Why Being Bored is Actually Useful

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]I've been thinking a lot about boredom in the context of creative activities.

[00:00:04]As you've probably seen in um a recent video, I have been using a little device called the brick, which is something that allows you to block your phone's apps across whatever time frame you choose. And so, I've been thinking, why has the brick become such a lifecher for me when it comes to creative activities, specifically writing? And in a way, of course, that it's self-explanatory because the brick completely blocks any sort of social media apps. I'm not allowed to go in there and interrupt my writing sprints. However, I actually think that the real answer goes beyond that. I think that in a way, the brick and any sort of social media blocking device or app allows you to feel bored again. So, I don't know if you're like me, but every single time I have to do something like a big like chunky writing assignment, whether that's creative writing or whether that's for work, I tend to grab my phone immediately when a sentence isn't flowing, when my thought process isn't going the way I want it to go. Intuitively, the first thing I do is grab phone and start scrolling. Now, this is not only harmful for my productive work in the sense that the output won't be the same because I'm losing precious time scrolling and procrastinating instead of working, but I'm also blocking myself from precious time just feeling bored and feeling like I'm coming to some sort of a block. This is particularly interesting because I have been recently thinking that probably one of the times where I was the most productive when it came to creative writing was when I was commuting to work a lot. This is actually fascinating because when I was commuting to work way more often than I do now, I you know mathematically when you sum all of the time I had available for writing, I had very little time to write. However, I had a lot of time to feeling bored and that's mostly because my commute is very very long. So, I take around 1 hour and a half to go to work and then another hour and a half to return. And because I'm driving and I'm not sitting on a train or on a bus, so I can't do anything. Actually, the only thing I can do is drive. Another thing that I end up doing a lot is thinking.

[00:02:36]So because I'm bored during that very long commute being a writer and a very like a very visual writer, one of the things that I do is I start and managing scenes in my head as I am driving and as I am listening to some sort of a playlist. Now what will happen is that the way I imagine these scenes is going to get into a repeat mode. So as I'm driving, I listen to like a specific song on my playlist. I imagine this scene that happens alongside that song.

[00:03:09]And if you're a writer, I know you'll probably do this as well, so you know exactly what I'm talking about. And then because if I'm liking that song, I will put it on repeat and I will just like listen to it on loop to the point where I basically created this scene in my mind and all I have to do is like get to my keyboard and I just have to type it all out because all the scene beats, even the dialogue is completely consolidated in my mind when I actually get to my laptop. So this is sort of a productive instance that arose from pure and sheer boredom and impossibility to do productive work because I was driving. The same thing happens to me in various situations when I'm showering.

[00:03:56]Uh when I'm walking my dog, I also can't do anything else uh besides walking my dog. I'm someone who cannot listen to audiobooks as well. like my my attention span. I have a very hard time sticking to an audiobook because when I go to the third sentence or the fourth sentence, I I kind of forgot where the chapter began. So, when I'm walking my dog, the exact same thing happens. I'm listening to a playlist.

[00:04:22]I'm managing scenes in my head. The scene is so visually consolidated in my mind that when I get to my laptop to actually type it down, it's ready to go.

[00:04:31]So, the first author that I remember talking about this specifically was Chris Bailey in this very poorly named book called Hyperfocus. And Chris Bailey um talks about hyperfocus and he talks about something that's that he calls scatter focus. And that's exactly what we're talking about here. In the hyperfocusing mode, you are sitting down to produce a task with a specific time frame and a specific goal in mind. With scatter focus, you are allowing yourself and you're allowing your brain to scatter. So you go on a walk or you step away from your typical workstation and you allow your brain to basically start connecting the dots by itself without you forcing it to adopt a specific method or a specific train of thought.

[00:05:16]And I feel that in creative work, this is so important. not only in creative work. This happens to me a lot in my you know day job as well though because in a way it's more researchbased. I feel like it's not as powerful. I feel like scatter focusing is not as powerful when it comes to empiricalbased work and researchbased work as it is for creative based work. And in a way with social media and all of the noise that we're currently and constantly surrounded with, you lose the ability to focus, but you also lose the ability to not focus. You know, because if you are scrolling through Instagram, if you're scrolling through any sort of social media app, you probably are not allowing your brain to scatter as well. You're not allowing your thoughts to connect as well because you're blind by that sort of flashy but repetitive information that your phone is feeding you. You probably have experienced this before.

[00:06:17]Your best ideas come out of nowhere. We always say that our best ideas come in the shower, right before we go to bed, in the middle of the night, right when we wake up, when we are driving, uh when we are cooking or cleaning the house because we are allowing ourselves to let our thoughts scatter. And that's when the best ideas start to connect. And Chris Belly also says that this happens because we have these open loops in our mind. And when we have these unfinished stories, these unfinished tasks in our minds, our brain will not allow us to stop thinking about them until we connect all the dots. However, if we also force ourselves to, you know, not having enough attention spent to connect the dots, which happens when we are procrastinating, dealing with this sort of addictive environment that is social media, we are not allowing our brain to connect the dots, to finish the cycle, to finish the story. On the other hand, I do believe that boredom, this ability, you know, of not doing anything at all allows you to also reconnect a little bit more with yourself as well as with deeper thought processes. I think that when we are way too attuned for results and we are way too attuned for, you know, finishing a task with a specific output under a specific time frame, we are pleased with a result as long as those conditions are met. However, when you are in an environment where those conditions cannot be met because you don't have the tools, you don't have the resources, you are not in the right place to actually finish the task, you are allowing yourself the time and the space to actually engage in deeper thinking. Sometimes when I'm chatting with someone who doesn't write for a living or who has never tried to write before, they often ask me how long do you take writing a book? And I think that in a way uh I'm a very fast typer and I know for sure that when I have a plot and a few character arcs pretty much consolidated in my mind, I can write a book very fast. However, that is just a typing part of writing a book.

[00:08:32]Before I actually consolidate those character arcs, before I understand why am I writing that book in the first place, what is the message that I'm trying to portray? What is the theme behind that story? What is the purpose of me writing that particular book? I feel like it takes months for me to get there. Just as a few examples, the last book that I wrote, Truthteller, which hopefully I will have more information about that book soon. Follow me on Instagram. I'm going to pop here my feed so you can follow me along. So when I have something to announce, you'll be there to see and read the announcements.

[00:09:11]But when I wrote that book, I actually spent probably a year and a half from the first couple of words to just hitting the end with my agent. This was after a couple of rounds of edits. Interestingly enough, between draft zero and draft one, or I can call it like between draft one and draft two with my agent, I rewrote the book in around 1 month and 2 weeks. So that was a very short amount of time to write the book because I was also working at the time. I didn't have any sort of leave. I was not on holidays. It was a very fast process because all I had to do was type what was in my mind. However, until I got to the process of rewriting the book, a lot of time had passed between draft number one and draft number two. And what happened in that time was that I was not writing at all. I was not brainstorming at all. But for months, I was thinking about the book. I was thinking about the characters. I was thinking about why did I write this book in the first place?

[00:10:14]So, what am I trying to make the reader understand? What is the message beneath all of this? And I spent months thinking about this, but like thinking on the back of my mind, not actively thinking.

[00:10:29]I was bored. I was waiting for edits. I had nothing to do. So I just allowed my brain to scatter to think about these processes and these things on the back of my mind without any particular goal and I was just literally just like connecting the dots. I was connecting the dots. So when my revisions came in and my agent spoke to me about the things that we had to change in the book, I already had a sort of a plan in my mind because as I was waiting for my agent's feedback, I was also thinking like in parallel about all the things that I was not liking about the book.

[00:11:03]And this all happened sort of very bored way where I had no goals, I had no deadlines, I didn't have anything but I just allowed myself to think about it.

[00:11:13]And when I think back on my days as a kid, the exact same thing happened. I I believe that in a way, I started writing books because, you know, I didn't have a lot of distractions when I was a kid. I I didn't have access to phones very early in my life. I didn't have access to internet very early in my life. And for me, writing was a really good creative outlet because I was so bored.

[00:11:39]And I'm really thankful that I had access to that sort of boredom of not doing anything at all because that was what unlocked the ability for me to have this passion for writing. So in a way all in all I think that boredom is a bit where curiosity begins. And my purpose with this video is just to tell you that cultivating boring times in our routine and times where nothing actually happens and there's no output and no tasks are being completed is actually a positive thing. And it may give you this ability to, you know, do your tasks with more quality than you are expecting and reaching new conclusions that you never thought you'd reach if you were just micromanaging your calendar all the time. And speaking of how you're spending your time and always being a big advocate for reading and for you know understanding new things and new ideas both through fiction and non-fiction, I really want to recommend you our sponsor for today's video which is Short Form. So Short Form is the ultimate way to get the key ideas from the world's best non-fiction books.

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