I know it’s been a while since I wrote an actual blog post, and then as if summoned by that thought, this topic popped up. Today, I wanted to discuss – the power of Boredom! Don’t run away, I promise it won’t be that bad!

Boredom, Seriously?

I know, how boring a topic, right? But we really need to talk about it.

Being born in the 80s, meant I grew up with no internet, social media and no smartphones. Technology of that level didn’t overwhelm our lives like it does now.

During long car journeys with the family, we couldn’t bury our faces in a phone or tablet to distract us and no headphones to drown out everyone’s questions, arguments or tedious games of Eye Spy!

If we were lucky, we might have a book on tape to listen to (yep, audiobooks have been around a long time… they were just stretched over several cassette tapes)

So that meant staring out the window. Add to that driving through swathes of countryside meant that most of the view was fields, hedges and the odd herd of cows or sheep glimpsed through greenery as we rushed by.

Okay, so what does all this memory lane nonsense have to do with boredom?

Obviously… we were bored!

Underappreciated Boredom

As a child, I completely underappreciated boredom. I hated it, I avoided it… by making up stories in my head. (Now you see where I’m going with this?)

But not just stories, I created games, designed creatures to draw, ran through dance moves and imagined myself making movies.

Boredom can be a miracle worker!

We’ve kinda lost that miracle because we aren’t often bored.

Now before you come at me. Being bored and “scrolling” on your phone is not the real boredom. You are engaging, probably passively, but engaging.

Your brain is focused on something. Often lots of short somethings – mini videos, flashes of photos, 1-line memes, single-panel comics, quick easy games… you get the picture.

We crave these weird stimuli and with it get those sweet dopamine hits (which are not constant and can lead us to a dopamine deficit)

And so we continue to scroll, to watch, to play and we rarely give our brains a rest. Even reading and watching movies, we are focused on that. So when do we get those quiet moments in our brains?

Sleep. If you are lucky, maybe you’ll remember your dreams.

If not, you just live with constant outside noise entering your brain all the time.

An Unwilling Participant

Recently, my phone died. I was trapped beneath my 7-month-old kitten who was fast asleep on my lap and my charger was upstairs. (Isn’t he a cutie!)

Add to that our TV is on the blink and sometimes freezes or shuts itself off. It had done just that. (And yes, I was going to mess on my phone WHILE watching TV… I know, I know!)

So all I could do was sit, in silence* for about an hour before my partner came downstairs from his work call.

That hour started out painfully, because I, like many others now am addicted to my phone – to noise – to filling my life with external stimuli.

However, at around the 25-minute mark, I found myself drifting off into that quiet place. I didn’t guide my brain, I didn’t decide to think about my novel, or questions about the universe or ponder the mysteries of ghost ships… but I did.

My brain took a long leisurely walk through a myriad of thoughts, notes and ideas I have been jamming into the nooks and crannies of my memories.

I turned ideas over and poked at them, reshaping and rebuilding them. I plucked questions from what appeared to be a large stack and tried to answer them. I sifted through memories and found myself laughing at something I had forgotten.

When my partner finally came down, he kindly retrieved my charger cable and plugged it in. I then turned my phone off. I no longer wanted to mess with it. We put on some instrumental music in the background – nothing that would have me focusing on lyrics and singing (badly) too and just enjoyed the quiet.

*and for any non-cat people who come at me that I could “just move the kitten,” to that I say, “How dare you, you monster! We do not relocate sleeping kittens, it is an unwritten rule!”

Boredom Is Your Friend

None of this is rocket science, obviously. There’s a reason people often get ideas when in the shower or drifting off to sleep.

These are times when (mostly) the noise is gone, and you are not overly focused on anything (who needs to “focus” on shampooing their hair?) when your brain gets a quiet moment to work on things.

What all this is getting to is… boredom is your friend! (Not always, geez, that would be awful) but those quiet moments between tasks, those commutes, waiting for appointments or doing repetitive tasks that require no focus.

They can give you a chance to let your brain churn over a problem, meander through memories or develop new ideas without straining through the excess noise and distraction.

So maybe consider actually planning a little “boredom time” into your schedule.

~ ~ ~

Okay, over to you dear readers, do you have moments of quiet boredom or are you always filling every moment with noise, visuals and distractions?

Happy writing

I write articles on writing, marketing, blogging, organising, social media, books and some random stuff.  I also create free printable resources. 

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