The Upside of Boredom | #45

The Upside of Boredom

No. 45 — read time 5 minutes

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Today at a glance

• Essay: How to Get Ahead Through Boredom

• Tweet: Reading Ancient Books 

• Article: In Defense of Boredom

• Quote: All Of Humanity’s Problems

How to get ahead through boredom

Last April, I decided to splurge on a writing course. David Perell’s Write of Passage.

I’d been following David’s writing for a few years and come across his essays. He’s a talented writer and when I heard he was putting together a course, I wanted in.

But I didn’t sign up for the first cohort. I don’t remember why specifically but it probably had to do with my limiting beliefs around what online courses could possibly offer that I couldn’t figure out on my own.

Hubris.

I didn’t sign up for cohort 2, or 3 or 8. I waited until the 10th cohort, at a much steeper price, before finally pulling the trigger.

And it was worth every penny.

But not for the reasons you might think.

The course was great and David, as it turns out, is a phenomenal educator as well as writer. But it was one of the guest lectures which challenged me in ways I wasn’t prepared for.

The Cultural Tutor is a Twitter account that blew up last year amassing over one million followers. He publishes daily threads on art, architecture, and literature.

Naturally, many of us were curious to see behind the scenes of this anonymous Twitter account and learn how he manages to consistently produce high quality content day in and day out.

His secret—boredom.

I know what you might be thinking. What on earth is Tom talking about. Boredom?! 

Yes. Boredom.

The Brain’s Reaction to Overstimulation

One of the biggest creativity blockers of the modern age is the always available presence of stimulation.

Notifications.

Screens.

Apps.

Cal Newport has talked about the mental cost of cognitive context switching.

30 seconds of checking email costs you roughly 30 minutes of being in a distracted state.

Switching between them restarts the clock on our ability to get into deep work. Quite literally, our brain uses different neural processes to do deep work and task completion. They are wholly separate processes.

Purposeful avoidance of stimulation, The Cultural Tutor explained, was the key to allow his brain to get into deep thought. To access creativity.

How To Cultivate (Strategic) Boredom

Fortunately, we don’t need to actually sit around doing nothing in hopes of creative lightning striking. This isn’t practical for 99% of people.

Instead there are specific things you can do immediately to get into a deep flow state.

1. Set specific deep work hours

The goal is to train the brain that during specific times of the day, we sit down and do deep work.

With my current schedule, that tends to be 9am till noon.

For you it may be different.

Play around with this to find the slot in your day when your brain can be quiet and think.

2. Write down what you want to accomplish

Most productivity gurus will tell you to incorporate overly complex project and to-do apps and have them all synchronized and talking to each other in order to work.

Screw that.

Take a simple 3×5 index card and jot down 3-5 things you want to accomplish.

Cross off each one as you complete it.

The simple act of crossing something off with a pen or pencil in hand is enough reward to condition your brain.

3. Perform a ritual

Rituals hold great power.

In ancient times, rituals were used to create a sense of ceremony or significance around events.

Rituals signal to the brain and body that it's time to shift into a specific mindset or mode of functioning.

It could be as simple as making a cup of coffee or tea, a 5-minute journaling exercise, or a guided breath work or meditation. This process serves as a signal to your brain that it's time to focus and enter a state of deep concentration.

4. Minimize distractions

Create an environment that is optimized for deep work.

Remove any unnecessary distractions from your workspace, silence notifications on your devices, and consider using website blockers to prevent access to distracting websites.

I use Opal on my phone and desktop to block distracting sites, and I put my phone on airplane mode, do not disturb, vibrate, and turn down the volume to zero.

It might be a bit overkill but I know how deeply distracting even one phone call or text ping that sneaks its way though can be to my flow state.

5. Take breaks

In between periods of deep work you must force yourself to take occasional breaks.

This will feel weird at first.

You feel like you should be working.

But these breaks are critical for your brain’s ability to recharge and reset.

Use these breaks to rest your mind, stretch, or engage in a different activity to recharge and prevent burnout.

I like to go for walks when the weather isn’t freezing, or just stepping away from the computer to perform something physical around the house or office. Some non-work, non-screen-related physical task.

Whatever you need to do, just step back for a moment.

If you’ve felt frustrated at your lack of ability to think deeply and get meaningful work done, I challenge you to consider boredom.

Consider how reckless we behave when it comes to the amount of distractions in our lives. How addicted we are to overstimulation.

And consider what might happen, if you allowed yourself to sit for 30 minutes and just do nothing.

Until next week,

Tom

Quote:

Article: In Defense of Boredom

Maria Popova’s The Marginalian is a wonderful blog and treasure trove of deep rabbit holes. In this piece, she goes deep on the rich tradition of “not doing” from some of history’s most consequential people.

Tweet: Avoiding New Books

The Cultural Tutor came on David Perell’s podcast, How I Write, to talk more about his process. Much of what I learned in the course through his guest lecture is covered in this video.

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