When boredom leads to brilliant ideas Is it true that boredom can lead us to find good ideas? Today we will try to find the answer with the story “How boredom can lead to you brilliant ideas”, another interesting episode from TED presented by Manoush Zomorodi. I believe that after we read and watch this story, we will have methods to cope when boredom comes.
A decade ago, we switched our brains every three minutes. Now, according to new research, we switch our thoughts every 45 seconds. We check our messages 74 times a day. We change what we’re doing 566 times a day on the computer. And we’ll spend two years of our lives on Facebook.
“Oh my god, do you think I’m not bored?”
Manoush Zomorodi was once an aspiring journalist, quick to get to the scene before anyone else. Of course, she was always the first to catch important news events. But that all changed when, on the day everyone was queuing up to buy iPhones, she was busy with her baby who had colic, which prevented her dexterity for more than three months until her baby’s colic disappeared.
“I’m on the move, doing things. I’m a playground mom, and I’m a Twitter reporter.”
For more than three months, she floated around thinking, “If I could get a good night’s sleep again, what would I do?” It finally happened. When her baby finally recovered from her colic, she decided to pursue her dream career as a public radio host on Twitter. It’s a great thing that her smartphone allows her to be both a mom and a journalist at the same time.
“When was the last time you had a good idea?”
Satisfaction with her dream job began to take over her. While hosting the radio show she wanted to do, her thoughts on how to gain more listeners began to fill up. Digging inside her brain at the end of the tunnel, there was nothing waiting for her. It made her think back to when her creativity had started to flow, and the answer she got was, “Pushing that boring baby stroller.”
“Aren’t only boring people bored?”
She began to question the boredom that was building because when she was most creative, she also found her life to be the most boring. After talking to neuroscientists and psychologists to find out, she found that when we start daydreaming, letting our minds wander out of our conscious mind, into our subconscious, our brains make connections and wonder, what’s next?
“Setting personal goals for the future”
We call it “default mode.” It is when our brains connect our thoughts together. We drift into reminiscing about the past, our experiences, connecting with the present, and imagining the future. This creates goals for what we want, and our brains calculate ways to achieve these outcomes as ways to achieve our future goals.
“Just get it over with.”
Our default mode has its drawbacks. It’s a series of actions called “getting it done,” like replying to a text, checking a message, or opening an app and scrolling through it. The moment you switch your attention from one thing to another, your brain switches up the chemicals in your brain, which requires all the nutrients in your brain to do that. And some people don’t do just one or two things at once, but four or five at once. When we switch things up, our brains tap into glucose. And the bottom line is that our glucose is limited.
“Teenagers have reduced imagination and creativity.”
Research has shown that modern technology is designed to meet all kinds of human needs, especially when we feel bored. Phones, computers and a multitude of apps are ready to help us get rid of that boredom. This is the reason why teenagers are less imaginative and creative. They don’t have the time to drift off into the world of imagination, they don’t get immersed in the subconscious where they can set goals and figure out how to achieve them by brainstorming. Instead, their minds are overwhelmed with technology.
“The only businesses that call customers users are drug trafficking and technology.”
Tristan Harris, a former designer at Google, said that it’s not wrong for everyone to stop paying attention to apps. The most popular apps have a lot of engineers who have a way to capture the attention of all users. They have a way to make all users unable to stop traveling on their apps and eventually drowning in addiction. The CEO of Netflix himself once said, “Netflix’s biggest competitors are Facebook, YouTube and sleep.”
“Whenever the product is free, you are their product. Your interest is in the high-priced product.”
“Each pageview is an auction that runs in the hundreds of billions of times per day,” says Antonio Garcia Martínez, a former Facebook product manager and author. “Every single pageview a user sees is an auction that runs in the hundreds of billions of times per day.” Everyone in the tech industry pays big bucks to see how many times a user sees an ad on that page. And most users are browsing multiple pages at the same time. That’s the expensive attention that users are unknowingly paying to tech companies.
“Boredom and intelligence”
From his extensive research, Manoush came up with a project called “Bored and Brilliant.” It is a project that recruits participants to reduce their phone use, monitor their behavior, and encourage them to think creatively. The project involves completing daily tasks, comparing their phone use before and after participating in the project, and constantly asking the participants how they feel and think.
“I spend 150-200 minutes a day on my phone, and I pick it up 70-100 times. It’s very concerning because I’m not really doing anything useful.”
Before the week of the Bored and Brilliant project, one of her researchers told me that she was shocked to find herself on her phone so much, and that she wasn’t doing anything productive or constructive for herself all day long. Because when she was on her phone, she was so lost in it that she didn’t do anything.
“I was so bored. At that point, I glanced at the stairs and thought, I have time to go up and then come back down here. In the end, I found myself doing cardio by going up and down the stairs more than 10 times.”
The first task was to turn off their phones for a day. Of course, all the participants in this project admitted that they felt anxious, restless and very uncomfortable from having nothing to do, not to mention not being able to use their phones. One of the participants in the project said that she came to work as usual, which was earlier than the start time, when she could not use her phone.
“More important than the numbers are the stories of the participants in this project.”
In the next mission, all participants had to delete all the applications that they felt were highly addictive, whether it was Facebook, Instagram, or the games they used to play when they were bored. Most people felt empty at first because it was like something that stuck and they were always immersed in their world. But now they have to get rid of that world. But what they gained after that is that they have time to do other things, such as having dinner with their family, going for a walk, looking out the window, enjoying the view, or even immersing themselves in their thoughts instead of immersing themselves in games on their phones. These things are all very good. But when compared to the numerical results from the project, it was found that everyone only used their phones for 6 minutes per day.
“It feels like waking up from a mental hibernation.”
Manoush admits that when she first heard the results of the project, which saw the average number of participants spending just six minutes a day on their phones, she felt a little down. However, neuroscientists told her that changing human behavior in such a short period of time was a dream. The results she got from all the participants were amazing. Most of them had great stories and experiences. They found themselves in a new light and were interested in exploring themselves more.
“A little boredom makes us understand more and helps us set goals.”
We need to rethink the idea of being online all the time. Connecting ourselves to technology to kill time or prevent boredom is not always a good thing. Going forward, we need to teach the correct use of technology to bring children and teenagers back to being an age full of imagination and creativity. We also need them to be interested in the surroundings outside of the phone screen. And they still need learning and daydreaming that they can’t get from their phones.
Conclusion
Our world is becoming more and more technologically integrated. Many people are glued to their phones as if they were their 33rd organ. We fear that we will become bored, because it is not a good feeling that anyone would want to have. We get rid of it and run away from it, pushing ourselves further into the world of our phones. The imagination, creativity and daydreaming are gone, and the immersion into the subconscious to find future goals is gone.
Don’t let the next time you start digging into your head for a desire to do something, put down your phone, get bored, let yourself daydream, imagine a goal or something you want to do, let your mind do its thing, find a way to achieve your goal. Boredom may not be as bad as you think.
“When you pick up the phone, ask yourself what you want to do. If you don’t have an answer, put it down. Don’t let the phone decide for you what to do.”
How Boredom Can Lead to Your Most Brilliant Ideas | Manoush Zomorodi
