OUTWORK Everyone By Being Bored
The Hyperfocused Entrepreneur
September 4, 2023
Read time: 14 minutes
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Hustle culture can go f*ck itself.
I’ve gone in and out of minor depressive episodes over the past decade because I bought into the lie I heard from all the influencers and successful entrepreneurs out there preaching that you’ll never be successful if you’re not working around the clock.
The problem for me is that I’m naturally, kind of a lazy guy.
And for years I felt shitty, because I thought there was something wrong with me…
No matter how hard I’d try, I’d waste hours of my day on completely stupid shit.
If you’ve ever felt the same way then stick around because I discovered that the real way to outwork everybody and get way more meaningful work done is not through discipline, work ethic, or will-power.
It’s through Boredom.
And in this article I’m gonna share with you exactly how to harness the power of boredom to outwork everybody…
But first, we have to brush up on our Neurobiology real quick to understand how our brain works…
Two Neural Networks
Specifically, we need to understand two neural networks called the Default Mode Network and the Executive Functions Network.
The Executive Functions Network describes the set of cognitive processes and mental skills that help an individual plan, monitor, and successfully execute their goals. This includes things like attentional control, working memory, inhibition, and problem-solving.
As an interesting side-note, people like me with ADHD often have what’s referred to as Executive Dysfunction which is why we struggle to control our attention, have bad short term memories, and high impulsivity.
But that’s okay, because we more than make up for it by having a hyperactive Default Mode Network, which is the part of our brain active when our attention is NOT directed by external stimuli.
And this is important, because when we’re not processing external information, it means our MEMORY becomes the primary source of our thoughts and images.
TRUE creativity is born when our thoughts are allowed to wander inward without external stimulation distracting us…and it’s here that we start making new connections and associations.
Which is all creativity is anyhow:
It’s the ability to connect unrelated pieces of information in new, novel ways.
And since an IBM study of 1,000 CEOs found that CREATIVITY is the most valuable skill in the modern workforce, it’s well worth our time and energy discovering new ways to expand our creativity.
Which leads us to the first of two psychological study I stumbled upon a few years ago that changed my life:
The Two Studies That Changed My Life
This study from 2014 was aptly named Does Being Bored Make Us More Creative?
And as it turns out… it does.
To determine this researchers split participants into two groups. One was asked to copy phone numbers out of a phone book by hand, while the other was asked to read those numbers out loud.
Now, both of these are pretty boring tasks, but reading numbers out loud is considered MORE boring because you’re not as actively engaged as when you’re writing something down by hand.
In the second stage of the study, researchers conducted a fluency task where participants had a couple minutes to come up with as many creative ways to use a brick as possible.
For instance, you could use it to build a wall, or as a paper weight, or a baseball, or a bludgeoning weapon, or a flower pot…whatever, your imagination is the limit.
The study found that both the phone number writing group AND speaking group outperformed the control group who didn’t go through any boredom preconditioning.
But even more interesting is that the speaking group (ya know, the group that was supposedly more bored) came up with the longest list of creative uses for the brick.
Okay, so what’s this tell us?
Well, it’s simple…
Boredom (enhances) creativity.
Which in turn, enhances the value of the work you produce.
So are you starting to see?
The way you outwork people is by producing more value than them in the same period of time.
Which is important, because we all have the same amount of time in the day, so the idea that you can outwork anybody else is completely idiotic.
I know plenty of people grinding around the clock working 2 or 3 jobs. There’s literally no more time in the day for them to work… the problem is they’re working on the wrong things.
Because here’s the truth:
Success isn’t about how MUCH you get done… it’s about WHAT you get done.
And this is why creativity is such a high value skill.
But here’s the problem, and I’m not gonna lie… it’s a really big problem.
As Blaise Pascal pointed out:
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
And to prove this, we turn to the second psychological study that changed my life.
Timothy Wilson and his team put participants alone in a room for 15 minutes with nothing but a button.
A button that, if pressed, would shock them.
Now, before the study began, the majority of the participants said they would be willing to pay money to avoid being shocked….
And yet…
Once the study commenced… 67% of men and 25% of women chose to shock themselves…
(this disparity in the gender’s willingness to inflict pain on themselves is maybe one of the reasons women tend to live longer than men, but I dunno).
The question is: why on Earth would people rather inflict pain on themselves than to just sit with their boredom?
And to understand this, we have to go back to why the human brain even evolved the capacity to feel boredom in the first place.
This is no small question, because boredom is often described as a very unpleasant state where you feel simultaneously stressed, agitated, and lethargic.
So what exactly is the evolutionary advantage to feeling bored?
Now, there’s a bunch of thoughts on this topic, but the leading theory (and the one that makes the most sense to me) is that boredom serves as a motivational factor to go and actually do stuff.
In particular, there’s two things that would’ve served our ancestors very well.
The first is to experiment with new and novel things such as new foods, experiences, or venturing into the unknown.
And this is important because trial and error is the overpowered strategy that nature has used to develop every living organism on this planet over the last couple billion years.
If it’s good enough for the universe, it’s good enough for us.
And this leads us to the second benefit of boredom which is that it induces more introspection and time spent thinking about the future.
Another word for this is Daydreaming.
Daydreaming is a fascinating concept that might not seem like that big of a deal until you consider the fact that humans are the only creature on this planet with the ability to daydream.
But what exactly is daydreaming?
Here’s a simple definition:
Daydreaming is a state of decoupled processing in which attention to ongoing perceptual information (aka things you’re perceiving outside of yourself) are reduced in favor of the active consideration of internally generated thoughts and feelings…
Does this sound an awful lot like the Default Mode Network which is the part of the brain responsible for creativity?
Why yes it does… because all of these concepts (boredom, creativity, and daydreaming) are all interconnected through the same neural network.
Studies show that daydreaming boosts creativity, problem solving skills, AND increases your ability to focus on a specific task.
Now, unfortunately, most of us grew up thinking daydreaming was bad because our well-meaning parents and teachers were always yelling at us to stop drifting off and to pay attention.
This subtle message that daydreaming and therefore boredom is bad, actually did a lot of damage to me, because for years I felt deep guilt and shame whenever I’d “drift off” and I started equating boredom with a lack of discipline, work ethic, or focus.
And so I tried living my life in accordance with hustle culture and I filled my days with non-stop work and the result was that I did MORE work, but not necessarily BETTER work.
So, the first thing I had to change on my journey of using boredom as a means for outworking everybody else was to simply give myself permission to be bored.
To stop looking at boredom as somehow unproductive and to just give myself the space and permission to stare out the window or spend the afternoon in a hammock staring at the clouds…
I know that might sound silly, but my guess is that a lot of you feel a similar shame when it comes to intentionally NOT doing work.
So step one is to just give yourself permission to be bored.
Now, here’s the second reason many of us run from boredom and you need to understand this or you’re never going to unlock the true power of boredom.
See, we all have countless things in our life right now, at this moment, that we are putting off.
Things that we know we SHOULD do, but for whatever reason we don’t.
This means that we all exist in this state of perpetual mental purgatory with countless open cognitive loops running in the back of our minds.
Things that we know we should do… and that we, in fact, even WANT to do, but because we are distractible monkeys simply chasing the easiest dopamine, we push these off because they are by definition things that require an act of creation.
And the reality is this:
Consumption is always easier than Creation.
But you can’t consume your way to fulfillment, it can only be created.
Now this creates a dissonance for many of us, between what we’re doing and what we know we SHOULD be doing.
It’s the difference between who we are and who we know we could be.
Most of the time, we can simply drown out these thoughts by turning to social media or netflix.
But when boredom inevitably occurs, our minds are given the space to wander, to think, and to reflect… And the first thing that most of our minds will reflect on are around the big existential questions of life
Why am I here? What’s it all mean? What’s my purpose?
Now most of us run desperately away from boredom because we’re afraid to confront these questions, because we don’t like what we’re going to find there, or who we’re gonna find there.
But as Aristotle said:
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Which means this is one of the most important battles any of us will ever fight.
Unfortunately, knowing boredom is important is one thing… acting on it is something else entirely, because remember, being bored really sucks.
Which is why, most of us turn into dopamine seeking missiles the second we feel that twinge of boredom.
And the drug we all typically reach for to mainline a world of instant entertainment and distraction straight into our eyeballs is none other than our phones.
In my experience, it is practically impossible to be well and truly bored in this day and age when your phone, as it’s currently designed, is always within arms’ reach.
Which is why our battle for boredom begins by dumbing down our smartphone.
5 Ways to Dumb Down Your Smartphone
Here’s 5 ways to do just that.
1. Grayscale
Our phones produce remarkably high resolution images that the human brain simply didn’t evolve to experience in nature.
This means our brains light up like Christmas trees right alongside all of those thousands of pixels flashing on our screens.
On the one hand this creates awesome viewing experiences if you want to watch a movie or play video games.
But the problem is we often get sucked into those movies or video games when we actually just unlocked our phone with the intention of doing some actual work.
Our brains almost immediately go chasing the Dopamine White Rabbit from app to app without even realizing it.
The solution is actually quite simple, but most people will resist it, because it requires turning your phone PERMANENTLY to Grayscale mode.
All this does is put your phone into black and white mode, but it’s crazy how impactful simply taking the color away from your screen actually is.
The reason this is so effective (and why you’ll probably resist it), is because it instantly makes your phone less beautiful to look at.
And I get it, we spend a lot of money on our phones because they ARE beautiful and fun to use.
But the truth is your phone is probably using YOU more than you’re using IT.
Truly, of all the hacks I’ve experimented with over the years to change my relationship with my phone, none have been more powerful than this one simply because it instantly makes my phone less interesting.
2. Turn Off ALL Notifications
The other day my marketing manager leaned over to show me something on his phone.
I don’t remember what he was trying to show me because all I saw was a screen full of little red notification bubbles.
4,315 unread EMAILS?!
I literally felt my heart rate spike.
I told my marketing manager this and he just shrugged it off and said, “Oh yeah, I don’t even notice those anymore.”
My response: Bullshit.
You might be numb to what’s happening in your body, but those notification bubbles are eliciting a physiological reaction that will drive you towards a particular behavior.
The reason I know this is because these companies have spent billions of dollars on research to determine that they do work, which is why they are there.
Here’s the takeaway:
Notifications are impossible to ignore.
It takes mental bandwidth and willpower to see a notification and not address it.
Most of the time, these notifications aren’t even important, which means we’re leaking attention for something that doesn’t even matter.
The no-brainer solution, therefore, is to turn off ALL notifications on your phone, and I mean all of them.
Social media, emails, text messages, missed calls.
Turn. Them. Off.
Notifications are nothing more than the external world’s attempt to make their agenda your distraction.
Don’t let the attention-terrorists win.
Alright, let me get off that soap box and hop onto another one.
3. Delete Distraction Apps
This might be a controversial opinion, but I believe your phone should only be used as a tool in pursuit of your goals.
It should never be used as a distraction, an escape, or as entertainment.
The reason I believe this is because you cannot consume your way to a life of fulfillment, it can only be created, and your phone, for better or for worse, is primarily designed as a tool of consumption.
Whether that’s scrolling endlessly on social media, playing Flappy Bird until your fingers bleed, or watching a never-ending parade of YouTube videos… your phone is a Perpetual Consumption Machine.
Breaking the cycle and taking control of your phone begins by selecting the apps you use with intention.
For myself, this means no games and no social media on my primary phone.
Now, I use social media A LOT for work so it’s actually quite important that I have ways of using these apps.
The solution that’s worked very well for me is actually the fourth way of dumbing down your phone:
4. The Social Media Phone
It’s by having a designated Social Media Phone in addition to a Primary Phone.
My Primary Phone is the one I carry with me everywhere. I use it for texting, emails, navigation, note-taking, or Google searches.
My Social Media Phone is exactly what it sounds like… It’s a $400 phone that has all my social apps on it.
Now, there are two things that make my Social Media Phone especially useful.
First, I rarely carry it ANYWHERE with me.
Second, this phone doesn’t have data, which means the only way I can use it is when it’s connected to WiFi or if I set up a mobile hot-spot with my Primary Phone.
This means that the only way I can really use this phone is with intention.
I cannot overstate how powerful the social media phone has been in my life, so give it a try.
5. Simply the Home Screen
Over the years I’ve found a lot of truth in the idea that a messy desk equals a messy mind.
And I’m saying this as a guy with severe ADHD who frequently uses the floor as a hamper.
But one of the things that really helped me on the journey of turning my ADHD into a superpower was realizing I needed to build my organization systems with a bit more intention.
As a result, my productivity skyrocketed.
It took me a long time to apply this same principle to my phone, but once I did, it was a game changer.
The way I did this was by simplifying my home screen so that when I unlock it I’m not greeted by a dozen enticing apps.
Instead, I see a simple folder that has my 9 most used apps inside of it (things like email, text, or calculator).
The reason this is so effective in curbing my mindless phone usage is because often I just open my phone as a reaction to boredom…
And I’ve found that by landing on a blank homepage, it’s almost like a pattern interrupt that causes me to stop and reflect on what I’m actually trying to accomplish in that moment.
And at the end of the day, I don’t believe there’s a wrong way to use your phone assuming you do so with INTENTION.
But again, this is hard because our phones are designed to put us into auto-pilot mode, which is why I strongly recommend you implement these 5 tactics to make your phone less interesting so you’re less likely to turn to it the moment you start feeling bored.
Which is the goal, right? We’re trying to make space for boredom in our lives so we can reap all the benefits associated with increased creativity and productivity.
So with that in mind, here are 3 very simple ways to make space for Boredom and Daydreaming in your life:
3 Ways to Cultivate Boredom
First, no more listening to music, audiobooks, or podcasts while driving or walking.
For a lot of you, this is gonna be painful, but trust me, making room for silence in your life will pay massive dividends.
Second, take boring breaks.
I’m a big fan of the Pomodoro Technique of working in 25 minute sprints with 5 minute breaks.
It’s important that you avoid doing “interesting” things during those breaks.
Don’t reach for the phone or social media or scroll the internet, because these things will short-circuit your subconscious mind from continuing to work on the primary thing you were working on.
Instead, do something boring with that time so that you’re chomping at the bit to get back to work.
Do some air squats or stare out the window or go for a 5 minute walk.
Whatever you do, don’t overstimulate.
Third, increase your capacity to be bored.
We do this in the same way that we increase our muscle’s capacity for moving heavy objects…
Go to the gym.
In particular, our goal is to go to the Boredom Gym.
One of my favorite exercises for this is what I call “meditation” (emphasis on the air-quotes).
In typical meditation the goal is to clear the mind and simply focus on the breath. But when I “meditate”, I don’t care about that.
My only goal is to sit still for 15 minutes with my eyes shut (without falling asleep). That’s it.
I don’t care if my mind wanders and leaps from thought to thought. The only thing that matters is that I sit with the Boredom and I don’t try to do anything about it.
This is a surprisingly hard, but effective practice for increasing your capacity to sit with boredom.
So give it a try.
If you can regularly apply this practice alongside all the others we’ve discussed in this article, you’re gonna be well on your way to outworking everybody by being bored.
Good luck!
Until next week,
Stay Hyperfocused,
AV
From YouTube This Week:
OUTWORK Everybody By Being Bored
Want to go even deeper?
1. Ever felt like Sisyphus, pushing that boulder of focus uphill? ADHD, distractions, procrastination- all fighting to knock you back. 💥
Welcome to the Hyperfocus Dojo! 👊 It’s your secret ninja training ground to master your brain, win this war and live your dream life.
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2. If you’re in relentless pursuit of doing less, but better, than check out my podcast, Amplified Impact, for a quick-hitting daily dose of motivation and inspiration.
