How Boredom Supercharges Your Original Thinking | Manoush Zomorodi | Big Think

How Boredom Supercharges Your Original Thinking
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Are cell phones destroying creativity? Podcast host, author, and relentless examiner of the modern human condition Manoush Zomorodi believes that they are. When we are bored, the brain enters what is called "default mode"—think about the way your mind wanders when you're in the shower or doing the dishes. This might not seem like valuable time but our creativity really kicks into high gear. We now use up a lot of that boredom-time by poking at our phones, and in doing so are starving ourselves of a main source of inspiration. This boredom issue goes beyond simple creativity: boredom is also useful for autobiographical planning and being able to solve big problems. Manoush posits that maybe we should put down the phones and start being bored more often. Her latest book is Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self.
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MANOUSH ZOMORODI:

Manoush Zomorodi is a podcast host, author, and relentless examiner of the modern human condition. As host of Note to Self, the podcast from WNYC Studios, she unpacks the forces shaping our accelerating world and guides listeners through its challenges. Her book, Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self (St. Martin’s Press; Sept 2017), is based on her 2015 interactive project with tens of thousands of listeners. It empowers the reader to transform their digital anxiety into self-knowledge, autonomy, and action.

In spare moments, Manoush tweets @manoushz and takes deep cleansing breaths.

Manoush’s goal, as the New York Times wrote, is to “embrace the ridiculousness” of modern life, even when that means downloading dozens of apps to fight the feeling of digital overload (see Lifehacker's profile on her). She often speaks on creativity in the digital age, kids and technology, and non-fiction storytelling...she was also the "Z" in Vice's recent list: "An A-Z of Women Pushing Boundaries in Science and Tech."

Manoush has won numerous awards including 4 from the New York Press Club. In 2014, the Alliance for Women in Media named her Outstanding Host. She has appeared on NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, WNBC, and The Dr. Oz Show and contributes to NPR, Quartz, Inc. and Radiolab. When she can, Manoush fills in as host for WNYC shows including The Brian Lehrer Show, The Leonard Lopate Show, and On The Media.

Prior to New York Public Radio, Manoush reported and produced around the world for BBC News and Thomson Reuters. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey and went to Georgetown University. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, NY1 reporter and anchor Josh Robin, and their two kids.
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TRANSCRIPT:

Manoush Zomorodi: So the original Bored and Brilliant challenge was based on an extremely mundane situation that happened to me in that I sat down to try and come up with some good ideas for my podcast. We were doing well. I wanted to like, you know, I wanted to kill it. It was 2014 and I sat down to sort of make a list which has usually worked for me and I felt like there was nothing. There was this blankness. It was almost as though there was sand in my brain. And I started to think like what the—you know, first of all, what the hell, and second of all, well wait a minute. When had I had my last best ideas and why was I potentially having so much trouble now? And I thought back and it was really when I was staring out the window – it was such a cliché. It was when I was staring out the window or I was in the shower or I was pushing my kid’s stroller for miles and miles. That is when I had my best ideas. And now I realize that all those little cracks in my day, all those moments when I used to sort of just be spacing out what was I doing?

I was looking at this thing, right? I was looking at my phone when I was waiting in line for coffee, when I was on the bus, every single one of those moments. And it made me realize like I was never bored ever in my life anymore. In fact, I might not have been bored since I think 2009 which is when I first got an iPhone. I was a late adopter. And so then it made me thing like well what actually happens in our brains when we get bored and what could potentially be happening if we never get bored ever again, if we got rid of this human state all together. Is boredom actually a useful sort of emotion.

Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/manoush-z...