How to Embrace Boredom: Rec. Reading v23
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In our previous installment of Recommended Reading, we talked about how to be alone in a healthy way, but there’s an elephant in the room we only slightly touched on: boredom. Boredom can be a real challenge when you’re spending a lot of time on your own, but it doesn’t have to be a bad thing if you learn to embrace it. We’ve talked a bit before about why it’s important to do that, but today, we want to share resources on how to do it.
So for this installment of Recommended Reading, here are some of our favorite resources for how to be bored in a way that encourages creativity, fosters curiosity, and nourishes you.
1. Read Bored and Brilliant
In 2017, Manoush Zomorodi wrote a groundbreaking book exploring how boredom unlocks creativity and give us time to make connections between ideas and information we consume. In short: boredom is essential to letting our brains do processing work. In her book Bored and Brilliant, she explains what happened when she gave herself time to be bored:
I let my mind go. It went to some dark and uncomfortable places, but it also went to some weird and wonderful ones. ...I saw a connection between a lack of stimulation--boredom--and a flourishing of creativity and drive.
Step one, then, is to give yourself time to be bored. Put down your phone, step away from your computer, stop reading that fascinating book, and just… be. Drive with the radio off. Take a walk without listening to a podcast. Let your mind wander.
2. Understand That Letting Yourself be Bored Eventually Reduces Boredom
This is a little complicated, but it starts with the basic fact that there’s negative boredom and positive boredom. Negative boredom is the kind that leaves you feeling frustrated and unfulfilled. Positive boredom is where you do your thinking and exploring. According to one research scientist who specializes in boredom, giving yourself space to be bored reduces the negative kind of boredom:
The paradox is that we need to introduce more boredom into our lives in order to become less bored. I’m passionate about having a digital detox. Swim. Go for a walk without music. If you’re on a train, look out of the window. When I commute to work, I don’t have the radio on. I let my mind wander. When get in my head is often brimming with ideas.
The more often you go without external stimuli, the less those periods of boredom will feel bad and the more they’ll become productive in new ways. Maybe try journaling.
3. Intentionally Induce Boredom
If your mind is so active that even going for a walk in silence is still really stimulating, you might need to push yourself to get bored. One study suggests copying something really dull, like numbers from the phone book:
Psychology studies have revealed a strong correlation between feelings of boredom and new sparks of creativity. In fact, one particular study conducted by psychologist Sandi Mann required participants to perform an extremely boring task before attempting a creative one. The lack of stimulation experienced from reading and copying numbers out of the phone book, for example, led the subjects to some of their most novel ideas.
Getting bored sometimes requires intentional effort, but it can be worth it for the results that come afterward.
4. Understand that Boredom Can Be Uncomfortable, Especially At First
Most of us tend to avoid things that make us uncomfortable, but that has all kinds of negative repercussions. Whether you’re avoiding your doctor or avoiding your bank account or avoiding yourself, it usually just causes additional anxiety and unhappiness. Boredom can also be uncomfortable, but it’s essential to let ourselves feel that discomfort if we want to reap its benefits:
Boredom is incredibly uncomfortable. Commonly experienced as irritable restlessness, boredom is something people will go to great lengths to avoid—in one study, most people chose to self-administer electric shocks rather than sit alone with their thoughts for six to 15 minutes. In this sense, boredom is a motivating force, which is how researchers differentiate it from depression.
But then, see point two, above: the more you let yourself experience boredom, the less uncomfortable it will be. You just have to get through that initial awkward period.
Have you embraced the power of boredom in your life? How do you do that? Drop us a comment and let us know.
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