Awhile back, I would come home, smoke a cigarette, and promptly enter a useless state for three to four hours (I wouldn’t smoke the entire day while I was at work so the nicotine hit hard). Then I quit smoking, and all of a sudden, I noticed that I would come home, work out, read, write, and do stuff. Now, I am not 100% sure what was causing this slump (99% sure it was cigarettes), but I am glad it is over. The weird thing, I have a decent amount of time that I apparently have to fill with activities (average cigarette takes five minutes to smoke, I would smoke ten to twenty in a day, so I am saving fifty minutes a day).
As a single person, I end up not having much to do since I rather not watch TV or listen to Podcasts at home. Now, I have ceased the Podcasts at home, because I saw my mind being swallowed by their sermon. So I took action, and by slimming down on these forms of entertainment, I was able to let my mind wander and just be.
Then, to take it a step further, I created forced boredom time. This is a period in time where I lay on the couch, listen to one entire instrumental album (jazz, classical music, flamenco, or something weird like my Reed Album), and just think. Part of the reason for this forced state of boredom was to transition from work mode to personal work mode (writing). The other aspect of this methodology was to help me form coherent and personal thoughts on topics. Often, we become a regurgitation engine where we consume a piece of media, digest it partially, then vomit the concept back into the world – rarely changing the initial idea. My forced boredom time was a structure framework to avoid this hive mind outcome.
Yet, in one of my boredom periods, I realized it is impossible to divorce my own ideas from the various entities that helped produce them. The difference was my ability to take an idea, fully digest it, and turn it into something else (in this analogy that would be a turd… but they aren’t all turds). By focusing on the content and really thinking about it, I was able to isolate the concept and really hammer on it to validate that it was sturdy. These led to tweaks, modifications, and justifications. By not just listening, I had allowed myself the necessary time to strengthen the idea against the outside world. It also helped me reject straw men arguments and other logical fallacies. And all of this due diligence was the outcome of 45 minutes of pure uninhibited time to think.
Also, it led to some great writing ideas that I will need to act on as soon as I finish up this current round of editing.
In the end, please take some time each day and just think. Take anything and just mull on it. Trust me, it helps… here’s your first topic: Forced Boredom.