Day #12: Overcoming the addiction to busyness: The Art of Not having to fill every moment of your attention.

Bathe Yourself in Boredom.

The person who focuses on fewer things goes further than the person distracted by many.

— Shane Parrish

1 Thing today:

Bathe Yourself in Boredom

Something I realised I was doing wrong in 2018, aside from peeling bananas, was filling every moment of time with doing something. Whether it was listening to a podcast when walking back from the gym, playing Angry Birds while on the subway, or having Netflix on in the background while I colour my comic strip, I never had a single moment of silence, much less boredom.

In an interview with Tim Herrera in The New York Times, Cal Newport revealed a tidbit from his book Digital Minimalism in which he says:

…“Embrace boredom.” The broader point here is that the ability to concentrate is a skill that you have to train if you expect to do it well. A simple way to get started training this ability is to frequently expose yourself to boredom. If you instead always whip out your phone and bathe yourself in novel stimuli at the slightest hint of boredom, your brain will build a Pavlovian connection between boredom and stimuli, which means that when it comes time to think deeply about something (a boring task, at least in the sense that it lacks moment-to-moment novelty), your brain won’t tolerate it.

Late in the year, I realised that 90% of my waking hours were spent with Bluetooth earbuds in, listening to podcasts, Instapaper articles or music and 10% was allowed for my brain to catch up on all of that information. The only time allowed to process it and make any sense of that enormous amount of input was during sleep — which, as you can imagine, was pretty restless.

I reinstated my daily practice of meditation which made a massive difference. It made me more mindful of my tendency to reach for my phone or fill some dead time with something.

Boredom is important.

It allows your mind to wander and make connections it mightn’t have had the opportunity to while you were listening to another episode of the Tim Ferris show.

Creativity requires quiet.

Part of the reason you get your best ideas in the shower is that you don’t have any other input — and your subconscious is on autopilot with something you’ve done routinely for decades — leaving you with the ability to make creative connections and come up with great ideas you might have missed out on having if you plugged up that time with further input.

Taking a walk?
Take out your earbuds. Just walk.

Taking a bath? (a #ScotchBath, I hope)
Don’t take a book. Just sit.

Taking a baby?
Put it back. Don’t take babies.

I now carve out entire blocks of time with nothing in them on purpose. It was an experiment I tried in 2018 and the results were astounding. The space I carved out yielded more creativity than anything I could have actively scheduled in those blocks of time.

I would implore anyone to try it and see what making time for nothing does for your mind, and your relationship to time.

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Homework:

1. Go through your calendar and block out chunks of time (60 or 90-minutes) as if they’re a meeting or a zoom call you’ve booked.

2. Protect that block. Hold it.

3. When it comes around: Don’t fill it with anything. Don’t look at your to-do list, or your calendar, just sit. Be. See how long you can last without your monkey mind wanting to tick something off a list.

Note: People with Kids, I know this one is nearly impossible, depending on how old they are. This one is best done when you know you have someone coming around to watch them: It’s so tempting to fill the rare block of time with ‘catching up on things’, but just allow yourself some of the time to sit and look at a wall. (Turn off your phone.)

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Baby steps. NO takes practice. Start small, and work your way up.

Tomorrow and Saturday, we’re going to look at working from a calendar instead of a To-Do List, JOMO and learning to sit with the idea of not having to fill every minute of your day.

Good luck,


- Jason