[HN Gopher] He felt 'creatively dead', then harnessed the power ...
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He felt 'creatively dead', then harnessed the power of boredom
Author : mooreds
Score : 93 points
Date : 2023-12-17 22:05 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| mock-possum wrote:
| Could've used more details on how exactly that process worked,
| but - big Song Exploder fan.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Any long time with yourself will do: walking for days in the
| mountains, isolating youself in a cabin in the wood to write, a
| meditation retreat...
|
| It's hard to have your own thoughts when the entire world is
| constantly inputting its own in your psyche.
|
| After long periods of silence, you start emptying and the mind
| fills the void. Ideas come in.
|
| With practice, it will stop filling the void. But this isn't
| necessary if all you want is producing new ideas.
|
| Even being bored is not necessary, but we are so not used to
| less input that we easily get bored.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Road trips are my (not so) secret sauce to boredom and, as
| pointed out, ultimately my more creative ideas.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Same. I've had a lot of game design ideas while driving on
| the road.
|
| Doesn't work for me if I have music with lyrics on, though.
| Sometimes podcasts work, because something they say might
| spark an idea, but songs with lyrics don't work at all.
| petercooper wrote:
| _I started doing Song Exploder as a kind of distraction, you
| know, a little side hobby idea that could also be a way to
| hopefully give myself a day job in between tours and making
| records and things like that._
|
| It might even be the opposite of "boredom" but I think this is
| pretty common and a neat technique if you're feeling "blocked" in
| your pursuits: do something that pushes your buttons but still
| uses other aspects of your knowledge and skills, and you can find
| another way through.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| > I would set everything else aside. I wouldn't look at my
| emails. I wouldn't have any meetings. I wouldn't do anything for
| the podcast. Just music. It allowed some space for my brain to
| get bored.
|
| I feel creatively dead, but mostly only at work. Never have
| enough time/space to let things just settle down, it seems like.
|
| This might be why I still resist management stuff: I dislike
| accepting responsibility for the problems of the org because I
| know they will eat up more time and energy than any accompanying
| pay increase. And then I get resentful because I'm supposed to be
| the one holding things together.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Welcome to the rat race. Just wait until you get the
| responsibilities of a manager anyway without the pay increase!
| Might as well fight for that title...
| ravenstine wrote:
| Is it really so inevitable? I sure hope not. Unless I get a
| meaningful amount of real autonomy, I am not cut out for
| management. Fortunately, any vague promises I've ever been
| given for more managerial roles have not actually
| materialized. I want to say no if they ever do.
| tomca32 wrote:
| It's not, at least not from my experience, but you have to
| be vocal about what you want.
|
| I was offered a managerial position multiple times and
| declined it every time saying that it would be a loss for
| both myself and the company. I'm way more useful in an
| individual contributor role and a better way to leverage my
| experience would be to be a cross-team IC and help on the
| more demanding projects/initiatives.
|
| Eventually, after being vocal about it for a while and
| actively helping other teams with parts of the system they
| didn't have experience with, that's what I got. The bad
| part is that most challenging work often ends up in my lap.
| The good part is that most challenging work ends up in my
| lap.
| sarkhan wrote:
| Eeh, at some point, a nepotic Manager will move resources
| around in a way that an IC (should be manager) will be
| banging head on the railing with a question why am I not
| calling the shots.
| spydum wrote:
| and often thats when you know it's time to look for a new
| manager (inside or outside). Most folks with competency
| to solve hard problems have options
| Log_out_ wrote:
| A colleague of mine is stuck in this, tried to fight it all
| his life. Then they fired half the org and expected the
| survivors to self manage in the it ruins without the
| knowledge of the fired predecessors. And so he is in
| meetings every day as they manage the recovering. Hardly
| gets to code..
| ericmcer wrote:
| Work is what you make of it, you can definitely prove
| yourself to be competent and valuable while not becoming
| critical. Just be respected enough to get your yearly
| raise/bonus, survive layoffs and get future referrals and
| recommendations. Not super complicated really.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I thought I must have written that myself in some kind of fugue
| state. I'm in the same boat.
|
| What I find strange about it, is that I'm the opposite outside
| of work. Life life is just great, I'm improving at sports and
| learning new things in my side projects.
|
| But at work I feel like I've got writers block. Any progress is
| super hard earned.
| notnaut wrote:
| I'm jealous as hell. I can only improve when given a list of
| tasks and a carrot/stick. Tried for decades to figure out how
| to self impose and have not had luck yet!
| twodave wrote:
| My 2c--I went ahead and took the pay increase and added
| responsibility, then used it as an excuse to only do the most
| impactful thing possible at any given time. Leads to telling
| people "no" a lot, but also less stress.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Text only version of NPR? What is this goodness and why don't
| more sites have one?!
| flobosg wrote:
| Here's some lists of text-only websites:
|
| * https://sjmulder.nl/en/textonly.html
|
| * https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites/
| 1over137 wrote:
| also:
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/lite/
|
| https://lite.cnn.com/
| dmillar wrote:
| " _HIRWAY: ...Just music. It allowed some space for my brain to
| get bored. Another thing that I learned was how much boredom was,
| like, an essential part of creativity. Maybe boredom is too
| strong of a word for it, but it 's something like..._"
| mindfulness.
|
| I remember hearing Sam Harris (I think) say something to the
| effect of 'once you reach some stage/awareness of mindfulness,
| you can never be truly bored.' Like, if you're bored, you're not
| paying attention. That's stuck with me.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Meta: Why are there fads like this? Like do people not see this?
| Everyone's suddenly so interested in how great boredom is, before
| this it was some other crap, then something else. I don't have a
| point but I just find it mildly irritating for some reason. It
| does make sense to collectively research things and exchange
| ideas but at the same time there's something off about it when it
| comes to mass media, like it's lazy or something.
| Jensson wrote:
| We know A, B and C are useful. Media just likes to copy each
| other so when one writes that one of those are good others
| wants to write the same thing so you see:
|
| Media: A is the shit, everyone do A!
|
| Media few years later: B is best, B B B!
|
| Media even more later: C, never forget C!
| ravenstine wrote:
| I, too, find it incredibly obvious. Today's fads that are at
| all adjacent to self-help or productivity are usually doing
| either of the following:
|
| - Inverting an existing idea
|
| - Excessively applying mechanistic explanations to human
| problems (see Huberman and dopamine)
|
| To me it's really obvious, but I'm sure there's a constant
| supply of new buyers who don't know any better.
| an_ko wrote:
| Fads come in waves because it's easier and safer to do or
| discuss something when it's already on the mind of people
| around you.
|
| Perhaps the irritation comes from having seen enough media that
| you've started to see this meta-level pattern, which is stale
| and eternal.
|
| [Snarky overused The Matrix movie reference goes here.]
| Zambyte wrote:
| People have been interested in intentionally inducing boredom
| for literally hundreds of thousands of years (under the name
| "meditation"), so I think it is safe to say it is not a fad by
| now.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Counterpoint: That's a very superficial conception of
| meditation.
| akomtu wrote:
| Meditation is more about learning to focus attention on
| boring things and discovering that the effort itself is
| rewarding. It's a lame materialistic description, but it's
| much closer to the truth. Doing gym stuff is a good analogy:
| moving weights around and to their original position looks
| silly to an outsider, but that's because the outsiders try to
| judge with their minds what can only be understood thru
| direct experience.
| broscillator wrote:
| For how long have you practiced meditation?
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Herd mentality. We all have it to some extent, even when
| actively trying to suppress it (me for example). It made human
| society what it is, and most probably was a great survival
| advantage early on.
|
| Now it makes masses susceptible to populists, but wasn't it
| always the case? Just that masses before were even more
| meaningless and powerless without things like voting rights.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| +1 for suppressing herd mentality.
|
| If I find myself in agreement with a majority of people, I
| usually don't have a long distance to travel to work out
| where I've gone wrong.
| RankingMember wrote:
| "His business was 'approaching bankruptcy', until he harnessed
| the power of self-delusion"
| kgwxd wrote:
| Stumble on a well, pump it dry, keep on stumblin'
| markrages wrote:
| "Creativity is the residue of time wasted" -- dubiously
| attributed to Einstein
| bilsbie wrote:
| What's the actionable take away from this?
| bryancoxwell wrote:
| I don't believe it's the goal of Enlighten Me to produce
| actionable takeaways.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| On the subject of intimate conversation...
|
| > I think it means that you get to a place where you feel
| comfortable being vulnerable with someone else. It's sort of a
| shared environment that gets created between both people, where
| everyone involved in the conversation can say, yeah, I'm going to
| let down my guard. I'm going to reveal something true about
| myself
|
| This would be exceedingly difficult for me to do, especially with
| someone I just met. I pretty much don't do it with anyone, to be
| honest. Seems like there are only downsides, especially in the
| age of social media where someone says something that is is then
| quoted out of context and follows you forever. Also why I'm not
| on social media.
| thefaux wrote:
| There is tremendous upside to intimacy (which I admittedly
| struggle with too). By closing yourself off, you foreclose the
| possibility of deep relationships in which you are truly seem
| for the whole person you are. We are all deeply flawed and that
| is almost paradoxically what makes lovable. It is wise to
| protect yourself but the walks we build to protect ourselves
| become a prison.
| metadat wrote:
| Your comment really struck a chord with me. Wise words.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I never know when I have boredom vs dopamine starvation. Having
| lots of possible things to do but not finding them motivating.
| broscillator wrote:
| How would you distinguish them semantically?
| aschearer wrote:
| I recently stumbled upon "Artists Way a Spiritual Path to Higher
| Creativity" and really resonate with a practice it puts forward:
| "morning pages" and "artist dates." The exact nomenclature isn't
| important, but the idea of a "signal and response" pattern is, in
| my opinion, spot on. Like meditation, it's one of those things
| that sounds far fetched but that you can try for yourself -- and
| the results will speak for themselves.
| broscillator wrote:
| Dude I'm on week 5 of this book rn, the morning pages really
| are quite something.
|
| The artist dates were harder to incorporate at first but I
| think I got the hang of it.
| aschearer wrote:
| I was fortunate to stumble upon the practice by accident. I
| was journaling just because, and my two dogs ensure I have
| plenty of solitary walks through nature. It really is
| incredibly important to have that time, and to maintain a
| curious, open mind.
|
| Likely there are other ingredients. Some sort of catalyst may
| be needed for the process to get into gear. (Full disclosure,
| I'm still partway through the book so perhaps Ms. Cameron
| discloses them, but I stand by signal-response practice from
| direct experience.)
|
| To hazard a guess, I would say joy/wonder may that catalyst.
| Or rather, our sense of wonder will lead us to joy which
| triggers the necessary inner reaction.
|
| I'm curious to hear more about your experiences.
| akomtu wrote:
| Creativity rests on two pillars:
|
| 1. Not wasting your energy on irrelevant things, that is
| temperance. Everyone knows what those things are. It seems
| obvious that without this inner energy, you can't turn any of the
| creative ideas into reality. At most you'd be a passive observer
| of those ideas.
|
| 2. Not cluttering your mind with rubbish. This is poetically
| called the inner peace, and it's often confused with boredom.
| It's not necessary to retreat into a cabin in the mountains, as
| the inner peace comes from within. Once that state is reached,
| you can start seeing reflections of the stars in the sky - the
| higher ideas that inspire creativity.
|
| Creativity, in essense, is the need to express yourself. It's the
| reason behind the desire to live or any existence at all. Even
| savages are driven by this need, they just find different outlets
| for self expression. It's also what gives such power to the need
| for pro-creation.
| havan_agrawal wrote:
| I might be suffering from imposter syndrome, but I feel like I'm
| not the right audience for "taking advantage of boredom".
|
| I feel people who benefit from this "diffuse state" are those who
| already have a base level of competence in their field or
| challenging problems they're trying to solve, and so boredom
| gives their brain an opportunity to express creativity in that
| domain.
|
| For me, my brain is just "quiet" when bored. It doesn't come up
| with "novel ways to solve problem X", or "a brand new idea". When
| it is at all noisy, it is mostly regurgitation of thoughts I've
| already had before, replays of conversations from the past week,
| mundane things like that.
|
| Does anyone else feel this way, or is it just me?
| traviswingo wrote:
| I didn't have time to read the entire article, so forgive me if I
| blatantly state what it said.
|
| But, isn't "being bored" leading to enhanced productivity deeply
| rooted in neuroscience, particularly with regards to dopamine and
| the reward centers of the brain?
|
| Dopamine is incredibly powerful when understood properly. It can
| both be the reason you can't seem to start, and also the thing
| that allows you to accomplish your goals. Your brain uses
| dopamine to get you to do more stuff that's "good for you."
|
| The problem is, everything in our lives today is engineered to
| release dopamine, so we get "rewarded" for doing nothing.
|
| By being bored, you dilute yourself down to either doing nothing,
| or doing the thing you've been putting off. It doesn't take long
| before the thing starts looking appealing, and you get rewarded
| for doing it.
|
| This is essentially what people experience when they do a
| "dopamine fast," which isn't really a thing at all, it's more of
| a fast from stuff that isn't productive. It simply works because
| we really seem to have a dopamine limit within a short time
| period, where, once reached, things that used to be enjoyable
| simply aren't anymore.
|
| Same goes for creativity, motivation, etc. Just stepping away
| from all the stimulation brings those baseline levels back down
| and allows you to get excited about doing stuff again, even if
| it's not insanely fun.
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