BOREDOM: WINNING THE BATTLE, LOSING THE WAR

I make my living being creative and have always assumed that my potential was inherited from my parents. But for allowing my creativity to flourish, I have to credit the soul-crushing boredom of my childhood. ~ Scott Adams

Part of why my kids are both so creative is that:

• I was never big on buying toys and games, but I could never resist buying books and "supplies", such as tablets and notebooks, paints and clay, crayons and butcher paper.  
• We always had a big box of dress up stuff.
• Most importantly, they started school in Indonesia -- a place where there was very little on TV, and which had no team sports, no arcades or roller rinks, no movie theatres or malls, and no McDonalds or Chucky Cheese.  In other words, they had lots of time to get good and bored, which forced them to come up with their own ways of entertaining themselves.

Oh yeah, and one other thing.  Their mom was kinda lazy, and absolutely refused to spend every minute of every day chauffeuring them from one "enrichment" activity to another.  I have always believed that kids need time to just hang, and knowing how well they had done in Indonesia gave me the courage to stand up to the onslaught of pressure when we returned to the states.  I thought I must be the only one in the world who believed in the powers of boredom, until I stumbled across the blog of Scott Adams the other day, author of the ever-popular comic strip Dilbert.

In it he says we have won the war against boredom.  What with our i-phones, i-pods, kindles, laptops,  car TVs, and what have you, we need never waste another moment of downtime, where our minds have nothing to do but wander.  But wait!  Could there be a downside to this?  Well yes, there could.  It seems many experts feel that our brains need boredom in order to process thoughts and be creative.  I don't know about you, but all of my very best ideas have come to me on long, solitary road trips or walks, or just sittin' by my lonesome, when I was bored, bored, bored!

So, what would happen if everyone in the world were to stop being bored?  Here are a few of Mr. Adams' postulations:

People acting more dogmatic than usual? (If you don't have time to think for yourself, and think creatively, the easiest opinion to adopt is the default position of your political party, religion, or culture.) Check.

More movies that seem derivative or based on sequels? Check.

More reality shows and fewer scripted shows? Check.

Bestseller lists dominated by fiction "factories" where ghost writers churn out work under the brand of someone famous? Check.

The economy flatlines for lack of industry-changing innovation? Check.

News headlines start to repeat, like the movie Groundhog Day, with nothing but the names changed? Check.

Bloggers are spending most of their energy writing about other bloggers? Check.

People seem almost incapable of even understanding new ideas? Check.


Uh-oh.