Go Get Bored. When last did you do nothing? I mean really nothing. No phone, no laptop, no book, no company, no conversation. Oddly it was probably while you were doing something that you do all the time, a routine action that requires no conscious presence … like showering, walking the dog, doing your admin.
These psychic downtimes are important. They give our brains a chance to change gears, to sort and shuffle our experiences and information to figure out how it all fits. From this sorting process, new ideas, realisations and insights often emerge.
In short, if you are not getting bored every so often, you are missing out on the processing aspect of your intelligence. You may run the risk of essentially just stuffing the cupboard more and more full … until it bursts.
When we get bored, a sort of restless energy overtakes us, moving our limbs and casting our senses around. We look at things differently, we seek out ways to amuse ourselves. We enter a somewhat different state of mind from our focused work selves, and from our endless activities that prevent this bored state.
Kids get bored all the time. And then they invent some new game from the various bits and pieces lying around. Thery don’t require our intervention. And nor do we require intervention in the form of a social media feed, a game, more work.
We require the time. We require disconnect from constant rational and conscious processing. From being always on. Apart from actual physical and mental rest, we also require the distance and perspective boredom brings.
‘I am never bored’ is a badge we have learned to wear with pride. But what it means is that you never have the time to just be with yourself and your aimless thoughts. That you have no time to wander down narrow lanes in search of whatever is there. That you never cast around looking for new ways to configure the pieces of the puzzle. No, if you are never bored, you are always on, driving relentlessly forward without pause, reflection or absorption.
That time that you have where you do not need to work, or make dinner or tidy up… that gap you normally fill with scrolling, watching TV and so on … Take that time and stare out of the window with it. Do nothing, Get bored. Get very bored
You’ll suddenly find you have so many ideas, so many solutions.
But you must go through it to find them.
