Scott Adams: The Heady Thrill of Having Nothing to Do

We have not won the war on boredom. At best we have won the war on idleness, which is only a lite version of it. If anything, these kill-time gadgets exacerbate the deep boredom problem, what Pessoa calls tedium:

Tedium is not the disease of being bored because there’s nothing to do, but the more serious disease of feeling that there’s nothing worth doing. This means that the more there is to do, the more tedium one will feel.

I can totally relate to this quote and attest to the ineffectiveness or even negative effect most tech toys have in alleviating my chronic diminished motivation and under-functioning reward system.

There was a comment on the site about this article being a "rip off" of Huxley (once again, wikipedia delivers in spades): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World#Comparisons_wit...

"Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism."

There's boredom, then there's freedom from distraction.

I'm free from distraction when walking the dog in the woods by myself. I'm bored when stuck in line at Meijer's behind the guy whose credit card expired yesterday. The latter is excruciating and exhausting.

But aside from that: Scott Adams has a weird way of mixing some decent insight, like his thesis here, with some really inane stuff that sounds like late-night college freshman bullshitting. I mean really: "You might see the best-seller lists dominated by fiction "factories" in which ghostwriters churn out familiar-feeling work under the brands of famous authors. Got it." Has he never heard of Charles Dickens? Probably not, actually. But those fiction factories have existed since books got cheap enough for the mass market.

Not saying he's wrong - I guess I'm saying he's got nobody in his life willing to shoot down his pretty arguments before they hit the Wall Street freaking Journal, and that's a little sad.

In Larry Niven's A World Out of Time (1976), a human mind is uploaded to a computer, and finds himself running an interstellar spacecraft. Since he has to be awake for centuries, he comes up with a trick. He writes a virus to erase all of his memories of boredom, so the next time he becomes bored and realizes he's experiencing a heretofore "new" emotion, he feels novelty. Then somehow, he learns of the trick and does it to himself again.

I guess that once we're uploaded, we could use something like this to "solve" the reddit and HN repost issue.

I went to see Ira Glass speak about creativity and storytelling. I was a beautifully crafted speech, and one rhetorical nugget I remember clearly was this:

"Ideas come from other ideas."

He argued that we cannot be creative in isolation, but that if we surround ourselves with high-quality ideas and stories, we are more likely to produce them ourselves. That is what he sees (and strives to create) in public radio.

There is some degree of truth to this, but it is balanced out by the fact that Internet gives you so many more ideas to combine. Creativity is essentially combining different ideas, and technology puts at your dispisal a constant stream of new ideas. You can follow in great depth the ones that tickle you.

The majority of people will always passively consume. That's nothing new; it's possibly a lot more visible now with a lot of content-free blogs/twitter/etc.

But for those so inclined, technology helps a lot. For one example, look at how many free programming languages are available for use now -- things that you can build billion dollar businesses on. It wasn't like that in 1985. And a pretty promiscuous combination of ideas that was required for this to come into being. Or just consider open source in general.

I think this is applicable:

"when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow exclude people. so create." -Why The Lucky Stiff

"My period of greatest creative output was during my corporate years, when every meeting felt like a play date with coma patients."

Love that line.

I agree with this. Creative bursts usually come at midnight when I force myself to switch everything off and go sleep or when I'm stuck on an aeroplane with nothing to do at all than sit and stare out of the window.

I however, won't miss staring at people while in line at chipotle. I also disagree with the sentiment that innovation itself is dead because of readily available distraction.

My experience with my kids is that boredom definitely breeds creativity. We don't allow unlimited TV or computer time and when they are forced to be "bored" a short burst of complaint is usually followed by creative play. When they complain they are bored they hear Grandma's maxim: "Only the boring get bored."

However, I think it's slightly different for adults. Creative play is not something we're good at. I often find myself picking up some menial chore around the house when I feel I have nothing to do instead of doing something creative.

My best inspirations of creativity usually come when I'm thrown into some new, unanticipated situation by some outside force. Let's say I go to the DMV and wait in line and strike up a conversation with the next unlucky customer - all of a sudden I learn something totally new and unexpected that causes me to try or do something I have never done before.

In that sense our electronic gadgets are awful because they allow us to get immersed in completely self-selected entertainment, reinforcing existing feedback channels. Maybe it would be better to be receive only one channel on your TV and be forced to sit through a rerun of a Lawrence Welk episode (preferably with a lot of Polka.)

It's very interesting to analyze the greek word for employment, working which is απασχόληση (apasholisi).

It comes from two words απα - σχόληση (apa-sholisi). The first part of the word απα (apa) is used when we want to give the opposite meaning so απασχόληση (apasxolisi) is the opposite or the lack of σχόληση (sholisi).

So that does this word means? It comes from the verb σχολάζω, sholazo which means study. For the greeks working was inferior to cultivating your mind, going to the gym or the theater. Studying for them was whatever had to do with the culture of the mind or the body. So employment or working prevented you from studying.

Aristotle has said: - "Ασχολούμεθα ίνα σχολάζομεν" (asholoumetha ina sholazomen) which means that we are working in order to be able to study. More or less he said that we work in order to have the means to improve our body, soul and mind and not just work to live.

That's what the Greek said. (not the modern ones of course :) )

I think a big aspect of creativity is finding new connections between things, applying a technique to a different domain, and combining ideas.

I think you need alternation, between stimulation and boredom. And the stimulation needs to have interesting ideas in it. Though, depending on the type of person you are, you won't find it novel (and therefore not stimulating) unless it does have new and interesting ideas in it.

But to be fair, I find my mind does tend to wander to creative problem solving if it's not occupied. i.e. boredom does help me. I think it might be that working out new ideas is hard work, and it's easier to be distracted.

I guess there is some truth to this. I usually have my best ideas while I'm jogging / walking. See, I've been jogging the same route (with minor variations) for almost 4 years now. Around 20 minutes after I started walking I can feel ideas pop up in my head. I've had some of my best ideas of the past years while jogging.

So that even helps combining two useful things for me: I process the happenings of the day, and I stay in form.

"To be fair, economics is to blame for some of the decrease in creativity. A movie studio can make more money with a sequel than a gamble on something creative."

More specifically people want to know that they will enjoy something so they buy a brand that they're familiar with, even if it is repetitive.

When there are so many people in this world in need of a friendly visit, or assistance in some way, shape or form, doing nothing is irresponsible.

Bottom line. HN pretty much qualifies for doing nothing. We should all abandon HN immediately and forever and get on with our lives.

I dare you.

My best hack around this is commuting instead of driving a car and doing something mindless like cleaning the house or laundry after being stumped by a problem. Its in these times that ideas & solutions get formed or destroyed.

There's a startup in this, somewhere.

Has anyone tried the YC startup http://www.rescuetime.com/? (I've been meaning to try it myself, but they want my credit card to begin.)

I'm not too sure I agree with the specific notion that availability of distraction destroys creativity. Here's my (off the top of my head) take on creativity:

Problems 1: You come up with an idea, and tell yourself, "that's a good idea, I should remember that!" and then you don't remember, or you tell yourself that you need to focus on fixing these bugs at work, or on whatever other task is at hand.

Problem 2: Your mental energy is sapped by whatever you're currently doing. It's like the classic Stephen King quote about how working simple manual labor (laundry) was fantastic for creativity and writing.

The solution to problem one is to always have a means of taking notes, one which you will definitely revisit. This frees you from wanting to focus off-task when you need to be on-task, and it allows you to revisit and refine your thoughts. Problem two is tougher. Find a job doing exactly what stimulates your creativity. Let's face it, though, that's not as easy as blogs and Dice make it out to be. The only advice I can give is to quit your job and do exactly what you feel like doing until you've found a problem you want to solve, but that's not a very constructive path.

I've found that by simply doing whatever I want each day, I'm exposed to way more interesting problems that I want to solve. I listen to things like podcast while performing tedious, manual labor (cycling, weight lifting, cleaning, wrenching, etc), and I feel like it's both easier to get the tasks done, and I'm left with a feeling of better variety of mental exposure. I'm currently experiencing a much more creative/inventive period in my life than I have in years.