Benefits of Boredom: How Being Scroll-Free Boosts your Brainpower
Are you familiar with ‘Shower Thoughts’? How great ideas can unexpectedly pop in to your head out of nowhere while in shower? Or it could be while eating breakfast, or on your way to the bus stop. Sometimes you are struck by just how creative you are without even thinking very hard!
What do these things have in common? Typically it is when you are not occupied with anything else, especially scrolling through your phone! I really hope that nobody reading this takes their phone in the shower with them!
Unfortunately more and more of these phone-free moments are vanishing; you probably pick up your phone while eating your breakfast or waiting for a bus (but hopefully not while walking to the bus stop). And this is a problem. Why? Because our brain is at its most creative when not occupied with anything else, and social media feeds are taking those amazing moments away from us.
The Power Of The Wandering Mind
It is well-documented that a calm and distraction-free mind is a creative mind. One example of this is the ancient use of a Labyrinth. Labyrinths have been used for centuries as a way of calming the mind and unlocking creativity, and can be seen in many locations around the world. They are different to mazes; a maze has multiple entrances and exits and requires some level of problem-solving.
A labyrinth on the other hand may look like a maze but only has a single path to follow. The purpose is just to give your brain something simple to do and free it of other distractions. In his book “Pragmatic Thinking and Learning”, Andy Hunt describes how this causes the ‘processing’ part of your brain to tune out and allow the higher-level problem-solving side to get creative.
Psychology professor Sandi Mann has conducted experiments to test how boredom boosts our creativity, and her results show that ‘being bored’ can indeed lead to more creativity. Her research provides some evidence that embracing boredom is a good thing, whereas finding things to occupy our attention instead can be detrimental.
Smartphones: Creativity’s Kryptonite
With the introduction of Smartphones and Social Media, especially short-form videos, Tech companies have found a way to infiltrate our opportunities for boredom and thus creativity. Short-videos are like sand - they can be poured into any size of gap in your day and with their micro-dosing of dopamine, it is easy to fall into the trap of filling up all your idle moments with a quick look at your phone.
Standing in line at a shop? Have a quick scroll. Waiting for your bus? Have a quick scroll. Waiting for your partner to get ready? Have a quick scroll.
Do you see the pattern?
While watching longer-form videos like on YouTube, or reading blog posts, take a little time and planning to make time for, the short-form entertainment of Reels, Shorts and TikTok constantly pour a convenient boredom-antedote into these small gaps in our lives. But the effect is that our brain is never having a break! If you are constantly consuming then you are not able to create. If you binge on a buffet then you will get bloated and sick, and binging on the social media buffet does the same for our brains.
Your Creative Opportunity: Be Bored
We forget that we have power over the devices in our pockets. And these small moments in our lives also present the perfect moments to practice embracing boredom. If you are waiting in a shop or at a bus stop or in your car, remind yourself that you are only waiting for a few minutes and allow yourself to be bored, idle and un-occupied. Just for a minute or two. See what happens, and assure yourself that nothing bad will happen. In fact is it likely that something good will happen.
I recently went on a 45-minute walk with my children and we promised that we would not take our phones out of our pockets. The first few minutes were a bit awkward, but by the end of the walk it was amazing how many things we had talked about and how much I found out about what they were enjoying in life.
So here are some tips:
If you are waiting for something, leave your phone in your pocket. Assure yourself that there is nothing wrong with being idle.
Do something menial like count something in your environment (white cars going past your bus stop, people wearing glasses) or find a clock and watch the hands. Give your mind something simple to do
If you are already doing a ‘boring’ task like washing dishes or folding clothes, focus on the task at hand without any distractions. Do each action carefully. This is a form of ‘being present’
Stuck on a problem? Go for a walk around the block without your phone. Walk carefully and deliberately. Maybe focus on not stepping on cracks like when you were a child. Make it like a labyrinth.
Finding it difficult to stop scrolling? Try Screen Balance’s scroll-disruption service. It injects personalised reminders into your social media feed to remind you to take a break from scrolling and spend your attention more wisely.
Let your mind be free to work its magic and do what it was designed to do. Don’t shackle it down with constant consumption. Treat it well and it will return the favour.