Why Is It So Important to Be Bored?

Arthur Schopenhauer, a German philosopher from the 19th century, said that the world is divided into two. There are those who try to reach the goals that everyone tries to reach, but they do it in a better, more accurate, and faster way. They are the ones who will make the world better, smarter, stronger—but not different. The second type manages to recognize goals that no one before them has recognized. They are the ones who will drive innovation, creativity, and change. They are the ones who move the world forward.

So what is the feature that characterizes people who observe the world in a different way? We call it creativity.

Creativity has only begun to be studied intensively in recent years. Ever since ancient Greece, creativity has been talked about as mysticism. The creative person is merely the conduit. Gustav Mahler said, "I'm not a composer; I'm composed," while Steve Jobs, when asked how he was able to reach a certain result, said he didn't really know. That's just how things worked out in his head.

The default mode network

The agreed definition of creativity is changing the set of connections between the various elements—or in other words, reorganizing the elements. If the elements relate to each other in a certain way, then a creative person is able to look at them in a different way. Take, for example, Waze, which took existing satellite navigation technology and combined it with real-time data and information from drivers.

We have recently begun to identify areas of the brain that are associated with creativity; mainly, the default mode network. It is a network that is active when our attention is not directed by external stimuli, so our memory is the source of our thoughts and images, as it is when we're in the shower or before bed.

In the past, it was common to think that our mind only spends energy when we engage in extensive thinking, such as reading a book, studying for an exam, or concentrating on a lecture. These actions are controlled by a brain network known as the executive functions. However, it turns out that when the attention is directed inward, when we are in the shower, at a traffic light, or daydreaming, another part of the brain, called the "default mode network," takes control. Therefore, waiting in a traffic light is not a waste of time. This is exactly the time to think creatively because then our mind makes use of diverse internal sources—which are the basis for insights and creative solutions.

The importance of boredom

"The Hobbit" for example, came into the world when JR Tolkien, a professor at Oxford, received a huge amount of exams during the summer vacation. "It was a task that required enormous amounts of time and energy, and unfortunately it was terribly boring," he once told the BBC in an interview. While checking the exams, he came upon an exam page that the student had left blank. He savored the moment, and his thoughts began to wander. "So I scribbled on the exam paper, I don't even remember why, 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.'"

Thus, out of a moment of boredom, one of the classics of the 20th century was born.

Creativity is associated with activation in the default mode network. In a situation where thoughts wander inward without external stimulation that distracts us, new connections and associations are formed. Associative thinking is critical for humans because this is the time when we can distance ourselves from a stimulus such as an argument with a friend, and try to understand the other party's perspective and look for a creative solution to the problem.

Another phenomenon that characterizes creative people is called “latent inhibition”—people who pay attention to details that to others seem marginal. The attention of creative people is scattered rather than focused. Their brains have a hard time filtering out noises. The interesting thing is that this phenomenon characterizes both creative people and people with mental illnesses. The difference between creative people and those with mental illnesses is that a creative person can control these impulses and connect with reality, while for people with mental illnesses, these irrelevant details overwhelm them. Indeed, in personality tests, it was found that creative people show very high indicators of mental health and stability on the one hand, but also high indicators of psychopathology on the other hand.

People who allow themselves to be bored and are not afraid to be with themselves and their thoughts think more creatively than those who do not experience boredom. The feeling of boredom is effective for encouraging creative thinking. In one of the experiments that examined this, one group of subjects was asked to manually copy numbers from a phone book, while a second group was asked to read the numbers aloud. In the second stage of the experiment, the subjects conducted a fluency task, namely, finding as many possible usages for an object such as a cup or a clamp. The more boring the assignment was (reading is considered a more passive activity than copying and therefore found to be more boring), the more creative solutions the students came up with.

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The ability to be with ourselves

The ability to be with ourselves and our thoughts is a learned ability. For children who do not acquire the ability to be with themselves, boredom becomes the biggest fear. In one of the experiments, students were asked to stay in a room without stimuli for 15 minutes. They left a device in the room that allows them to electrocute themselves. After a few minutes of boredom, the students began to electrify themselves. It seems that they would rather be electrified than bored.

In the current period, as our attention is distributed over several stimuli at the same time, our ability to pay attention to internal stimuli significantly weakens. We work with an average of eight to 10 windows open at the same time; these are 10 applications that compete for our attention, impair our ability to concentrate, and do not allow us to look inward. Therefore, waiting for the light at the traffic light to change is not a waste of time. This is precisely the time when we gain a perspective that is not possible in the heat of the moment; when the physical and emotional presence of another person does not allow us to distance ourselves from the external noise. In the shower or while driving, the brain relives the event and makes use of diverse internal sources, which are the basis for insights and creative solutions.