Posted by This weekend, I found myself on a solitary walk. No digital meant there was no phone to take pictures or to annotate things that my brain would think about. There were no audiobooks or podcasts. No company meant no talking (other than to myself). No purpose meant I was totally out of my depth. I ventured out with the commitment of enjoying the silence, watching flowers and perhaps some birds, and to avoid coming out of it with a longer to-do list than when I started. Hard-work.
The Artist Date
As part of the Artist Way, I am meant to have “Artist Dates”, aka moments of solitude without a purpose other than exploring an interest. It is a commitment to spending time with yourself and exploring your “creative child”, giving it attention. Attention starts with spending time with her (the child) without distraction. Just for the wonder of doing so.
Shortly into my walk, I found myself humming as I composed a song in my head. I wondered if that was allowed. But my brain was going already. It is just so hard to stay put!
As I was on a weekend away with Hubby B, we both did it and went our separate ways. Funny enough, as we reflected back on our day, those 50 minutes (yes, I shortened the Artist Date from 2 hours this time) were the hardest part of the day. Why is it so hard to allow ourselves to do nothing?
Men prefer an electric shock
No joke. Research by Wilson published in “Science” in 2014 found:
“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.”
This study is from 2014, but it could have been today. If I had to guess, either people would be there for even fewer minutes or give themselves even more electric shocks. In today’s digitally hyperconnected world, our dopamine circuits are constantly hyperstimulated. In an age where every swipe gives us novelty, our brains are conditioned to expect reward instantly. The design of our digital experiences—notifications, infinite scroll, autoplay—isn’t just distracting us from boredom. It’s rewiring us to fear it. When we are not getting a stimulus, we suffer from withdrawal. Just like with any other drug.
The busyness culture
I am just getting started in Cal Newport’s book on “Slow Productivity”. The author starts by analysing the origin of this focus on productivity and putting in the hours, always connected, always on. We came from a place where 40 hours a week was the norm for factory workers (when not more) and assumed it should be translated to knowledge workers. And because we could not measure productivity in throughput like in a factory, we started measuring busyness. In the number of emails, the speed of response to Slack, and the number of meetings attended. None of these metrics considered the presence of deep work, the allowance for white space where critical analytical thinking would prosper.
Somewhere along the way, doing nothing became a sign of doing it wrong.
What most of us don’t realise is that constant task switching actually uses energy in our brain that could be otherwise focused on more valuable tasks. Maybe because I am now formally in a Portfolio Life format, I am more prone to task switching than ever before. And the more I switch, the more I need to focus. Because deep work is not done with your email open and on another call. It takes time to read, to reflect and to stare at a blank sheet of paper (or screen). It takes getting bored. I joked with a friend this morning, who told me she needed a few full days of focusing on an article. I promptly replied, “Tell me when you find those, I will come and join you”.
No need to get bored
In today’s day and age, we really do not need to get bored. And getting bored is just not efficient! We have the world in our hands through a small device. We don’t need to wait for anything. We can order food, rides or dates. We can read newspapers, listen to podcasts, and take a course. We can build websites, publish on social media, develop presentations, and run analyses. If all fails, we can scroll down YouTube shorts or Instagram Posts and Stories. And for years, we thought this was just great. No need to be bored anymore.
If there is one place where I noticed the difference in my last few years commuting in London was the Tube. I read novels on that Tube and, invariably, if I forgot my book and was not in the mood to check emails on my blackberry (yes, I had one of those), I could just look around the carriage to check what people were reading. Wonder what would be behind those pages, remembering the titles I had read. I also did a lot of writing in my commute. It did not take long after sitting down and staring for my creativity to start flowing. What makes boredom harder to access today isn’t just our phones—it’s that everything is now engineered to prevent it.
We’ve become accustomed to constant stimulation and instant answers.
The Gift of Boredom
Between notifications and all the FOMO about knowing what is going on with friends, family, news and work, we can barely keep up with all the steps before even making it to the office. By the time we get there, we have already given our brain a high dose of dopamine. And that’s great, right? We are so productive getting all our tasks done in our morning commute, listening to a book in our drive (guilty), dialling into meetings while checking our emails, walking between places with our eyes fixed on what our friends are doing on their holidays. We can just fit so much more. What is there not to like?
With AI tools completing our thoughts, writing our texts, automating repetitive tasks and summarising our experiences, there’s even less space for the kind of mental wandering that boredom used to offer. But this comes at a cost.
What about doing nothing
It’s hard to do nothing. I mean, coming from me, it is pretty extraordinary that I even dare to go into this topic. This is not the first time I’ve brought the topic to the blog. And as I read some advice about the importance of getting bored (and even wrote my first children’s book on the back of it), I also recognise you have to practice what you preach. It can’t just be good for children.
Over time, I became more observant of my reactions to doing nothing. I often go in the car without a radio or podcasts (as much as I love my audiobook). I notice my brain getting busy with to-dos and wanting to reach out for my notes app. I remember messages I haven’t sent, and wish my Siri got better so I can dictate them. There is an immense head spin a few minutes into my drive, with all sorts of attempts at getting busy with something. When going for a walk, I promise myself I am just going to enjoy the waves, the smell of the sea, and the sun in my face. I barely make it to the end of the first 500 meters without taking a picture, writing a post, calling someone or putting on a podcast. It’s just more productive that way; that is my base thought.
The only place where I have ever been comfortable sitting down doing nothing is lying by the beach. As much as reading was always a beach favourite for me, I often still had enough time to do nothing (that is, pre-kids). In the first few years that we went on holiday together, Hubby B started asking me to take more books. Because an hour of doing nothing would ultimately end up in a new business plan. We had it as a family joke, but really, it was no joke.
Boredom is not the enemy
When you get bored, you activate this system in your brain DMN – Default Mode Network. You go into autopilot and “stop thinking“. This is a network of the brain that becomes active when we rest and are not focused on the outside world. It can also be called daydreaming. If it feels like something minor, stay with me. Studies show that DMN is involved in spontaneous and self-generated thought. For that, you need moments of disengagement.
Boredom is more recently perceived as a negative emotion. Something to avoid. Whoever has emphasised this idea is probably in the business of using your attention. Remember, if you are not paying, you are the product. People like to quote this as a passerby comment, but are they really aware of what it means?
The only people that refer to their customers as users are drug dealers and technologists
Manush Zomorodi
Indeed, the key reason why boredom is so hard is that we suffer from addiction. With busyness and constant stimuli. You only have to spend a day without your phone next to you to start getting the itchiness, the uneasiness, the headaches, the heart pounding. If you think that’s not right, get yourself a time-tracking app to see how many times a day you pick up your phone. Yes, I am suggesting an app to reduce your app time. Ironic.
We live in a world where boredom feels intolerable. But in chasing constant input, we short-circuit the reflective moments where real insights emerge.
It’s a hard balance
Now, don’t get me wrong, the key is in the balance. I am not advocating for exercising in silence, driving in silence, or lying by the beach in silence. How else could we read, listen to music, podcasts, chat to others, or even watch a series? All I am advocating for is to attempt to have, even if for one moment a week, a time where we are not getting stimulated. In the retreat I took part in last year, at New Life, we had silent time from 9 to 9. That is maybe more than most of us humans can bear, but it worked for me for 5 days. The key part of silent time was precisely no stimulus. To just be with us and our minds. They were not extremist about it, so one was allowed to journal. I think another week there might just have gotten an entire book ready…
Remember, you don’t have to “do nothing” all the time. The trick is to allow yourself enough time to get bored but be able to act on it. When I was a teenager, I suffered from insomnia. I would go hours daydreaming and listening to music. Often, the sleep timer on my stereo would run out, and I would just be there in silence. I was big on poetry writing at the time, and long heartfelt poems would show up in the dark, only for me to feel frustrated that I did not note them down in the morning. As the nights went by, I had to keep a notebook by my night table. That is when I had the best of both worlds. Boredom and creativity.
When we erase boredom, we may also be erasing the discomfort that forces us to confront ourselves—to think deeply, to create spontaneously, to problem-solve independently. In trying to eliminate boredom, we risk outsourcing our inner world. It’s difficult not to be in constant movement in the world and the society we live in. And that is part of what makes it so exciting to live in it. But let’s not forget to look and reflect, to wonder and admire, to disengage to better engage. What if this weekend, you chose one hour to do absolutely nothing—with no phone, no goals, no stimulus? What would that feel like?
Photo by Dina Nasyrova at Pexels