the importance of boredom, a talk with emma

live today in 2024 in regards to technology has become cringe.

It's very cringe, okay?

To be like, social media is rotting our brains.

Cringe.

It's cringe to be like, we're all overstimulated and addicted to our phones.

Cringe.

I know.

I agree.

However, it is unfortunate that it's cringe because I am going to be talking about it

today again.

Have I talked about it before?

Yes.

Have I said everything there is to be said?

Yes.

Am I revisiting it today because it's still sort of an issue in my personal life and I'm

trying to work through it with all of you?

Yes.

It's unfortunate that it's cringe because it's not a conversation that should be over

necessarily.

I sound like, listen, I know I sound like your mom or your dad or your grandma or your

uncle coming to you at Thanksgiving being like, you need to get off that phone.

I know I sound like that.

I sound like that now.

I've sounded like that before and I'll sound like that again.

This is just the reality of who I am.

I've said this before also, but it's almost like I have a mom, like a built-in mom in

my own brain.

I obviously have my mom who I love and adore, but I also have like another mom slash grandma

slash older, wiser voice in my head telling me what's right, what I should be doing.

And then on the other side of my brain, I have 22 year old Emma and those two sides

of my brain are constantly fighting.

But today I'm going to be talking from the mom in my brain, the grandma in my brain for

the most part.

And then 22 year old Emma will come in too.

I'm going to warn you.

I'm about to say a cliche about the world that we live in today that you've heard a

billion times and you'll probably hear a billion more times in the future.

We live in a time where you don't have to be bored anymore.

Oh, you've never heard that before.

Yeah, you have.

I know.

I know.

I don't need to explain why this statement is true.

You know why.

There's endless entertainment readily available at all times and it's addictive.

Okay.

We know that.

Something a little less discussed is also the fact that we live in a culture that sort

of shames boredom, not necessarily directly.

There aren't people saying like, being bored is bad.

It means you're a failure and it means you suck.

But indirectly, I feel like we don't live in a culture that says, hey, you should go

and be bored.

There's a lot of emphasis on working really hard, grinding, blah, blah, blah, which is

sort of, in my opinion, indirectly saying, if you're bored, then you're not working

hard enough and there's something wrong with your life.

There's this emphasis around finding your dream job and working really hard at it.

And that whole narrative does not have boredom anywhere in it.

And I feel like if you were to go to someone who has this major grind mindset, like, find

your dream job and work really hard at it every single day, if you were to say, I'm

bored to somebody like that, they'd be like, okay, why aren't you working?

And if you're like, I am working, I'm bored and I'm at work, they'd say, okay, why are

you still at that job if it's making you feel bored?

Do you see what I'm saying?

That whole narrative just does not support boredom.

On top of that, everyone's constantly comparing their lives on social media and everybody

looks like they're always doing something fun all the time, blah, blah, blah.

That's something we already all know.

That also makes us all feel like we should never be bored because it's like, oh, well,

this person's on a trip to Hawaii and they look like they're having so much fun and they're

doing something.

Meanwhile, I'm not doing anything.

I'm sitting in my backyard looking at a bird and I'm bored.

I shouldn't be doing that.

I should be doing something else.

I should be entertained.

I should be doing something with my life.

Again, that does not support the idea that boredom maybe can be good.

Everything going on around us pushes us towards overstimulation in one way or another.

I came to the conclusion the other day that I need to allow myself to be bored more often.

Now, this is not a conclusion that I'm coming to for the first time.

I've come to this conclusion 10 times before.

This is not a new conversation for us here on Anything Goes.

I have talked about this, but I've come to the conclusion again recently that, you know

what, I'm not bored enough.

I know that being bored is important because just through life experience, not that I have

a lot, I'm 22, but through experience, I've noticed that times of boredom have led me

to do incredible things.

Okay?

I can look back and see the value in times of boredom in my life, and simply because

of that, I'm inspired in moments where I'm not ever bored and I'm constantly overstimulated

that I need to create more space to be bored, and I need to allow myself to be bored more

often.

Now, there's a few things I want to go into, but the first one is why I think boredom is

important.

In my personal experience, I've found boredom forces me to reflect, for one.

If you're not bored and you're constantly overstimulated, when are you going to find

time to sort of do the dirty work and reflect on yourself and your life and the people around

you?

You don't really have to do that if you're constantly distracting yourself with other

things.

I tend to reflect most often when I'm driving or I'm in the shower.

Even in moments of overstimulation, I can't usually distract myself very well when I'm

driving or when I'm in the shower because what else am I going to do?

I mean, yeah, sometimes I can listen to a podcast or play a YouTube video or call someone

on the phone, and I've been known to do that, but sometimes no one's available.

Sometimes everyone's working.

Sometimes everyone's busy.

And guess what?

Emma's left to be alone, and a YouTube video or a podcast is not cutting it, and that's

not a distraction enough.

And you know what?

It gets to a point where it's like maybe silence is the best option.

And then I find myself briefly, for just a moment, bored, and guess what I do?

Without a doubt, I reflect.

And I always find it miraculous when I do give myself a moment of boredom in a phase

of overstimulation, how quickly that moment of reflection makes me feel better.

Like we always have things going on in our head.

Okay, here we go.

Here I go with a metaphor.

But I feel like we have this backpack that we're carrying all the time, and there's certain

things that put weight into the backpack, and then there are certain things that take

weight out of the backpack.

Daily challenges and dilemmas and questions that we have unanswered, unsolved, weight

in the backpack.

And then any time we take a bit to think and reflect and answer some of those questions

and address some of those uncomfortable things, we're able to take weight out of the backpack.

In the moment, it's annoying because there's a lot of heavy shit in the backpack, and it's

annoying and you just sift around and find the things that you need to take out.

And it's harder to lift something up from the front than it is to be carrying it around

on your back.

So it's really heavy and it's annoying, and then you get it out and you throw it and then

you're done.

And it was annoying to go into your backpack and get it all out and like whatever.

But then now that it's gone, you're so stoked that it is.

That's sort of what it feels like to be in a phase when you aren't reflecting.

I feel like when you're in a phase where you're really overstimulated and you're distracting

yourself a lot, that almost acts as like these pads on the straps of your backpack.

These like soft, fuzzy pads that make it hurt a little less when you're carrying around

all this heavy stuff.

You don't feel as inspired to look into that backpack because you're like, well, my shoulders

don't hurt as bad because I have these pads that are protecting the straps from digging

into my shoulders.

I'm not thinking about it as much.

I don't have to think about it.

But eventually you'll add enough heavy stuff to that backpack that now you have really

bad back pain and maybe your sciatica is acting up.

And now you have to look into that goddamn backpack.

But you don't want to get to that point where your backpack is so heavy that you have so

much stuff that you need to reflect on that it's like overwhelming and daunting.

It's better to have more moments of boredom throughout your day and in your life so that

you just naturally end up addressing those things more often.

At least this is my experience.

I also think boredom is crucial for creativity in all ways.

I'm not just talking about like a creative project like, oh, I'm making my magnum opus.

I'm painting a self-portrait that hopefully will be in the Louvre one day.

It's not like that.

It could be good for that as well.

Don't get me wrong.

But I'm just talking about using the creative side of your brain in general.

I'll use an example for when I'm trying to come up with things to talk about for my podcast.

I sometimes get really stumped because I've had a podcast for a long time and I'm like,

fuck, what have I never talked about before?

And by the way, this is not me complaining.

This is just genuinely an example from my life.

I'll be like, okay, I want to think about something that I haven't talked about before.

Something that feels, you know, fresh and exciting maybe.

Or maybe I have a different take on something that I have already talked about before.

But sometimes I get stumped and I can't really figure out what I want to talk about.

And I have to sort of get creative and try to figure out, okay, what could be a full

episode and you know what the best solution for that is?

Forcing myself to be bored.

I have days sometimes where I lay in bed all day, bored as fuck with my computer open trying

to figure out what I could talk about for the podcast.

That's part of the deal.

If you are trying to create something new in some way, no matter what it is, a lot of

times you're going to end up really bored, staring at the wall, not sure what to do.

And that's sort of a part of it.

And I wish in a way that I set out more time in my life to be bored because I think that

if I did that, then in those moments of boredom, I would end up coming up with ideas instead

of coming down to the wire and then having to force myself to be bored on days when I'm

like, oh, I want to record today.

And it's like, oh shit, I don't have an idea.

And then I end up needing to stare at the ceiling for six hours to eventually figure

something out.

Then I have to shove all this boredom into one day out of necessity instead of, I don't

know, being bored some other time and spreading it out in a better way.

Does that make sense?

I think that nothing inspires creativity better than boredom.

And I think that you're able to be creative in all areas of your life so much easier when

you have the space in your brain to do it.

I feel like creative endeavors, whether it's a creative problem or it's a creative project,

it requires almost an empty brain.

You almost need to have an empty brain.

And when is your brain empty?

When you're bored.

So and similar to that, problem solving, I mean, I kind of already addressed that with

reflection and creativity because both of those involve problem solving.

But I feel like problem solving, similar to creativity, it requires so much focus in such

a blank slate in the brain that without boredom, it's very hard to solve a problem properly.

And then last but not least, recharging.

I think a lot of times we look at boredom as something that is not recharging because

being bored is not the most comfortable feeling, especially now.

It can make a lot of us sort of antsy because we're like, God, I should be doing something.

I should be doing something.

But being bored is, in my opinion, crucial for recharging and preventing burnout in all

areas of life.

Having the freedom to do whatever you want with your brain, whether it's uncomfortable

because that's actually not always a comfortable feeling or it's comfortable because maybe

you're someone who, I don't know, understands the value of boredom and appreciates it.

I think it's the only way to recharge in a way.

With all that being said, it's clear that boredom, at least for me, is very important

because it allows me to do all of these critical things in my life.

And I was thinking about it the other day.

It's not hard to find boredom.

It's actually really easy.

In fact, it's easier than ever because I do think that it takes much more to stimulate

us now than it used to in the past.

People in the 1920s didn't know what they were missing.

They didn't have an iPad.

They didn't have Instagram.

They didn't have TikTok.

They did not have Netflix and they did not have Max, formerly known as HBO Max.

And they definitely didn't have Hulu either.

Like they were probably properly entertained by, I don't know, going on a walk through

a flower garden.

They were probably properly entertained reading a book.

I would argue it's much less entertaining now for the majority of human beings alive

today than it was for human beings in 1920 when there was just a whole lot less going

on.

Our barrier for what's entertaining and stimulating, it's just different.

But with that being said, it's kind of cool in a way because boredom is all around.

Like we can find boredom in way more places because we're so much less entertained by

mundane things.

Like let's say it's a Saturday and you have two options.

You could overstimulate yourself, as we all do, okay, by spending all day going on TikTok

and then maybe watching a really addictive TV show and then ordering dinner on a food

delivery app and then, you know, just all these things that are very addictive and very

just prevent you from being bored because you don't ever have to be bored during those

things.

All of those things gather all of your attention.

Now before I even go any further, I want to say that I don't want to demonize a day like

that because I also think that there can be something recharging at times about having

a day like that, just letting yourself do all the things and indulge in all these things.

I don't think that that's always inherently wrong and I don't want to demonize it because

I think there is some value maybe there too.

I'm not sure if there's value there.

That might be pushing it too far, but I think that we shouldn't feel like we can't ever

do that.

I think that's so unhealthy as well because whatever.

But I think we should keep that to a minimum.

You know what I mean?

I think that there should be a limit.

Like I don't think we should do that anytime we have a day off, anytime we have an hour

off.

You know, I think that there should be a balance where sometimes our time spent off is like

that because that's fun and that feels good sometimes.

But it should also be spent being bored sometimes too.

And we should just create more boredom in our life in general anyway, and it's easy

to do.

Like replace a day like that, watching TV, going on TikTok, ordering food delivery with

going for a hike.

For a lot of us, going for a hike is fucking boring.

Some people love it.

Some people are vividly entertained by that and that's beautiful.

Some people are not.

Many people are not.

I do enjoy going for a hike and I find it to be fun and somewhat entertaining.

But I also do think that there is a little bit of it that's boring for sure.

You know, maybe in good company, it's less boring.

But actually, definitely in good company, it's less boring.

But if I were to go on a hike by myself and force myself to just walk and not listen to

anything, maybe listen to music, but I might get a little bored.

I'm going to be honest.

An hour in, I may be like, all right, I'm fucking bored.

Sitting in your backyard with no form of entertainment, no music, no podcast, no YouTube video, not

even a book, and just sitting there, ooh, that's uncomfortable, that's boring.

Laying in bed with the TV off, thinking time, oof, that is boring.

Who'd want to do that?

It's not hard to find boredom.

You can make yourself bored very easily.

Finding boredom is not the hard part.

It's motivating ourselves to create boredom and then not succumbing to the addiction to

all these things when we are in a moment of boredom.

Not just being like, oh, fuck, fuck this.

I'm just going to, like, what's so wrong about playing a podcast right now?

I'm on this hike and I want to listen to a podcast, like, what's wrong with that?

It's like there is nothing wrong with that necessarily.

But I don't know.

I think that there's a balance that we're not striking.

It's almost like for a lot of us, we have to almost manufacture boredom nowadays, which

feels so unusual because I feel like in the past, it was always like people would tell

their kids, oh, go make yourself busy.

Go figure something out.

Go figure out how to entertain yourself.

And kids would have to go get creative to entertain themselves.

Whereas now it's like we all have to manufacture that boredom again because we don't have enough

of it and we need a little bit of it at least.

I don't know.

It just feels so backwards and unnatural.

It feels weird and forced to do that.

And it feels kind of silly.

But for me personally, I feel like I need to do this.

I know I need to do this more because I am constantly overstimulating myself because

it's just the easier route in life.

And I know that it's not good for me in any way.

It's not good for my creativity.

It's not good for my growth in life.

It's not good for reflecting on things.

It's just not good for my overall soul in a way.

But it's so much easier.

It's so much easier to just let myself indulge in all of it.

It takes a lot of discipline.

And I go through phases, like you've heard me talk about this topic before, maybe in

a slightly different way.

But I've talked about being addicted to social media.

And then I've talked about how, you know what, I think I kicked it.

I think I kicked it.

I think I figured it out.

Maybe I picked up this hobby or I started doing this and this really helped.

I've only ever found temporary solutions for this problem.

I've never found a permanent solution for this problem.

And maybe there is none.

But I would say right now in this current moment, I'm back in a period where I am just

constantly listening to YouTube videos or podcasts.

You know, I go on Instagram reels all the time.

I go on YouTube shorts all the time.

I waste so much fucking time on those because I don't have TikTok.

So I'm not addicted to TikTok per se, but I might as well be because I'm addicted to

all the weirder forms of TikTok, aka Instagram reels and aka YouTube shorts.

I would say actually Instagram reels are not weird, but YouTube shorts are obviously weird

and everybody talks about how weird they are.

However, I've found that their algorithm is actually very addicting once they understand

what you like.

And it's just as potent as like, if not even more potent sometimes than Instagram reels.

I'm so addicted to YouTube shorts and they have me down so good right now.

And I get actually positive content.

I get a lot of food reviews and stuff, which is fun because I'm always like, oh, maybe

I'll go try that restaurant.

Of course I won't.

I don't know the next time I'm going to be visiting Singapore and remember to go to this

one restaurant that this person visited.

The likelihood is very low.

You know what I'm saying?

Or I don't know the next time I'm going to be in Mexico City and remember this exact

bakery that this person went to.

However, it's very entertaining and I'd like to think that I would go there one day.

I also get a lot of videos of people on van life, doing van life, okay, living in a van.

And I know I'm 10 years late to that sort of trend, watching content about that.

Doesn't matter.

It's just as fun to watch now as it was 10 years ago, okay?

I'm very addicted to YouTube shorts.

I'm also very addicted to Instagram reels, whatever.

I get very funny stuff on Instagram reels.

I'm laughing up a storm over here.

I'm sending Instagram reels to everybody and they're like, Emma, this is so annoying.

This would be less weird if you just had TikTok and it's all good.

I've resorted to just sending reels to people who appreciate them and also don't have TikTok,

such as my parents, because they love it and they get it.

This is all a pointless tangent.

I'm in a phase again where I'm very addicted to all of these things, food delivery, social

media and the internet as a whole, constantly having noise going on, constantly having a

podcast or YouTube video playing.

There's constant noise.

I'm back in that place.

I think the reason why it happened was because in phases where I'm maybe working harder or

working more, that tends to give me an excuse.

I'm like, well, I've been so busy working on all these things that when I have like

an hour off, I just want to fucking rot my brain.

That just feels good.

And it's like, yeah, but when is the time?

When do I get...

Then I'm never going to get that moment of silence, that moment of boredom.

I'm not getting that at all.

I can't tell you the last time I was bored because anytime I would be bored, I just drown

it out.

I'm very much in that phase again.

I'm frustrated.

I'm fucking frustrated because it's like, I can't tell you how many times I've cycled

through.

Like, okay, I get to a point where I'm so overstimulated that it's like actually starting

to make me lose connection with myself.

I don't feel connected with myself.

I don't feel connected with my life.

I don't feel connected with the world around me.

I'm not looking inward enough.

I don't feel connected.

And it starts to make me feel like shit.

Slowly but surely, it leads me to a sort of a dark place.

It can make my anxiety worse.

It can make my depression worse.

It can make these things, I think particularly in this phase of my life, my anxiety worse

because I'm not in a depressive phase necessarily.

But yeah, it can make me start to feel like shit and it can make various mental health

challenges even worse.

And I'm reaching that point now again where I'm just feeling down in the dumps a little

bit and I'm like, I can't keep coming back here.

I don't want to keep ending up here.

You know, I want to get into a routine that's so solid that I don't end up back here.

It takes so much discipline though that it's so fucking tough.

And I honestly think the best way to kickstart it in past experiences is doing somewhat of

a dopamine detox, okay?

About a year ago actually, I tried my first dopamine detox, which is basically when you

abstain from addictive things such as social media, gaming, food delivery, alcohol, shopping,

watching TV, listening to podcasts.

Basically anything that would over-stimulate you, anything that makes your life too easy,

uh-uh, not happening.

So I did the dopamine detox and I actually, from what I can remember, found a lot of value

in it.

I think it was really challenging because it was uncomfortable a lot and I was bored

a lot and I realized how much time I waste entertaining myself with pointless shit.

And it was sort of an uncomfortable realization, I remember, like I felt a lot of shame I think

about how much time I was wasting doing all this pointless shit when I could have been

doing something else.

But I remember it being pretty profound and I think I did it for a week or two, I don't

remember.

And I remember feeling really good during it.

I remember feeling much clearer in the head and I actually, if I close my eyes now, can

remember the calmness that I felt towards the end of the detox.

Like I felt amazing.

And in the past, the dopamine detox was a very trendy sort of movement, like everyone

was doing it.

It was like, we're all, you know, so over-stimulated, we need to do a dopamine detox and it was

very trendy and a lot of people were trying it and I think that that was great.

The problem is it fell out of favor because the name of it is scientifically inaccurate.

You technically can't detox your body from the chemical dopamine that your body releases.

You can't cleanse your body of dopamine.

You're always releasing dopamine.

So it's scientifically inaccurate.

And I also think, too, there are some people saying that it doesn't technically work the

way that people explain that it does.

People say, okay, a dopamine detox is you remove all of these things that produce the

chemical of dopamine so that you can start releasing more dopamine when you do less

exciting things.

Like that's sort of the idea.

Like we get all these easy hits of dopamine all the time from social media and food delivery

and shopping and video gaming and we get too much dopamine all the time from all these

things.

So to strip it all away forces us to find little hits of dopamine in things that are

more impactful in our daily lives.

And then soon we'll be able to release more dopamine from those things.

Basically, there's a whole lot of like science debate on how it actually works inside of

the brain and body.

And it was sort of proven that the name of it was kind of bullshit and the whole concept

and what people were selling when it came to the dopamine detox that it was sort of

bullshit.

It turned it into somewhat of a fad and made it disappear out of the zeitgeist.

Like you don't really see people talking about the dopamine detox anymore as much as they

once were, which I actually think is a shame because I don't think that there should be

something that's a fad.

I understand that the science is kind of spotty.

I'm not a fan of that either.

But I think it should be repackaged into something new where the science is backed up that people

can revisit whenever they feel like they need it.

Because I think in theory, it's actually a really beneficial thing.

That just reminded me of there was another flaw with the dopamine detox where it was

at times considered to be too extreme.

The rules vary depending on what website you went on or whatever.

But with some, it was like no reading books, no listening to music, certain things that

are arguably like not that big of a distraction.

You know what I mean?

Music, I guess, is sort of...

That's maybe a more controversial one with this.

Some would argue like music is distracting.

It's better to have complete silence if you're doing a full detox.

I could see value in that because music can sometimes prevent you from reflecting and

stuff and being fully bored.

But I don't know.

That one's kind of debatable.

Or like saying that you're not allowed to eat any sugar, you're not allowed to eat out

at any restaurants.

It's like, okay, if you want to do a dopamine detox, quote-unquote, for three weeks, the

rules need to be a bit more realistic.

What if you want to go out and eat with friends and what if they order cake and like, yeah,

you can have some of the cake.

It just feels too extreme to be realistic, I think, for some people, which I think is

also a flaw with it.

So there's scientific flaws and then there's also flaws with how extreme the rules can

be.

I think, I don't know.

I think it's something that should be revisited though because I think that there is value

to it regardless of the incorrect science and regardless of the optional extreme rules.

According to Harvard's website, they describe the concept of the dopamine detox as something

that helps you to, instead of automatically responding to these reward-inducing cues like

text messages or Instagram notifications or TikTok notifications, blah, blah, blah,

which provide us with an immediate but short-lived charge, we ought to allow our brains to take

breaks and reset from this potentially addictive bombardment.

The idea is that by allowing ourselves to feel lonely or bored or to find pleasure in

doing simpler and more natural activities, we will regain control of our lives and be

better able to address compulsive behaviors that may be interfering with our happiness.

Based on my experience with doing it a year ago, that was kind of true.

That was genuinely what happened to me.

So here's the thing.

Like the dopamine detox, I wish that it had a different name because that name has absolutely

no respect on it, but I want to do it again and I think I'm going to.

But I think I want to do it for longer, I'm thinking, and I think I want to change the

rules to fit my life better, but I think I'm going to do it again.

And the reason for that is because I know that I need it.

And I think by doing a longer but less strict version of it, I'll learn more about what's