
Does being bored make us more creative? (2014) - mgdo
https://fermatslibrary.com/s/does-being-bored-make-us-more-creative
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cowpewter
I feel like I experience two types of boredom. Regular boredom, which can
foster creativity through daydreaming and finding new projects to work on, and
what I usually call ennui, which is the type of boredom where I'm quite bored,
but everything sounds terrible and I don't want to do anything. Ennui is not
productive at all, and I hate it.

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baldfat
ennui sounds like depression to me? How is it different?

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YinglingLight
You can tell people that the cure for ennui doesn't involve mind-altering
drugs (just exercise, diet, social/community involvement) without being
sneered at. That's the difference.

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Jtsummers
To be clear, you can tell people that those things help clinical depression as
well, without being sneered at. And for some people that _is_ enough (over
time, particularly as clinical depression is often a symptom of other things
and not a condition on its own).

The only reason they'd sneer at you is your "just" part. There's no "just"
with a mental state that can leave people unable to even will themselves out
of bed for days at a time (at my worst I could at least do that, but couldn't
get out of the apartment without using up most of my mental and emotional
strength). There are points where medication (mind-altering drugs) can be
essential for people, and for others it may be something they need forever.

Why? Because there are different causes. Mine is a consequence of anxiety,
addressing that essentially eliminated my depression. For others, their
anxiety is worse than mine and rather than medication for _depression_ they
need medication for _anxiety_ , and not just coping techniques. For other
people, the depression is a condition on its own, with no or no apparent
causal factors. Others, it may be a consequence of physical health (lack of
sunlight, exercise, poor diet) and so those precise things can eliminate or
significantly reduce their experience of depression.

It's all going to be case-by-case, and so there is no "just".

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conception
John Cleese has a talk on this that's one of my favorite and most actionable
for me.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g)

I go back to it over and over to remind me how to get into a state to be
creative.

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Jun8
This was a fantastic talk, thanks for linking! One interesting takeaway: As
you play create random juxtaposition of ideas and see if anyone makes sense.
It's good that some of these are crazy. He talks about the concept of
"intermediate impossibles" (related post: [https://medium.com/front-line-
interaction-design/intermediat...](https://medium.com/front-line-interaction-
design/intermediate-impossibles-d02f26bd9a74\)to) shake your mind loose and
arrive at the actual solution. I found this idea similar to Zen koans.

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gowld
I read something a long time ago that argued that highly creative people
aren't creative because they have better ideas, but they have _more_ ideas
than their peers of similar intelligence, and then they sift through those
ideas to pick out the gems. (Of course it then requires a lot of work ethic
and skills to generate quality inspiration and to covert those ideas into
valuable creations).

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TheOtherHobbes
Creativity correlates with openness to experience. Openness to experience
means you're more likely to play with a new experience or idea in an open way
- and perhaps generate new ideas from it - than to dismiss it out of hand
because you find it boring and/or anxiety provoking.

[https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/the-
number...](https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/the-number-one-
predictor-of-creativity-openness-to-experience/)

You don't need a work ethic to be creative. IME creative people _have_ to be
creative. It's not a choice.

You need a work ethic to turn creativity into value - which is a different
problem, where you have to balance creative output with critical evaluation
and conscious persistent development of relevant skills. (In addition to all
the usual biz dev stuff.)

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arandr0x
I tend to use "bored states" to do all my planning tasks. In "deep work" or
even deep work-adjacent states I am usually too focused on a problem to go
back and find things that should be getting done, or to consider the more
systemic roadblocks, or to wonder what is going on with other teams or new
technologies. I am glad for the moments where I am not in a meeting or doing
deep work, in a way, because they give space to ponder what should come next.

That said, the study is pretty flawed, because it asked individuals to self-
select at two points (whether they found the task boring, and whether they
daydreamed during it). I can find plenty of boring tasks I would daydream
while doing over the course of an 8h workday, but finding a time-limited 15min
task with zero difficulty so boring that you are daydreaming during it seems
to me indicative of some kind of attention issue. I worry that it may be
selecting for a personality type that is already more creative, because
participants in the control conditions were not asked how often they
daydreamed, and participants in the boredom condition were not tested on
creativity before the boredom test.

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tw1010
I used to think this. Then I was bored for so long that I got used to it, and
found no creative thoughts flowing out of me anymore. It's a balance,
unfortunately. I sometimes think that having a procrastinating undercurrent is
almost a necessary requirement for creativity juice to start flowing (or maybe
that's just the environment I've been creative in for so long that it's what
I'm habituated to).

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whiddershins
Momentary boredom (for me) seems vital to creativity.

It took me a couple of years to map out the correlation, but having a
smartphone seems to dramatically reduce the number of ideas I have.

I go for a walk, wait in line, sit in the train, and am consumed by a horrible
feeling of impatient boredom.

The phone alleviates that.

What I realized is that feeling only lasts about 90 seconds and then I start
having all sorts of inspired thoughts. The problem is I will use the device to
solve the boredom before the creativity circuit engages.

~~~
kochikame
You've inspired me to try it.

Next time I'm waiting for a train, I'm just going to stand there and see what
happens.

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eslaught
I have a theory that boredom, and specifically long-term boredom, is a
resource that gets depleted by being continuously busy. The day-to-day grind
of a job can be conducive for productivity, but it can really limit
creativity. To date, I think the most creative times in my life have been the
long summer breaks off from school. To be sure, a lot of that time got wasted
on Diablo 2, but it was also the time when I developed the programming chops
that lead me to my current career.

I think it's understandable to look at this and think "what value does this
have?", and yet we don't take into the account the costs (especially
creatively) of constantly being busy. I think there would be a lot of
benefits, certainly for individuals and possibly for companies, by developing
some sort of a structured sabbatical program to give people space for
alternate pursuits.

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WhompingWindows
Gaming can be a useful appetizer for young folks looking to get into
programming. Starcraft wasn't a waste for me. Granted, learning tons of
specific build orders doesn't help now. However, Starcraft taught me to touch-
type, it taught me finger-speed, and taught me some of the basics of
programming when I created some custom maps with internal logic and triggers.
Another friend was a map-hacker on WC3 dota, used to play Riki (permanently
invis char) and use map hacks. He started coding for that purpose, for hacks
and bots in WC3.

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Domenic_S
There's a relationship between boredom and motivation that's critical -- in my
experience, bored && unmotivated == time-wasting activities (mindlessly
surfing the internet, video games, etc).

Yet there's a kind of boredom that's relaxing, when you have a lot of work
piled up but you've done enough for the day. In the words of Jerome K. Jerome,
"It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to
do."

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dev_dull
I want to offer a counterpoint: it’s restrictions that make us more creative.
There’s a reason why all of our most famous and ancient writers use some kind
of line metric.

Being bored forces you to work within your restrictions to have fun. Just
observe your toddler with a “dumb” toy versus and iPad.

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mpol
To me it is much more about having a clear mind and not feeling stressed out.
In that situation I have room for more things and I am easily motivated to
work on something new, just anything I feel like.

When I am bored, I just watch a bit of TV or reload that same webpage
continuously.

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Fjolsvith
For me its a combination of boredom and laziness. I'm always looking for ways
to do things easier, and it's when I'm driving long distances that the ideas
come to me.

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deeteecee
wow, we base this conclusion on the result of a supposedly creative task after
a boring activity? im gonna assume the boring activity was actually boring
because those are easy to create but you most certainly cannot define what is
creative for these people.

Aside from this study, I would say boredom is not good for creativity. and for
an individual who is not bored, as long as he can relax, I believe he can
boost the right amounts of creativity.

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pasta
Restrictions boost creativity.

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aportnoy
Being bored makes us open HN and read articles about being bored…

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finaliteration
The cycle:

“I’m bored” > open HN > scroll > “I’ve read most of these articles/comments” >
close HN > ~3 minutes pass > “I’m bored” > open HN... repeat.

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jonbarker
Even worse: "I'm overwhelmed by what I am working on > open HN > scroll > find
new technology promising to reduce said overwhelm > start researching said
tech > apply new tech to previous overwhelming problem, but get stuck due to
lack of familiarity > go back to old tech

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justizin
nobody including me on this thread has read this article, welcome to HN.

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mehh
No the article looks boring

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zby
But there was a link posted in the comments to a great John Cleese talk.

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mehh
Seen that talk before :) really is a great talk too!

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xtiansimon
No

