I love “boredom”. I love playing with what are seen as negative words, and twisting them on their ear.
Boredom to me is creating space for inspiration and creativity. If I fill my days with busywork, I remove the possibility of those “eureka” moments.
Some of my most profitable and successful innovations were made walking to the store in my neighbourhood and simply walking without distracting myself with electronics. I’d look around at everyone else as they’re walking, with their faces down, looking at their phones, in a constantly distracted state and I’d feel sorry that they wouldn’t experience what I experienced regularly.
Sometimes my business partner would say to me “Sounds like you need to go to the store”, when he saw that I was facing a challenge that needed solving.
Growing up at a time before constant electronic connection, staring out the car window on long drives was all we had. Now my kids are looking at their screens and I wonder what they’ll miss out on.
I can’t schedule creativity, or simply force myself to be creative in a block of space. The creativity only comes from having vast amounts of unstructured “boredom”. I’m writing this article at a 9AM on a Tuesday, because that was when I was inspired to write it. Not because this is my scheduled writing time.
Now, I have realized there are different types of boredom. I just described one version, that most people do what they can to avoid, however another is one I’m not as good with.
I am bored to tears doing the same thing over again. And not just repeatedly, but I can’t even do something a second time.
When I was a DJ, I never repeated the same sets. I would mix my records in new ways every time I played. Part of that was the risk and thrill of creating something new, and the other was once I knew what two records sounded like mixed together, I never had an interest in repeating that.
This has been a problem for me lately. I seek and create stories of things I’ve done, but once done, I have no interest in repeating them. And unlike mixing the same records in different order and ways, with my stories the only thing I can do is seek out completely new stories. That is difficult and exhausting.
”What’s next?” has been difficult to answer, because it also has to be “new” and something I’ve never done before, and often completely different. I’d love if I could find a way to be good with this kind of boredom as I am with the other kind.
How about you? What’s your relationship with boredom? What kind of boredom do you like? And what kind do you do everything you can to avoid? Where is there potential to change things up?
