The United States tends towards using the unhealthy success metric of “busyness”. This is not surprising given its emphasis on capitalism and individualism. But in the age of technology and constant connectivity we could, all of us, stand to take a moment and step back. We need to reexamine the value of feelings we have always taken for granted. Even the unpleasant ones. The ones often deemed useless, pointless, or indicators of a lazy unimaginative mind.
IN DEFENSE OF BOREDOM
‘Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.’
Lao Tzu
Manoush Zomorodi’s popular TED Talk1 on boredom and creativity examines her own loss of creativity during the early years of the iPhone, and the results of a social experiment she did challenging people to put down their phones. It also explores the research of Psychologist Dr. Sandi Mann and Daniel Levitin.
Mann states, “When you get bored you ignite a network in your brain called the ‘default mode’”.2 If you have studied the work of Levitin you are probably familiar with this mode. In his book “The Organized Mind” Levitin speaks of this in terms of “mind wandering mode”. He says, “This distinctive and special brain state is marked by the flow of connections among disparate ideas and thoughts and a relative lack of barriers between senses and concepts. It can also lead to great creativity and solutions to problems that seemed unsolvable.”3
When in default mode we might start daydreaming, recalling events, and imagining future possibilities.
AVOIDING BOREDOM
That creativity and boredom both live in the default mode might be surprising. But boredom is uncomfortable. We daydream to escape it. And our deep want to avoid it is relatively easy to exploit.
A powerful example of this is recent research from a team psychologists out of the University of Virginia. One study found people would often prefer an electric shock to even a little bit of boredom.
“In 11 studies, we found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think, that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much more and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts. Most people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative.” ~ Just Think by Wilson et al
Companies are capitalizing on this very pronounced human vulnerability like never before. And we as consumers need to demand more from them and ourselves.
ANOTHER HIT
“Boredom is not an end-product, is comparatively rather an early stage in life and art. You’ve got to go by or past or through boredom, as through a filter, before the clear product emerges.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The exploitation of the threat of boredom brings us back to the results of Manoush Zomorodi’s social experiment. As examined in our article on behavioral addiction tech companies have utilized our compulsions to keep us online. Manoush shares a great quote from a UX designer she spoke to who said, “the only people who refer to their customers as ‘users’ are drug dealers and technologists.”
She was disappointed with data of her experiment (average usage went down by only six minutes) but later encouraged by the behavioral scientists. Six minutes of people modifying their online behaviors is actually huge.
Ultimately what mattered was the stories. She was most moved by young people who expressed that they were unfamiliar with the emotions they were feeling, “if you’ve never known life without connectivity you may never have experienced boredom”.
Dr. John Eastwood, a clinical psychologist at York University in Toronto encourages us to rethink, or at least think.“We are very used to being passively entertained,” he says. “We have changed our understanding of the human condition as one of a vessel that needs to be filled.” And it’s become something like a drug – “where we need another hit to remain at the same level of satisfaction”5
The glass metaphor is apt. Tristan Harris recently testified in front of congress. At one point he compared the endless scroll social media favors to knocking the bottom out of glass, causing the perpetual need for it to be filled.
RECLAIM CREATIVITY
The results of Zomorodi’s experiment reveal that even small actions can yield big returns. Working towards the goal of reclaiming your own time and creativity will not always feel productive or interesting. But it is more worthwhile to sit in that discomfort than to let yourself be in a state of constant passive distraction.
Technology & Relationships
How we perceive, empathize and love each other in the Internet age
As social media continues to evolve, it influences everything from politics, self-esteem, status, and love. Under the increasingly needed scrutiny of this fact, we explore how we might be certain that we are using technology as much as it is using us.
This ebook was created to raise awareness of the impacts of technology on our relationships.
Download your free ebook and receive our newsletter every second Tuesday of the month.
Technology & Relationships
How we perceive, empathize and love each other in the Internet age
As social media continues to evolve, it influences everything from politics, self-esteem, status, and love. Under the increasingly needed scrutiny of this fact, we explore how we might be certain that we are using technology as much as it is using us.
This ebook was created to raise awareness of the impacts of technology on our relationships.
Download your free ebook and receive our newsletter every second Tuesday of the month.
SOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
1. Manoush Zomorodi, TED Talk
2. “Wired”, How Being Bored Out of Your Mind Makes You More Creative
3. The Organized Mind, by Daniel Levitin
4. “Smithsonian”, The History of Boredom
5. “Just Think: The Challenges of a Disengaged Mind”–Wilson et al
