so does our quality in evolving our consciousness (which is what set us apart from our primate relatives in the first place).

So a solution?

It’s in solitude.

Unfortunately, finding a place to think by yourself and without distractions is difficult. In our current day and age, it is increasingly difficult to be disconnected and this is why it’s so important to purposely, willfully, set aside time to disconnect.

“Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought! How satisfying and rewarding are the long winter evenings spent in the private laboratory…Such evenings free us from poorly thought out improvisations, strengthen our patience, and refine our powers of observation.”

— Ernest Hemingway

Get out of your family-filled house, away from your friends, phone and all those between. Find a place away from others in your immediate surrounding and tune out of society to tune into your mind’s ocean — constantly exploring and pushing your horizon.

Does this sound strange? Well many successful people schedule thinking:

“AOL CEO Tim Armstrong makes his senior team spend four hours per week just thinking. Jack Dorsey is a serial wanderer. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner schedules two hours of thinking time per day. Brian Scudamore, the founder of the $250 million company O2E Brands, spends 10 hours a week just thinking.”

Give yourself mini-thinking breaks during the week — schedule it. Start small and disconnect yourself for 20 minutes a couple times during the week to embrace boredom and fuel your thinking.

7 Insightful Questions to Ask Yourself

1. What big decision have you recently made and how come you chose what you chose?
2. What good and bad habits have you developed subconsciously?
3. What inefficiencies are in your life? In the world?
4. How do you feel you can make the biggest impact on others?
5. What are your deepest values? An easier way to explore this — what values are a must for your significant other to have?
6. If you had absolute financial freedom right now, what would you be doing?
7. If you had no chance of failing, what would you be pursuing?