alt Hacker NewsIt’s very difficult to intentionally find time to be bored. It’s sort of the opposite of an activity, and the brain hates it. One passable option is to take a 20 minute walk with no stimulus beyond the scenery. Journaling regularly. Meditation provides a similar experience but feels like a different lane.
For me I do find a similar experience to the OP. It’s easy to feel yourself going a little crazy getting sucked along the current of modern life. Flowing from one activity to the next, looking at one’s phone in the between, never any chance for an extended thought except when laying down for bed. If you don’t break out of this mode it’s easy to let weeks go by without noticing or taking much conscious impulse to shape your day.
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I go for 2-3 walks a day. Might be temperamental but I kind of go insane being in one place all the time.
When I was staying with a friend, he had a big house, and I'd constantly go downstairs to get coffee. I didn't even need the coffee, it was just a little change of scenery.
> It’s very difficult to intentionally find time to be bored.
I have headphones present constantly for the opposite reason. When doing tasks that fail to provide interest (housework, some work tasks) the external stimulus stops me distractedly finding something else (posting on HN for instance!) to do instead of completing the task. Also when running in town, though I don't need it when out on the trails as the scenery is more than enough to sooth my mind into a pleasant state.
I've found that swimming helps me to do that. When I walk, it's too easy to take my kindle and read but swimming, it's a relaxing and repetitive movement where I can only focus on thinking.
I don't think you need to find time to be bored, the times have always been there and we didn't search them out before. Just don't mask them with multitasking.
Waiting for a bus, waiting in line at a post office, waiting for your wife to get ready for bed. Those moments are still there and if you don't pull your phone out the boredom is still there
> It’s sort of the opposite of an activity, and the brain hates it.
While this is true, I'd word it differently:
It's sort of the opposite of an activity, and we've conditioned our brains to hate it.
Boredom used to be absolutely normal in our society for pretty much ever, and the urge to do something about it when it occurred was a lot weaker than it is now.
Go live in the country side, unplug internet and you'll find plenty of boring things to do, of coure if you live in the hellscape of modern cities that smell like shit, piss and car fumes, are noisy as fuck 24/7 and ugly as sin the only natural conclusion you can reach is that you need distraction all the time
The way I write my novels is by reviewing a chapter I'm stuck on and its context, then going on a long run, and 20 minutes out, shutting my music off. I have, at that point, at least 20 minutes, if not 60+, where I'm easily thinking about and brainstorming for the chapter. It's wonderful. It sort of "compresses" the ambient sounds in the same way eating pancakes with syrup temporarily destroys your ability to taste slightly less sweet things.
The journaling seems like the right direction, but it's still too passive.
If there are three mental modes, two out of three are passive. Let's call this third mode "creative mode". Instead of consuming or meditating, do something else offline that requires developing a skill with your undivided attention.
Even when you're inspired, the interpretation is still your own. There's no way it could ever feel like wasted time because the intrinsic value of experience is so much higher than the other two states.
With enough experience, your own unique ideas will dominate your mind. That's when you finally feel in control.
> It’s very difficult to intentionally find time to be bored.
Today as a software developer I think it's easier than ever. We're already past the "the compiler is building" excuse, but now you can just claim "The agent is thinking/working", and sit and do nothing.
You don't have to switch window/tab as the agent is working, you can just sit there and stare at what it is doing, marvel that this stuff works at all, and let your mind wander if it wants, until the terminal bell goes off.