#07 Boredom

If you have all the money in the world and you don't have to worry about making money, what would you spend your time on? this is one of my favorite questions that I ask in most of the interviews. I get different interesting answers which go from - traveling, starting a business and exploring, etc.

The answer to that from my end would be - I'd do nothing for the most amount of the time apart from investing, consulting a few startups from my learnings, and helping them build. I'll have a lot of non-productive hours in a day and definitely some creating hours (it can be anything at that point in time which is interesting to me).

Off late I've been realizing the importance of "doing nothing time", "being bored" and a lot of thinking time.. trying to incorporate that a lot during weekends and post-work and pre-work. Today I wanted to discuss and share my perspectives on the same.

So let's dive in!

Do you know what's the best state of mind in life? - The state of mind when we are doing nothing :D.

Yes, I'm saying it again - Doing nothing puts us in the best state of mind.

Okay, let me ask you a question - When was the last time - you stayed by yourself and did nothing without a phone "literally doing nothing"?

If it's a yes, amazing! Keep doing it often!

If it's a no, double amazing! let's learn about it and try doing it.

In today's edition, we are going to talk about the importance of "doing nothing time" and a little bit about boredom and how can you benefit from it.

"Neuroscientific evidence argues that your brain needs to rest, right now. While our minds are exquisitely evolved for intense action, in order to function normally our brains also need to be idle— a lot of the time, it turns out."

In 2011, Steve Jobs also spoke about it, “I’m a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity.”

But let me tell you my share of experiences with boredom.

I've lived with friends who wake up in the morning - do nothing for the most amount of the time- go to sleep and another set of people who wakes up in the morning - continuously doing something or the other and being occupied all the time - the most productive bunch of folks. I've observed that both sets of people are successful at whatever they do but the first set of folks who are doing nothing tend to think, reflect, rejoice, refresh, be curious about a bunch of different things, do random things, and spontaneous when compared to people who are always busy.

There's nothing wrong or right about being busy or doing nothing - that is not what I'm interested in talking about. I understand that each of us is in different stages of life and not all of us have the privilege to do nothing all the time... but let's try to understand it better and see how we can benefit from it even with our existing limitations on time.

In one of the articles, HBR quoted "In a Distracted World, Solitude Is a Competitive Advantage". Let's learn this aspect of it better and experience the advantage.

To further understand better the advantages and experiences of doing nothing and being bored let us understand when Neil Perkins shared a quote from musician and writer, Henry Rollins, in which he talked about ‘Exhale Years’ and ‘Inhale Years’.

In it, he said (and I’m paraphrasing):

“In an inhale year, I will travel and get information so I can have something to say on stage while I spend a whole year exhaling. And an exhale year, I’m on the road touring and the material is derived from all the stuff from the previous year. You have to choreograph everything and all of this is designed”

Though in this specific case it is not truly doing nothing according to my definition can fall under doing nothing.

Now I get your reaction that not all of us can do it or have the luxury to do it because of our commitments. But when I incorporated the smallest stretches of "doing nothing hours" or let's call them "inhale hours" in my day, I felt more productive in a weird way, I felt more creative, and I felt that I'm reflecting on a lot of things that I did during "exhale hours"/ being productive time.

It helped me to evolve into a better learner.

Let us understand it better and look to some tips on how I think you can try incorporating this if you are convinced by now.

Going forward let us refer to

Non-productive/doing nothing time/ being bored time = inhale hours/days.

Productive/creating/being busy = exhale hours/days.

It helped me to reflect, iterate and most importantly have fun in the smallest possible way during the nothing times.

There are multiple ways and times that I introduced this concept into my life.

#01 First freed up some time:

I've realized that there is no time itself in a day, if most of you also feel the same way - the quickest thing to do is - open your phone, look at your screen time and eliminate all the junk hours by deleting those apps. I deleted a few apps where I felt I was doing mindless scrolling.

The second way of freeing up time would be - Start your day with inhale hours or close the day with your inhale hours. One way I did this was, I'd probably finish off all the work by 7 pm maximum and try to squeeze in 2-3 hours till 10 pm before I get back to any sort of exhaling hours for the day.

The third way is to incorporate this on your calendar. If you are someone who can't operate without a calendar - put in blocks of time beforehand and try to strictly follow them.

#02 Use weekends if not weekdays.

Most of weekdays I understand it might be difficult but try to incorporate 2 out of 4 or 1 out of 4 weekends where you just are in the state of doing nothing. This is another way to incorporate inhale days/ doing nothing days.

#03 Identify what excites you the most and use that as a hack to get into this zone of doing nothing.

A lot of us use music to work and focus. In a similar way, it is important to sort of be in the best state of mind during your inhale hours so - music can be a bridge, reading can be a bridge, or working out can be a bridge to get into that state of mind. I usually listen to music for 30-40 minutes and then it helps me to put into that mood and then I continue my inhale hours and do nothing time.

Ideally, during this time, I have a paper and a book with me and I write down whatever comes into my head or use my notes app sometimes to put my thoughts in.

These are some thoughts about the concept and my experiences.

I'm excited to continue this journey of being bored and repeat this exercise and experiment in a progressive way in the future years to come. I hope I was able to add some perspective to you to get started thinking about this.

Be free of mind and free of time. Boredom leads to creativity - naval.

Ending it with my favorite line "All of the man's problems arise because he can't sit by himself alone for 30 minutes in a room".

Let me know what you thought about the concept of nothing time and being bored if you are implementing it in your daily life, do let us know some best practices and benefits that you are experiencing currently.

Be bored!