Boredom

Boredom is painful for the brain. Evolutionarily, we’ve been honed to enjoy consuming information. That information, like where the watering hole is, whether the small blue berries are poisonous or sweet, and who you can rely upon in your tribe, would increase your likelihood of survival.

At the same time, our brain is our most demanding organ in our body. It accounts for about 20% of the body’s total energy expenditure despite being only about 2% of body weight. (At the same time, it is hyper-efficient at 20W, a supercomputer that draws less power than a lightbulb.)

In order to help us be mindful that we learn things that are worth the energy we put into them, the process of learning also evolved to be painful.

These two competing effects: the pain of boredom and the pain of learning, leads to what could be called reflective boredom. I think this is best characterized by something my friend once told me: “Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is stare at the wall for a while. You figure out things you never would while trying to be productive.”

You can’t force reflection, just like you can’t force creativity. However, once you deprive your brain of new sensory information, it is forced to draw more information from its existing memories. Those hours of tossing and turning in bed, that time while doing laundry where your brain races, or your long drive to work, can all lead to some of your best thoughts.

Answers to hard questions can sometimes magically pop into your head during this “dead time.”

1. How do I solve the problem I’m stuck on at work?
2. How should I have framed that conversation?
3. What am I missing in my life?

I think the “magic” comes from letting your subconscious chew on the problem over time, giving it the resources to do so by allowing yourself to be bored.

“Don’t go to sleep one night. What you most want will come to you then. Warmed by a sun inside you’ll see wonders.” - Rūmī, the thirteenth-century Persian poet.

Just like learning, reflective boredom doesn’t release dopamine, but it does release serotonin. You need to push through the hump to see the benefits. Today, the hump is bigger than ever because of the role of social media in our lives, since social media maximizes dopamine and minimizes serotonin. I’ve written up some brief thoughts on social media here.

Getting over the hump has another advantage. Since dopamine’s effects are normalized to your situation, it’s easier to reduce the “pain of learning” if you get comfortable with boredom, since it is a smaller jump from the dopamine rush you get from the infinite scroll of social media.

In a way that sounds counterintuitive to my friends, I’ve personally tried to increase my own dead time by going on walks, runs, and long bike rides. I think you need about 30 minutes before you enter the REM-like trance where your subconscious takes over and you lose track of time, lost in your thoughts.

Warning: I often get lost on these walks. But getting lost is a good way to discover something new, and I’ve found some beautiful corners of my homes in both Abu Dhabi and Stanford by getting lost.

Finding direction in life is never easy. But I think your instinct to sniff out directions that feel more right becomes more reliable if you add a little bit more boredom in your life.

It’s funny that we call this “dead time.” One could argue that without this “dead time,” it’s hard to really live.

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Inspired by a conversation with Jakub Smékal.