Let's Go Be Bored

This might be more a note to self, as much as a Tuesday 2¢, but the word “bored” has cropped up in a bunch of things I’ve been reading and listening to this week.

Being bored, it seems, is a good thing, and while business is quiet for the holidays, what better time to indulge in a bit of intentional boredom?

The title of this is actually a riff on something an inspirational old boss of mine (Brad Heidemann) says, “Let’s go be great”; I love this, but maybe for a week or so, we can step back from the hustle and go and be bored.

Plus, I just listened to the latest episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Uncensored CMO, which shared the story of high-flying agency owner and marketing executive Emma Harris, who suffered a cardiac arrest on a business trip and now advises us to “Slow the fuck down”.

That’s an extreme example, but the message stuck.

But rather than take my own advice today, I decided not to be bored and dig into some research that supports the premise that being bored is a good thing.

Being bored and creativity

You know how the best ideas come to us at the weirdest times?

In 2014, Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman from the University of Central Lancashire conducted research on this, and their paper, “Does Being Bored Make Us More Creative?”, concluded that indeed it does.

According to the research, there are two types of boredom;

• Active boredom that ties up attentional resources on a repetitive external task, doing something like the washing up, doing admin or even driving your familiar route to work.
• Passive boredom that frees up cognitive capacity for internal thought and daydreaming, which gives a boost to creative thinking. Passive boredom happens when we are waiting for a train (without our phone), staring out of the train window, watching something dull on TV, or the classic opportunity for a creative eureka moment - the shower.

I don’t want to argue with the academics, but it seems to me that “passive boredom” is not entirely passive, as it's often moments when we have to be intentional about being bored (like putting our phone down when waiting for a train). Still, whatever you call it, in the studies, it outperformed active boredom, and participants achieved higher creativity scores.

Being bored and burnout

I do a bit of marketing coaching, but I am no life coach - but inspired by Emma Harris’ advice to slow the fuck down, I wondered whether boredom could be good for our mental health, especially stress and burnout.

But, it’s not that simple. Chronic boredom, when we don’t have a choice, like being bored with your job, creates negative feelings of dissatisfaction and stress. It is a signal that you need to make a change, and none of us loves change, so yes, being bored can be bad.

The difference here is choice - and I am talking about intentionally being bored, of recovery, and my morning’s research led me to the term “psychological detachment”: the importance of mentally disconnecting from stressors (like intentionally choosing to be bored) as a protective factor against the chronic stress that leads to burnout.

It seems to be one of those self-care things that is a bit counterintuitive; we need to make time for it, take time out of the hustle, as it makes our productive time more productive.

So, we should enjoy the holidays and go be bored.

Happy holidays and Christmas (if you celebrate) - thank you so much for subscribing, reading, liking, and commenting!