#ThinkfullyHabit: Be bored
When was the last time you were bored; when those little moments and tiny cracks in the day were left unfilled – while waiting for the lift, queuing for a sandwich or arriving early for a meeting? Do you allow boredom to creep in, or are spaces quickly filled with snippets of news, a quick text or a catch up post?
We crave stimulus and it’s only when we can’t find it externally that our minds tend to create it internally; sparking innovative ideas and solutions.
“Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity.”
WHY?
It’s not boredom itself that’s necessarily the good thing, instead it’s how we cope with the boredom that can be. When our brains cope by playing around with ideas as a way of overcoming boredom, then the benefits can follow. By turning our attention internally to think about other things and to imagine different possibilities or revisit ideas, our brains can take the space.
Boredom not only allows us freedom to have more creative ideas while doing the boring task itself, but it may also prime us for more creative thought afterwards. Researchers from the University of Central Lancashire discovered that when people completed boring activities, such as reading numbers from a phone directory, before being given a more challenging task, their creativity increased*.
It has implications for how we value and organise our time and work. It suggests hidden value in tedious tasks that we have to do, but don’t want to, if they help prime us for more fruitful reflections afterwards. It suggests we shouldn’t always shirk away from the boring tasks that provide little stimulus, especially if we look to do something more creative straight after. And it definitely implies that it’s not a bad thing to leave spaces in our day which are simply unfilled. Being bored may be one of the most inspiring things we can do.
As the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche reminds; boredom is often the “unpleasant calm that precedes creative acts.”
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