Why Boredom is Good for Creative Minds!
One of the things that has gone massively wrong with our society across England and beyond, is the belief that everything has to be exciting.
Bigger, better, louder. If you look at the happiest cultures on earth, nearly all of them lead pretty ‘boring lives’ compared to super-rich western societies.
It never used to be like this. If you are old enough to remember watching the TV quiz show Bullseye, the contestants were so chilled out that you would never have known if they had won the car (or speedboat) or not at the end of the show. Today a gameshow contestant is whooping and screaming, before the opening credits.
Boredom often gets a bad reputation. We’re quick to fill empty moments with distractions, chasing constant entertainment.
But what if boredom isn’t such a bad thing? In fact, those dull moments can be surprisingly beneficial. They give your brain a break and may open doors to creativity and personal growth that you wouldn’t expect.
Boredom isn’t as pointless as it might seem. When you’re bored, your brain isn’t being overstimulated, and that can actually be a good thing. It creates space for mental clarity, new ideas, and self-discovery. Here’s how boredom can make a positive difference.
How boredom boosts creativity
Have you ever noticed how some of your best ideas pop up in the shower or during a long commute? That’s boredom at work. When there’s nothing grabbing your attention, your mind starts to wander.
It puts the brain into a different kind of mode, and suddenly you’re connecting ideas or solving problems you didn’t realise you even had. So, the next time you’re bored, don’t rush to your phone – let your imagination do its thing.
Do you remember in the TV series Columbo, when the lieutenant couldn’t solve a case? He always solved it when doing nothing – like eating his favourite bowl of chilli at a restaurant. Once he solved the ‘Playback’ episode when watching a game of football (realising how the killer had rearranged the tapes to mis-time the murder).
That’s kind of it. Often you have the best ideas when you are doing something or nothing!
Boredom encourages self-reflection
Self-reflection is naval-gazing. It’s about pausing and thinking, in the midst of chaos. You have to start reflecting on your feelings, to have any chance of making plans for the future, that are in alignment with you being on the right path, and not living your life just to please people who ‘have plans for you’.
Without boredom, we’d miss out on these opportunities to check in with ourselves.
Finding boredom in busy lives
In today’s world, boredom feels almost extinct. We have so many gadgets and apps designed to keep us constantly entertained. But is this constant stimulation really healthy?
Many people can’t wait a bus stop, wait for a cup of tea to be served or even wait for dinner, without grabbing their phones to stream for entertainment or news. Smartphones and social media rob you of naturally ide moments, when you could be just staring into space, having a think or chatting idly about the weather to the person next to you.
It’s important to give your brain downtime to reset and recharge. That’s why people pray, meditate, do yoga, work out, go for a walk etc. It’s all good stuff, to help you wind down and relax your mind.
We need competent (even boring) MPs
Too many MPs strive to be loud and interesting. Everything has to be bigger and better. And look what we end up with. Boris Johnson wanted to be ‘world king’ and everything to be ‘world-beating’. And Trump is even worse.
People elected Sir Keir Starmer as he seemed like a ‘boring safe pair of hands’. And now it looks like the power has gone to his head. And now ‘Keir, never here’ is flying off all over the world trying to be an ‘interesting statesman’, which has made him one of the most unpopular prime ministers in modern times.
What people want (as happens in Switzerland) is boring, almost anonymous MPs, who get behind a desk, make a list of things to be done, then to just get on with it.
Why ‘boring cultures’ are usually happier
In her beautiful book A Field Guide to Happiness, American journalist Linda Leaming travelled to study the lives of people living in the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. She found that whilst she often had 10 things to do by lunchtime, they had one thing to do all week! She fell in love with the lifestyle (and one of the locals, who she married).
Although they now live back in the US, she spends her working life giving lectures, on what we can learn from slow ‘boring’ cultures.
‘Boring men’ are usually the best!
Many women go after ‘exciting men’ and get their hearts broken, by men who treat them bad, or go off with younger women. And the ‘nice boring men’ don’t always get the girl.
That’s a shame, as often the boring man is the one who is honest, faithful and treats his woman well. Just the same with boring friends and colleagues.
Try being bored once in a while (and accept that date from the boring man with glasses, who is shy and awkward, but would never treat you bad, hurt or cheat on you).
Try being boring yourself. Don’t buy anything, watch anything, scroll anything or say anything, even if it’s just for a day. You don’t have to stare at the wall like a lemon. But just listen to the purr of a cat, take a small walk to gaze at an apple tree in fruit, or listen to some music, rather than switch on rolling news.
Think of your over-busy life as a pond, and the constant rain has been thumping huge drops from the sky, agitating the water. Do nothing and let the water stop falling. When the water becomes clear, you’ll find that you can view your reflection better, and the answers to your life will arise!
My aunt and uncle in their country home, taught me how to be okay with sitting still. To be a decent writer, you have to be okay with either writing or doing absolutely nothing.
I’m a firm believer that the only way to be creative, is to sit around and do nothing, until you get bored enough to entertain yourself. Cole Schafer
Niksen (the Dutch art of ‘doing nothing much)
Niksen is the Dutch concept of ‘doing nothing’. This is a very interesting concept, because we learn that Dutch children (the happiest in the world) don’t do homework!
They also are pretty much given their own freedom, with parents not thinking there’s a child attacker on every street. Families don’t use smartphones or tablets when in a room together, there’s a lot we can learn from them.
So many people these days exhaust themselves, by doing something. Obviously doing something is good when you should be doing something (paramedics and even growing vegetables). But don’t do something, when you should be doing nothing!
This way of living is an antidote to the modern world, filled with what the late anarchist lecturer called Bullshit Jobs (a book for anyone whose heart sinks at the sight of a whiteboard, or believes that ‘workshops’ should only be for making things). You know these type of jobs – ones that endure simply because they help powerful people – lobbyists, telemarketers, bailiffs etc.
The phenomenon of burnout has given rise to a multimillion-dollar industry of self-help to counter its negative effects. Self-help tips (however well-intentioned) are useless. You wouldn’t tell a soldier suffering from PTSD to eat more healthily or a single mother in a poor neighbourhood to find a hobby.
We are all different, living different lives, and we have different responses to stressful problems. There is no ready-made solution. That’s why we’re drowning in self-help books. Maartje Willems
A man who does nothing (for a living!)
Rental Person Who Does Nothing is a fascinating book. The true story of a man in Japan who literally rents himself out to ‘do nothing’ for most of the time.
Services he offers are for things that actually matter: he goes to restaurants with people who don’t want to eat alone, is the other player in a board game or keeps a space in the park for someone to come view the cherry blossom.
Shoji (a Japanese earthquake expert) started his own ‘job’ to offer services for the lonely and socially anxious, after a boss told him that he contributed nothing, and it made no difference whether he showed up to work or not.
So he wondered if a person who ‘does nothing’ could still have a place in the world. With one tweet, his Rental Person service was born.
He now rents himself out for useful services, to help others. This can be listening to a secret that someone needs to reveal, ‘testing’ how it would be to have someone live with you, or even wave goodbye if you leave a train station for a long journey.
The rest of the time – he does nothing!
People can die, because of the stress of adapting to society. Or they can lose every ounce of their energy. I’ve seen it happen. If people are pressured by society into saying they have particular abilities, then the true value they have as themselves becomes blurred. If you say you have value because you can do particular things, you will always be judged by established social standards. Shoji Morimoto
Shoji Morimoto began working as a rental person who does nothing in 2018, and has since been hired over 4000 times. He has written several books. He lives in Japan with his family.
