Boredom is not an enemy, it's a great ally!
Why should you allow yourself to be bored in order to achieve your dreams and goals
This title might have reminded you of your childhood. It’s often when playing as kids, that we get bored of a game we’ve played for too long, or the lack of stimuli that day might make us feel a bit lost.
Oh, if we would know back then how precious that time is…
The society comes with imposed activities at a fast pace and chores and responsibilities hit us like a train. We soon find ourselves having to attend school, being enrolled in extracurricular activities to increase our chances of getting into a better college, practicing sports, and maintaining a social life.
Our free time experiences a free fall and we find ourselves 30 years old and not remembering when was the last time we had the luxury of being bored.
However, when we are or were bored, we see it as a somehow negative experience, being overwhelmed with feelings of:
guilt - for being unproductive
fear - of losing time
behind in life - for not being busy like others
This cannot be further away from the truth!
Why you should allow yourself to be bored?
It doesn’t matter what field of work are you in, or what are your hobbies and interests, you probably look up to someone in history, or at least admire what they did. Maybe even wonder how they did it.
Let me tell you with certainty that most of the high achievers, people with great success, all allowed themselves to be bored, harness creativity, and allow ideas to flow.
Pablo Picasso used to sit in cafes by himself, with no books or paper to draw.
Albert Einstein used to keep a heavy ball in his hand, to wake him if dropped, so that he could stay in a theta brain state, not fully awake, nor asleep.
Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jack Dorsey used to do a silent retreat, where they would isolate themselves for days, with no books, no phones, no internet, no television, and no human contact.
The explanation is simple. We are all overwhelmed with stimuli from the moment we wake up, until the moment we go to sleep. We have busy schedules, family life, social life, health to take care of, chores, bills, phone calls to make, and a lot of decisions to take. Simply put, there might not be enough energy left to have new ideas or make great decisions!
This is nothing eccentric about this, although some of these people were/are. It’s the same principle that Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg use when it comes to clothing.
They both choose to wear the same kind of clothes every day, such that they don’t have to use their energy in choosing what to wear. This is to combat something called: Decision Fatigue.
What is decision fatigue?
During our days, we are faced with a lot of decisions to make. Some of them are more important than others. Some of them might not seem important at all, and might not make a big difference in our lives, but they still need to be made.
However, the process of deciding is using up resources from our brain. We have to analyze the possibilities, the consequences of each decision, and what we feel about them. Even if we are talking about starting a business, moving to another continent, or what to have for breakfast.
We take our brain for granted but it is working very hard for what we have to do. This is how scientists discovered that there is a limited number of decisions we can make every day, and these 2 CEOs, but not only them, are trying to reduce as much as possible the decisions they have to make, to keep energy for the really important ones.
The benefits of being bored
I liken the feeling of being bored with a blank canvas, not yet painted on. It’s a clean mind, waiting for your subconscious mind to bring back ideas to your conscious one.
Jose Silva talks about a mental screen. Being bored allows you to free up the screen and bring forward new ideas that you put away, “forgot” about, or didn’t dare to bring forward yet.
If I have to list some of these benefits of being bored, we can compute this list:
You will learn to deal with your thoughts
You will be exposed to what’s going on in your mind
You might understand your feelings better - like a journal that unfolds in your mind while you listen
You will be able to relax yourself and remove anxiety and stress - when closer to a meditative state
You realize what actions you want to do, compared to what you have to do
You will have ideas that now have space to come to light
You will have a chance to reorganize your priorities and values
You will be able to slow down and have some rest
In conclusion, being bored does not equal being unproductive. And being busy does not equal being productive!
Keep that in mind, and if you feel lost, depressed, or extremely anxious, without a purpose or tired, let yourself get bored! See what happens!
I love these insights. I agree that boredom forces us to be creative