You Need to Be Bored
One of Wayne's favorite writers/researchers, Arthur Brooks, wrote an intriguing article in the Harvard Business Review in August. In it, Brooks contends that in modern life, we have essentially eliminated boredom. But, he asserts, boredom is part of the human condition, is actually a good thing, and can be quite productive.
Please tune in this week as Wayne reviews Brooks’ article, passes along Brooks’ reasons for why we resist boredom, and offers five tips for allowing productive boredom to creep back into our lives. What's your view? Have we, in fact, eliminated boredom? And if so, what are the downsides to not having white space and boredom in our lives? Please e-mail us your thinking at [email protected].
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WAYNE RIVERS: Hello, everyone. This is Wayne Rivers at Performance Construction Advisors where We Build Better Contractors.
This week I want to talk about You Need to be Bored. I'll come back to that in a second.
Boot Camp begins in February 2026 in Dallas. If you want to send your rising high-potential leaders, contact Charlotte and she'll get you all that information.
Okay, you need to be bored. This comes from a Harvard Business Review article written by one of my favorites, Arthur Brooks. We used some excerpts from Arthur Brooks several years ago. His last book that I bought was Success to Success, and it talks about, if you remember, we talked about organic knowledge versus crystallized knowledge and how as people mature, they sort of gradually move on that scale. Anyway, previous vlog. I'll find a link for it sometime.
He talked about in his article that a fellow Harvard researcher, Dan Gilbert, did an experiment, and all he asked people to do was sit in a featureless room with no phones, no distractions, no nothing for 15 minutes. The only distraction they had was a button they could push. If they pushed the button, they gave themselves an electrical shock.
So, okay, so this is a test. Can you stand, in today's world, can you stand 15 minutes of boredom with no outside distractions or entertainment? Quote, "A big majority of the people gave themselves shocks. They were so horrified of being in a quiet featureless room and being bored that they'd rather give themself electrical jolts than be bored and endure it." Shocking to me. Shocking to me.
Now, this is a phenomenon of modern life, and what about this is important to you? Well, this article really, as you read through it, is about our devices, about our phones and our tablets and our laptops and all that sort of stuff.
My wife and I go to the beach regularly, and it's about a 2 to 2 1/2-hour drive down there, and you would be horrified. You could always tell distracted drivers because they weave a little more or whatever. You would be horrified to see how many people are looking down at their phones, only occasionally glancing up on interstate highways. It is really amazingly shocking.
But that's our fear of boredom. We can't be bored. It used to be in the car you would listen to the radio or listen to a cassette or something. Well, now that's not good enough. People need the visual stimulation of their phones or tablets. It's really shocking.
Now, what about this is important to you? This is affecting you too. It's affecting you in the office, in the field, everywhere, because your people are just like all of us other human beings, they are, frankly, addicted to their devices. Addicted. I'm using that word just as Arthur Brooks did, they're addicted to their devices.
Now, why do we resist boredom? This is what Arthur Brooks says. He says, "When we're bored, our mind wanders. And when it wanders, we sometimes blunder onto existential questions like what does my life mean? What's my purpose? Why am I here?" And those are scary questions. Those are questions that humankind has been trying to divine answers to for, well, all of its existence.
Brooks says, "This is good. Your mind needs to be bored because we need to ponder those kinds of questions." He said, quote, "The explosion of depression and anxiety is because people don't know the meaning of their lives. And we're not even looking," close quote.
I think that's right. So why aren't we looking? Why aren't we trying to answer those questions anymore? It's because we've eliminated boredom. We've eliminated those quiet spaces in our lives where we're not occupied with laptops, et cetera, et cetera.
He says, "Boredom gives us the opportunity to dig into the big questions. What's our purpose? What's our mission?" If this is a business blog, so let's talk about this in a business sense as well as a personal sense, what's the meaning of our company? What's the meaning of me as a human being, and what's my significance? What's my company's significance?
I don't think we've done a blog on this in a really long time, but the four stages of business are survival, stability, success, and significance. And so many of you watching this vlog right now, you've survived, your company became stable, you became very successful indeed, and now you may be at a life stage or a company life cycle stage where you're pondering significance. That's where so many of us are now as we get a little nearer to retirement.
Okay, how do you think about these questions according to Arthur Brooks? Number one, how do we eliminate boredom? How do we embrace boredom is a better way to say it. How do we embrace boredom? These are the habits and tools that he uses.
Okay, number one, no devices after X PM. He says 7:00 PM, pick your number. No devices after whatever time of day. That is not that difficult to do. Importantly, no phone or device in your bedroom. They're terrible for sleep. And when people, they wake up at night as I do and you have a little half hour, an hour of insomnia, what's the first thing you're going to do to alleviate that boredom? You're going to grab that device and it's going to not only keep you from pondering these important, potentially life-shaping questions, it's also going to be terrible for your sleep and cause you to have even more insomnia going forward.
The second thing, no devices at family time or at meals. I mean, this again should be easy to do, but I'm shocked. I see people in restaurants or a club or whatever and they're sitting with their family around the table, and everyone, or at least a majority of the people there have their devices out doing something else. So here you are in the presence of other human beings that you love and you can't spend 30 minutes to an hour without that device. Leave it in the car. That when I go to restaurants with my wife, I leave it in the car. I'm not going to need it. She's right there. I'm not going to have to text her about the grocery list or anything, she's right there. Okay? Again, I'm a victim too. I mean, not a victim. I'm a perpetrator of this too. I don't like to be bored either. I overuse my device for sure, but you need to have limits, as Brooks recommends.
Third, practice device withdrawal. If we're addicted to these devices, then we're going to suffer a little bit of withdrawal. So, use certain times, your commute to work. So, my commute is about six or seven minutes. Can I go six or seven minutes without some device or some listening to some audiobook or something? Well, sure. Sure, I can. What about going to the gym? Can you leave your device in the car when you go to the gym and you're on the treadmill? And okay, do you have to be watching something on your device or listening to something while you're on the treadmill? A walk. So, Lisa and I walk the dog every day. Do we need a device to help us walk the dog to enjoy nature, to take pleasure in our fun little guy as he sniffs around and does all the dog things he does? We don't need devices for that. So, practice, give yourself some space and some withdrawal time.
Number four, refocus on people. It's like what I said before, you're having family meals, you don't need your device there, and they don't need their device there. So, we have a rule in our Monday meetings here at work, no devices, because I observe that people were not paying attention around the table, people were paying attention to their devices because they got a text about, "Oh, are you still coming over for dinner Thursday night?" You don't need that stuff in your meetings. Phones, leave phones outside. Build a box. Build a receptacle to hold the phones and nobody brings their phones into the meeting.
Number five, block all numbers so people can't be texting you about dinner Thursday night or whatever after a certain time of day. So, for me, bedtime is around, you don't need to know my bedtime as it's early, but after bedtime, the only people that can text me or call me are my family members. And if there's something big going on with family members, that's an emergency, you need to hear it. But really other people probably don't need to get in touch with you during the hours from sleeping to waking.
Put down your devices, be bored. It's the best way to find meaning in your company life and in your individual life. By all means, put down your devices and encourage others around you to do the same.
I'd like to hear your comments, [email protected]. This is Wayne Rivers at PCA where We Build Better Contractors.
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