Does being bored make us more creative? (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Does being bored make us more creative? (2014)

fermatslibrary.com

113 pointsmgdo44 comments

I feel like I experience two types of boredom. Regular boredom, which can foster creativity through daydreaming and finding new projects to work on, and what I usually call ennui, which is the type of boredom where I'm quite bored, but everything sounds terrible and I don't want to do anything. Ennui is not productive at all, and I hate it.

Yes, what you call ennui is really really bad. I'd love to find a reliable way to get out of it. But maybe it's just part of a natural human recreational cycle and needs to be an element of our lives.

I know it's a cliche but forcing yourself to exercise when I feel that helps me. It distracts me from that feeling and afterwards I find if I'm "bored" it is much more likely to be the first type OP mentioned because I figured I did something productive (the exercise) so I don't beat myself up.

Of course forcing yourself to do that can be a very big challenge. Just don't wait for when you "want" to do it, cause that won't happen.

"Movement is life."

ennui sounds like depression to me? How is it different?

It's once in a while rather than chronic.

I have depression, but it's currently fairly well controlled with medication.

This ennui is not all the time, but occasional, and usually only for a period of a few hours.

Depression is a different feeling to me. Depression is more feeling incapable of doing anything, where ennui feels more like I could do something, I desperately want to be doing something, but nothing sounds enjoyable. I don't feel bored when my depression is bad, because I'm incapable of even feeling boredom.

Edit: I was also very recently diagnosed with ADHD, and am not being treated yet (dr appt in a few days!). It's possible maybe that my ennui is actually a combination of mild depression and the ADHD inability to focus? It will be interesting to see if I feel it less frequently once my ADHD is being properly treated.

You can tell people that the cure for ennui doesn't involve mind-altering drugs (just exercise, diet, social/community involvement) without being sneered at. That's the difference.

To be clear, you can tell people that those things help clinical depression as well, without being sneered at. And for some people that is enough (over time, particularly as clinical depression is often a symptom of other things and not a condition on its own).

The only reason they'd sneer at you is your "just" part. There's no "just" with a mental state that can leave people unable to even will themselves out of bed for days at a time (at my worst I could at least do that, but couldn't get out of the apartment without using up most of my mental and emotional strength). There are points where medication (mind-altering drugs) can be essential for people, and for others it may be something they need forever.

Why? Because there are different causes. Mine is a consequence of anxiety, addressing that essentially eliminated my depression. For others, their anxiety is worse than mine and rather than medication for depression they need medication for anxiety, and not just coping techniques. For other people, the depression is a condition on its own, with no or no apparent causal factors. Others, it may be a consequence of physical health (lack of sunlight, exercise, poor diet) and so those precise things can eliminate or significantly reduce their experience of depression.

It's all going to be case-by-case, and so there is no "just".

I feel as though ennui/depression is often symptomatic of loneliness, health and lacking in sunshine, that sort of thing. Speaking for myself of course. I've had it follow me a long time, but for all my problems now, depression doesn't rank among them. I still get bored, but don't hate myself for it.

That's putting boredom on a bipolar scale -- "manic" euphoric boredom, and "depressive" dysphoric boredom.

Boredom w/ and w/o motivation. I feel the same.

I am not a native English speaker, and it's the first time I see the world "ennui" (pronounced "An-we").

You have associated it with boredom, and you made me instantly realized that "ennui" is surely related to the Italian (my mother tongue) word "annoiato". Quick google search, and in fact it comes from the French equivalent of annoiato.

This means that when I translate "bored" with "annoiato", I am actually doing a (super common) mistake.

It's super interesting how words between languages have slightly different meanings, but sometimes these meanings are altered without us realizing it.

John Cleese has a talk on this that's one of my favorite and most actionable for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g

I go back to it over and over to remind me how to get into a state to be creative.

This was a fantastic talk, thanks for linking! One interesting takeaway: As you play create random juxtaposition of ideas and see if anyone makes sense. It's good that some of these are crazy. He talks about the concept of "intermediate impossibles" (related post: https://medium.com/front-line-interaction-design/intermediat... shake your mind loose and arrive at the actual solution. I found this idea similar to Zen koans.

I read something a long time ago that argued that highly creative people aren't creative because they have better ideas, but they have more ideas than their peers of similar intelligence, and then they sift through those ideas to pick out the gems. (Of course it then requires a lot of work ethic and skills to generate quality inspiration and to covert those ideas into valuable creations).

Creativity correlates with openness to experience. Openness to experience means you're more likely to play with a new experience or idea in an open way - and perhaps generate new ideas from it - than to dismiss it out of hand because you find it boring and/or anxiety provoking.

https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/the-number...

You don't need a work ethic to be creative. IME creative people have to be creative. It's not a choice.

You need a work ethic to turn creativity into value - which is a different problem, where you have to balance creative output with critical evaluation and conscious persistent development of relevant skills. (In addition to all the usual biz dev stuff.)

That sounds like DeBono PO method: http://www.debonogroup.com/podisruption.php

thanks for the link. Wasn't sure about it at first, but pretty good talk. Most of it seems somewhat obvious, but not often considered. Thanks!

I tend to use "bored states" to do all my planning tasks. In "deep work" or even deep work-adjacent states I am usually too focused on a problem to go back and find things that should be getting done, or to consider the more systemic roadblocks, or to wonder what is going on with other teams or new technologies. I am glad for the moments where I am not in a meeting or doing deep work, in a way, because they give space to ponder what should come next.

That said, the study is pretty flawed, because it asked individuals to self-select at two points (whether they found the task boring, and whether they daydreamed during it). I can find plenty of boring tasks I would daydream while doing over the course of an 8h workday, but finding a time-limited 15min task with zero difficulty so boring that you are daydreaming during it seems to me indicative of some kind of attention issue. I worry that it may be selecting for a personality type that is already more creative, because participants in the control conditions were not asked how often they daydreamed, and participants in the boredom condition were not tested on creativity before the boredom test.

I used to think this. Then I was bored for so long that I got used to it, and found no creative thoughts flowing out of me anymore. It's a balance, unfortunately. I sometimes think that having a procrastinating undercurrent is almost a necessary requirement for creativity juice to start flowing (or maybe that's just the environment I've been creative in for so long that it's what I'm habituated to).

Momentary boredom (for me) seems vital to creativity.

It took me a couple of years to map out the correlation, but having a smartphone seems to dramatically reduce the number of ideas I have.

I go for a walk, wait in line, sit in the train, and am consumed by a horrible feeling of impatient boredom.

The phone alleviates that.

What I realized is that feeling only lasts about 90 seconds and then I start having all sorts of inspired thoughts. The problem is I will use the device to solve the boredom before the creativity circuit engages.

interesting point, thanks

You've inspired me to try it.

Next time I'm waiting for a train, I'm just going to stand there and see what happens.

I have a theory that boredom, and specifically long-term boredom, is a resource that gets depleted by being continuously busy. The day-to-day grind of a job can be conducive for productivity, but it can really limit creativity. To date, I think the most creative times in my life have been the long summer breaks off from school. To be sure, a lot of that time got wasted on Diablo 2, but it was also the time when I developed the programming chops that lead me to my current career.

I think it's understandable to look at this and think "what value does this have?", and yet we don't take into the account the costs (especially creatively) of constantly being busy. I think there would be a lot of benefits, certainly for individuals and possibly for companies, by developing some sort of a structured sabbatical program to give people space for alternate pursuits.

Was your time on Diablo 2 really wasted if you developed good programming chops in that period? Maybe the enjoyable breaks are what help us learn.

I had a similar experience -- programming didn't really click for me in school until I went home for Christmas break and figured it out on my own. I was certainly playing video games then too :)

Gaming can be a useful appetizer for young folks looking to get into programming. Starcraft wasn't a waste for me. Granted, learning tons of specific build orders doesn't help now. However, Starcraft taught me to touch-type, it taught me finger-speed, and taught me some of the basics of programming when I created some custom maps with internal logic and triggers. Another friend was a map-hacker on WC3 dota, used to play Riki (permanently invis char) and use map hacks. He started coding for that purpose, for hacks and bots in WC3.

There's a relationship between boredom and motivation that's critical -- in my experience, bored && unmotivated == time-wasting activities (mindlessly surfing the internet, video games, etc).

Yet there's a kind of boredom that's relaxing, when you have a lot of work piled up but you've done enough for the day. In the words of Jerome K. Jerome, "It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do."

I want to offer a counterpoint: it’s restrictions that make us more creative. There’s a reason why all of our most famous and ancient writers use some kind of line metric.

Being bored forces you to work within your restrictions to have fun. Just observe your toddler with a “dumb” toy versus and iPad.

To me it is much more about having a clear mind and not feeling stressed out. In that situation I have room for more things and I am easily motivated to work on something new, just anything I feel like.

When I am bored, I just watch a bit of TV or reload that same webpage continuously.

For me its a combination of boredom and laziness. I'm always looking for ways to do things easier, and it's when I'm driving long distances that the ideas come to me.

wow, we base this conclusion on the result of a supposedly creative task after a boring activity? im gonna assume the boring activity was actually boring because those are easy to create but you most certainly cannot define what is creative for these people.

Aside from this study, I would say boredom is not good for creativity. and for an individual who is not bored, as long as he can relax, I believe he can boost the right amounts of creativity.

Restrictions boost creativity.

Being bored makes us open HN and read articles about being bored…

The cycle:

“I’m bored” > open HN > scroll > “I’ve read most of these articles/comments” > close HN > ~3 minutes pass > “I’m bored” > open HN... repeat.

Let’s see what’s under “new”...nevermind.

Even worse: "I'm overwhelmed by what I am working on > open HN > scroll > find new technology promising to reduce said overwhelm > start researching said tech > apply new tech to previous overwhelming problem, but get stuck due to lack of familiarity > go back to old tech

nobody including me on this thread has read this article, welcome to HN.

Amen

No the article looks boring

But there was a link posted in the comments to a great John Cleese talk.

Seen that talk before :) really is a great talk too!

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