Bored and Brilliant

That’s from Chapter 1 in which Manoush walks us through the history of boredom while establishing the fact that a) it’s pretty much always been there and b) it serves a valuable evolutionary purpose and c) it activates a “neural network in the brain called the default mode” (that some scientists call “the imagination network”) (think: taking a shower, going for a walk, petting your poochie, etc.) thru which some of our best ideas appear.

First: How awesome is that J.R.R. Tolkien story? That’s one way to stumble into your Life’s Work, eh? (Side note: Emerson and I have already hammered through all seven Harry Potter books and we’re working on The Chronicles of Narnia now. Can’t wait for The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings series!! :)

Then we have Steve Jobs. Loved boredom. And, of course, he led the charge in creating the technology that has simultaneously created infinite opportunities for awesome AND infinite opportunities for distraction.

Manoush shares the same stories we feature in our Notes on Irresistible. Did you know Jobs (and a TON of other tech executives) don’t let their kids use the technology they created? Yep.

Adam Alter’s wisdom (in Irresistible) is worth reviewing: “It seemed as if the people producing tech products were following the cardinal rule of drug dealing: never get high on your own supply. This is unsettling. Why are the world’s greatest public technocrats also its greatest private technophobes? Can you imagine the outcry if religious leaders refused to let their children practice religion?”

Manoush quotes another guy who says that the only people who refer to their customers as “users” are drug dealers and… technologists.

Kinda makes you scratch your head and say, “Hmmmm…”

In any case, we’re going to want to Optimize our relationship with technology so we can pull our eyes and minds off the screen long enough to decompress and let our minds wander!

More on how to do that in a moment. First, let’s look at various forms of mind-wandering…

Daydreaming.

Did you know there are a few different ways to do it? Yep.

Professor Jerome Singer has been studying the subject for FIFTY years! (Wow. Need to get his book on Daydreaming.) He tells us there are three primary styles of daydreaming.

Here’s the super-quick look.

First, you might just have “poor attention control”—and have a difficult time focusing on *anything* (including your daydreaming!). That’s obviously not ideal. Ideally, we’d be able to focus our attention at will and then let it go at will.

Then we have “guilty-dysphoric.” When mind-wandering is “dysphoric,” our thoughts drift to some negative places that aren’t positive or productive. Perhaps we ruminate on things and drive ourselves a little nutty in the process. Again, sub-optimal. We want to notice this and spit our cuds as per this +1.

And, finally, we have “positive-constructive” daydreaming. THIS, of course, is where we want to spend our time.

As Manoush says: “The flip side of dysphoric daydreaming, the positive-constructive kind, is when our thoughts veer toward the imaginative. We get excited about the possibilities that our brain can conjure up seemingly out of nowhere, like magic. This mode of mind-wandering reflects our internal drive to explore ideas and feelings, make plans, and problem solve.”

<- THAT’s the healthy default mode. We integrate our sense of who we are, do what researchers call “autobiographical planning” (aka think about our future selves in relation to where we are and have been) and digest all the interpersonal and moral challenges we face all day every day.

Guess what?

If you don’t give yourself time to just space out and do that integration you’ll get all wound up and stressed out and emotionally exhausted.

That’s the 1, 2, 3 of daydreaming.

Quick check in before we go to the first challenge to actually create a little more space to space out: How do YOU spend your daydreaming time?

Now we’re ready for the first challenge…

Welcome to Challenge #1: Observe Yourself!

Several things come to mind. First, Peter Drucker. His first rule of time management in The Effective Executive? Observe yourself! Specifically: Know where your time is currently going.

Then there’s Darren Hardy in The Compound Effect. He tells us: “Right this moment: Pick an area of your life where you most want to be successful. Do you want more money in the bank? A trimmer waistline? The strength to compete in an Iron Man event? A better relationship with your spouse or kids? Picture where you are in that area, right now. Now picture where you want to be: richer, thinner, happier, you name it. The first step toward change is awareness. If you want to get from where you are to where you want to be, you have to start by becoming aware of the choices that lead you away from your desired destination. Become very conscious of every choice you make today so you can begin to make smarter choices moving forward.”

Same thing with your tech usage. We’ve gotta start by tracking how we’re currently doing. Don’t even try to change—just observe and track.

And… Good news: Psychologists have actually noticed that behavior tends to change the moment you start observing it. They call it the Hawthorne effect. (We talked about it in the context of an experiment in which randomly assigned people who had a pedometer walked a mile (!) more per day than those who don’t.)

For now, if you’re feeling it, start observing yourself! Easy ways Manoush recommends: Download the Moment app (for Apple users) or the Break-Free app (for Android users).

Here’s a super-quick look at the 7 Challenges (cruise on over here for the podcasts on each!)

1. CHALLENGE ONE: Observe Yourself. Yep. Just discussed!
2. CHALLENGE TWO: Keep Your Devices out of Reach While in Motion. Manoush is all about baby steps. This challenge is simple: Are you moving? Keep your phone out of your hand/pocket!
3. CHALLENGE THREE: Photo-Free Day. Just like it sounds. Quit snapping pictures of every single thing in your day. There’s fascinating research that all that picture-taking *diminishes* your memories while, of course, taking you out of the moment so…
4. CHALLENGE: FOUR: Delete That App. What’s the #1 app you’re most addicted to? Yah. THAT one. Delete it. That (gulp!) is today’s challenge. Need some motivation? Get this: If you spend 25 minutes a day on something that adds up to TWO YEARS (!!) of your life.
5. CHALLENGE: FIVE: Take a Fakecation. Idea: Create an autoresponder that says you’ll be out of email for x period of time—even if it’s just a matter of hours so you can go deep and avoid all the “microintrusion” papercutting your productivity w/out feeling bad!
6. CHALLENGE SIX: Observe Something Else. Slow down for a moment (or three) today and just OBSERVE what’s happening. What do you see?
7. CHALLENGE SEVEN: The Bored and Brilliant Challenge. This is a fun one where you identify an area in your life in which you currently feel confused. Then you carve out 30 minutes of quiet time, deliberately make yourself bored (by watching a pot of water boil or writing 0, 1, 0, 1 over and over again for a whole page) THEN put your mind to solving the problem you identified.

Note: Manoush tells us that the most people though keeping their phones out of sight was the most useful thing they practiced in the challenge. Remember The iPhone Effect? It’s real.

It’s impossible to talk about being bored and brilliant without talking about doing deep work.

In fact, Manoush has an entire chapter on it called “Doing the Deep Work.”

As you probably know by this stage, I love Cal. One of the great joys of my work has been connecting with over 100 of the authors I’ve profiled. But, I’m biased. Cal is my favorite and I feel blessed to consider Cal a dear friend these days. I feel like a kid playing ping-pong as we bounce strategic and philosophical ideas back and forth in our always-intense and equally inspiring chats.

But that’s not the point of this Idea. Deep Work is.

So… If you haven’t read the Note AND the book yet, please do. It’s life-changingly epic. Seriously. I rarely ask you to trust me but trust me on this one.

Now for a recap of “The Deep Work Hypothesis: The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

And, here’s the full definition again: “Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

Deep work is necessary to wring every last drop of value out of your current intellectual capacity. We now know from decades of research in both psychology and neuroscience that the state of mental strain that accompanies deep work is also necessary to improve your abilities.”

And, this is always worth reminding ourselves if we’re committed to doing superhero-style work: “Deep work is so important that we might consider it, to use the phrasing of business writer Eric Barker, ‘the superpower of the 21st century.’”

And, finally, do you recall “The Four Rules of Deep Work”? (Neither did I.) Here they are:

• Rule #1: Work Deeply (Check! We covered that.)
• Rule #2: Embrace Boredom (Aha! Embrace boredom!! In other words, don’t reach for your phone whenever you have a spare 3 seconds. Embrace. That. Boredom!! But only if you want to go deep and be superhero-brilliant.)
• Rule #3: Quit Social Media Rule (You seen Cal’s Ted Talk on Why you should quit social media yet? Pure genius.)
• Rule #4: Drain the Shallows (aka Quit wasting your time on stupid stuff. Check out our Notes on The Shallows for more.)

Our new cheer (sing it with me as I wave some pom poms!):

“1. 2. 3. 4. Let’s get bored and gooooooo Deep!”

Ultimately, changing behavior comes down to motivation. We’ve gotta Make the CONNECTION between our most important goals and the time we’re wasting with stupid stuff.

How about we take a moment to reflect on McKeown’s simple three step process?

• Step 1. What’s essential for you? (Create the space to figure that out.)
• Step 2. Eliminate all the stuff that’s NOT essential. (That’s a lot of free time.)
• Step 3. Invest all that bonus time in what matters. (Optimize your meaning and mojo!)

Want to be brilliant? Be willing to bored.

What’s one little thing you can do to flip on your brain’s super-powerful “default mode” imagination engine?

Here’s to your epic brilliance, my friend!