Boredom is the Cure to All of Modern Man’s Problems
The Amplified Impact Podcast
August 20th, 2023
So I just wrapped up finalizing the script for an upcoming YouTube video that’s going into production soon and I’m genuinely thrilled about this one.
It’s rare that I finish a script and feel this excited.
Most times, by the end, I end up disliking what I’ve made.
But this video, focused on boredom, is different and special to me.
I battled with embracing boredom for a long time. I’m not a constant hustler…I prefer focused bursts of creativity.
This approach has often clashed with the relentless “hustle culture” that insists on constant productivity.
Growing up, I was labeled lazy due to my daydreaming tendencies.
Boredom, to me, equated to doing something wrong and not being disciplined.
However, I’ve discovered that boredom can be a powerful tool.
It’s a remedy for our overstimulated lives and helps us reset our dopamine levels.
Boredom can be uncomfortable, but it’s essential for growth.
It’s an opportunity for reflection, creativity, and positive change.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“Boredom is the state that moves us to change.”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino:
So I just put the finishing touches on the script for a new YouTube video that is going to go into production here in the next couple of days and should be on the main channel at Anthony Vasino here within the next week. And I’m really, really excited about this. It’s not often that I sit down to write a script for YouTube video and I finish it feeling like super excited and jazzed. In a lot of cases, the act of creation is one of phil to self doubt. And so by the time I finish it, typically I hate the thing that I’ve created. I don’t know if you’re like me in that way, but every time I have ever created something, by the end of it, I’ve spent so much time with that thing, massaging it, editing it, going back and forth, struggle, busing through it. By the time I finally finish it’s more just relief to be done with it than it is like genuine pride in the thing. And I don’t know if that’s just me.
Anthony Vicino:
It could be unique in that way. But I’ve talked to a couple of other artists that have expressed similar tendencies. But this one, this video about boredom in particular, is one that I’m just really excited to share with you guys. And I wanted to do just a quick I wanted to share two of the studies that I talk about in that video because I think they’re really, really interesting. I think boredom is this very interesting concept that if we can learn how to embrace it, it can enhance so many different areas of our life. I think I tweeted about this a long time ago, that most of man’s modern problems stem from the fact that we are overstimulated. So like, we feel isolated despite the fact that we’re more connected than ever on social media. We feel overwhelmed with all the different possibilities of life and where the different paths we could take.
Anthony Vicino:
And the antidote, the cure for a lot of these maladies of the modern man is making space for boredom doing less but better. And this video that’s going to be coming out, the reason I’m so excited about it is because this is something I personally really struggled with a lot growing up, which is I’m very, very lazy. And it seems to fly in the face of the hustle porn culture that says you have to work your face off and that if you’re not grinding every minute of every day that you’re doing it wrong. And I really struggled when I was younger on my entrepreneurial journey because I bought into those lies, those beliefs, those limiting beliefs that that’s the way that you had to play the game. Not realizing that one of the things that makes me uniquely skilled or gifted is the ability to be creative, to come up with ideas and then execute on them in kind of like this sprint feast and famine type of way. I’m more like the lion who spends most of his day just sleeping and then gets up and runs really hard to catch the gazelle and then sleeps for a couple of days. I’m not like the cow who’s out in the pasture just eating constantly. That was never me.
Anthony Vicino:
I’m not the grinder. And so when I was in school, I remember my teachers always yelling at me like, hey, you need to pay attention. Stop drifting off, stop daydreaming, stop staring out the window. You’re so easily distracted, all these things. And so I started to equate daydreaming and being bored with a bad thing. I’m doing something wrong. I’m not focused. I have no willpower.
Anthony Vicino:
I’m not being disciplined right now. And so I created this negative relationship with the idea of being bored. And the studies have shown really interestingly that boredom is actually a very good thing for us. It is great for a dopamine reset in an overstimulated world with so much digital glitz and glamour at our fingertips with our phones and our screens. It’s good for resetting back to a baseline, but it’s also good for giving ourselves space to reflect and be with our thoughts. And that’s where true, genuine creativity takes place. It’s not when we are consuming information that we are creative. It’s when we are producing the information, the thoughts, internally from inside of our minds rather than perceiving them externally.
Anthony Vicino:
And this typically happens in a state of daydreaming, which typically stems from a place of boredom in a lot of ways. And the problem is, because we all have our smartphones within arm’s reach at all times, this is the ultimate boredom killer. And so there is no reason to ever feel bored again. And because boredom is this uncomfortable physiological feeling of, like, it’s simultaneously feeling anxious, frustrated and lethargic. It’s this really weird thing. It’s only natural then that we would reach for our phones constantly. And it’s more interesting to really reflect on where did boredom even arise from? Where did we evolve this? If you think about our ancient forefathers and foremothers, why did the human brain ever evolve the potential to feel bored in the first place? And there is no one size fits all solution that all scientists agree upon. The one that I find maybe the most compelling is that boredom is the state that moves us to change.
Anthony Vicino:
It is by default by the fact that it makes us uncomfortable. It forces us, encourages us rather to go and change something about our environment in some way. Maybe go try new foods or go explore, go try new things. And if you look at trial and error as being like the primary mechanism by which nature has evolved us, the most sophisticated creatures known to us, at least trial and error is the way that we grow and improve. And it makes sense that boredom leading us to try things, try new things that we otherwise wouldn’t is one of the reasons we humans have evolved to become as successful as we are on the animal food chain. But all that aside, I want to talk about two studies that I came across that are very, very interesting. The first one is, I think the title of it was does Boredom Boost Creativity? Or something to that effect. And what the what do they call them, the study or the people that put on the study? Why can’t my words are not coming out well right now? Anyways, the people putting on the study, what they did was they had three groups.
Anthony Vicino:
They had one group write the numbers out of a phone book onto a piece of paper. The second group had to just read the numbers out loud. And then the third group didn’t have to do any kind of pre boredom conditioning. Now, of those two tasks, writing down the numbers versus just speaking them out loud, it is considered to be more boring, I guess, to read the phone numbers out of the book rather than writing them down, because writing is a little bit more of an active activity. So they had participants do this for a period of time, and then at the end, they did a fluency test, which is you come up with an object, you’re like, hey, this water bottle, I want you, you got 1 minute to come up with as many unique use cases for this water bottle as possible. Now, you could be like, yeah, it holds water. It could also be a bludgeoning weapon. You could put a flower in there and it could be a vase.
Anthony Vicino:
You could use it as a paperweight. You could use it as a baseball. You could use it as a baseball bat. So that’s a fluency test, right? And what they found is that of those three groups, the two groups that engaged in the preconditioned, the boredom preconditioning activities of reading or writing the numbers out of the phone book, they performed better on the fluency test than the baseline control group that did neither of those things. But of those two groups, the group that did the more boring activity of reading the phone numbers actually outperformed the group that just wrote them. So all this is to say yes. Not rather yes, but can boredom boost creativity? It seems as such. And one of the things we talk a lot about on this podcast is that creativity is the most important skill set in the modern workforce.
Anthony Vicino:
And that’s not just me saying that. That is from a study that IBM conducted of a thousand CEOs saying, what’s the most valuable skill? They said, It not me, I just happen to agree. And creativity is the ability to take information and combine it in new, novel, functional ways. And it’s no surprise to see why that would be so valuable. And so if boredom is a means for improving that skill, set that is the most important. It’s something that maybe we should tap into. But here’s the problem. It goes back to what we were talking about earlier.
Anthony Vicino:
Boredom sucks. It sucks being bored, it’s uncomfortable. And the second study was performed, I think it was 2014. And what’s interesting about this one is they put participants in a room for 15 minutes with a button and that button, if they were to push it, delivered a painful electrical shock. Now what’s interesting about that shock is that the majority of participants before the study began said they would be willing to pay money not to get shocked. And yet after less than 15 minutes inside that room, 76% of men and 20% of women pushed the button voluntarily. Rather than sit with their boredom, these dopamine seeking missiles went and inflicted pain on themselves just so that they didn’t have to sit with themselves and their silence and their thoughts. That’s fascinating.
Anthony Vicino:
And so there is this push in this pull. We recognize boredom is good for us and yet it is so uncomfortable that our brain, as soon as we start experiencing boredom, is desperately seeking to change the environment, to change something, to go seeking dopamine. And in a lot of cases the modern man has access to so many cheap sources of dopamine, your brain typically doesn’t have to look very far to fulfill its wants. However, is that good for you long term? That is the question that we explore a little bit more in depth in the video that’s going to be coming out here shortly, called outwork everybody by being bored. I’m going to give you some tips and tips, some strategies for cultivating boredom in your life so that you can boost your creativity, you can boost your productivity as a result and you can enhance overall the quality of your life. So if that sounds interesting to you, make sure that you go over to YouTube and you subscribe to the channel at anthony Vasino. Can’t wait to share that video with you guys. Truly, I’m really excited to hear what you guys think about it because I put a lot of work into that one.
Anthony Vicino:
So let me know once it launches what you think. Now that’s going to do it for me. I love you dearly, me and your mother and your dad, we all agree you are aces. So keep it up. You’re making us all very proud and we’ll see you back around these parts tomorrow. But until then, stay hyper focused my friend.
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