Cultivating Boredom: An Antidote to Uninspired Work and Spiritual Staleness
How stepping away from our personal devices can reignite creativity, generate solutions, and refresh our connection to God.
Mowing three acres of my childhood home was one of my primary chores as a teenager. This was before the age of zero-turn lawn mowers and bluetooth headphones. The yellow seat of our John Deere mower bounced around too much for me to even consider using my Sony Walkman CD player. Not that my parents would have let me use it because “You need to be able to hear what’s going on around you.” [Insert angsty teenage eye roll.]
Ugh. It was the worst. I had only my thoughts (and an incomplete internal soundtrack of 90s music) to entertain me. Down and back. Back and forth. Around this tree. Around the swing set. Finish this section. Move on to the next. By the time I graduated high school and moved out, I had perfected a most efficient yard mowing pattern.
It was so so boring.
But looking back, what a valuable lesson in boredom. Wide open brain spaces. Room to solve my world’s problems. Imagining new faces and places. Entertaining me, myself, and I.
In the not so distant past, boredom was common. A part of everyday life. It wasn’t a thing we had to intentionally chase. Before phones in our pockets, before TVs in every room, before the radio in every car, there was no constant chatter preoccupying our attention. We occupied ourselves with our very own thoughts, our conversations with God, and our interactions with one another.
Oh, how our world has changed!
Can you even remember the last time you were bored? When was the last time you daydreamed? How about the last time you let your thoughts wander?
Has it been a while?
Are you stumped on a problem? Do you feel a lack of creativity somewhere? Do your relationships–with God and others–feel a little stale?
If it’s been a while since you’ve been bored and your mind and heart are feeling a little lethargic, may I suggest that you–OK, OK, I’ll include myself!–we need to cultivate some boredom in our lives?
In my experience, boredom has led to connecting concepts that I never would have otherwise considered. It has led to creative solutions to inefficient systems using software against its intended purpose. It has allowed me to spot changes in my environment that led to awe and wonder in creation. And it has given room for the Holy Spirit to speak to my spirit.
All of those breakthroughs came from stepping away from my desk, putting away my phone, and turning off my music. Some came while I was on a run or a walk. Others came while I stared out the window with a cup of coffee in my hand. I’m confident that if I mowed my own yard, breakthroughs would come via yard work, too.
A Practice for Cultivating Boredom
Before sitting down for this practice,1 print this sheet of gridded paper. We’ll be using this paper to create some white space–some margin–in our hearts and minds first. You’ll also benefit from having additional paper or a journal on hand.
Also put away your phone and other personal devices. (Or at the very least, turn on Do Not Disturb and put your phone somewhere out of your line of sight and off your body.)
Settle into a quiet space and a comfortable seat. Pause for a few moments to breathe deeply, shake out your hands, and leave the outside world for a little while.
Begin filling each square on your paper with alternating 1s and 0s. Let this take as much time as it takes. Our objective is to be mind-numbingly bored by the time the page is full.
Now quickly review the last few days in your mind: What is asking for a solution? What needs some creativity? Where do you want God to speak? Where do you desire clarity?
Pick one thing to focus on. Begin journaling about it. For now, write in mostly complete sentences until you feel like you’ve written everything you want to say.
Next, close your eyes to recenter yourself. What is your sense of what to do next? There’s no right or wrong here. Your sense of what to do next might turn you toward God, or it might turn to creative problem solving, or maybe it will be something in between.
As you wrap up this exercise, reflect briefly on the exercise itself:
What was it like to take so much time filling in a page of 1s and 0s to achieve total boredom?
Think about your usual approach to creativity, problem solving, hearing God, etc. How was today’s exercise different?
Looking ahead: What’s the value cultivating boredom may have for your work, your communion with God, and your everyday life?
Comments & Community
True confession time: Tell me the last time you were bored! (Honestly, I was pretty bored at my son’s track meet this week.)
Even better: Can you think of a time when you experienced some sort of breakthrough because you were bored? I’d love to hear about it!
If my memory serves me, this practice is adapted from an exercise in Manoush Zomorodi’s book From Bored to Brilliant. I read the book so long ago and could only find sparse notes from what I read.