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Why feeling bored and doing nothing can make us more creative.
With the rise of technology and the need to stay busy, we no longer have time to reflect. Nowadays, productivity is equated with being busy, and we assume productivity is about how much we can achieve in a day. However, true productivity is our efficacy in producing work of value over time. For something to be valuable, it needs to be novel. This implies that for us to be productive, we need to be creative.
Simply being busy and doing more does not necessarily mean one is productive, because this can lead to information overload and burnout, which is the enemy of creativity. We busy ourselves to escape boredom, because boredom is seen as something negative to be avoided. However, research has shown that there are benefits to being bored, such as being more creative (Sandi & Rebekah, 2014).
In one study conducted by Sandi and Rebekah (2014), participants were assigned to a boring task, where they read or wrote telephone numbers from a phone book. Participants were then asked to rate how boring they found the activity to be, and if they had daydreamed at all during the ‘boring’ task. They were then given three tasks that measured creativity. Results showed that boredom in both tasks led to more creativity in the number of answers given and their usefulness, and that daydreaming played a role in creativity, which suggests that doing less and spending more time on reflection can make one more creative.
There is a unique value to being bored and doing nothing, because it provides a space for creativity and ideas of substance. We busy ourselves as a defense mechanism against thoughts and feelings we do not want to deal with. However, reflection leads to ideas. Most of the time, we find solutions to our problems not by conscious thought, but by allowing unconscious processes to help us reach insight.
Feeling bored can push us out of our comfort zones and the habitual, to try new things and explore the unfamiliar. Why do we covet busyness when it only leads to burnout and stress? The secret of successful people is not that they get so much done, but that they have learnt how not to be busy. If we never allow ourselves to be bored, we will not be able to reflect and generate novel ideas that we can apply to every day life – which is the essence of creativity. We need to be bored, because a world without ideas – music, art, books, dreams, knowledge and goals – is no world at all.
The key to tapping into our creative resources is by balancing activity and solitude, work and free time, because if we live our lives only focusing on work, we forget how to truly live.
