Embracing boredom
Winkletter • 16 Mar 2025 •
This week my internet service went down. Now that it’s back up, my Chromebook died. The world is telling me it’s time for us to reconnect. I had a fantastic evening though, I was watching a movie from the 80s, a time before the internet when parents were just worried about TV rotting our brains, and the nostalgia pulled me into a good headspace.
I’ve decided for my Season of Growth to embrace boredom as the basis for creative work. What can you do when you get bored? Either change your mind or change the world. These days, though, we change the world by changing the channel. We stick screens between our heads and reality. It’s fine to do this once in a while, but in the past decade I’ve become far too addicted to this easy solution.
“An inability to cope with boredom kills more successes than any kind of competition.”
Alex Hillman, The Tiny MBA
Real work gets done when we don’t have easier options. Unfortunately, I’ve built too many associations that lead straight back to the internet. Almost every thought I have pulls me back into its gravity well. Today I put my router on a timer so I will get to sleep at a reasonable hour and have a creative morning free of the internet.
If I have anything I want to do online, I write a note and take care of it later when I switch on my PC. This is the plan for the next 90 days, and possibly longer.
Comments
I have a plan for my creative goals:
- Morning writing sessions, revision in the afternoon, and evening planning
- Skill building exercises and study sessions
- Weekly publishing goals including work on a longer story
For my personal goals, I’m letting that be looser. I’m just working towards something I’m calling “unconditional living” which is essentially enlightenment, but less as a destination and more like something I work on each day.
Do you have a sense of what your day-to-day life during the Season of Growth looks like or are you still fleshing it out?