Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi
Has your smartphone become your BFF? Do you feel bored when you’re not checking Facebook or Instagram? Bored and Brilliant: Rediscovering the Lost Art of Spacing Out explains the connection between boredom and original thinking, and explores how we can harness boredom’s hidden benefits to become our most productive selves.
In 2015, WNYC Studio’s ‘Note To Self’ host Manoush Zomorodi led thousands of her listeners through a week of experiments designed to help them reassess their technology habits, unplug for part of each week and jumpstart their creativity. Throughout the audiobook are a series of challenges that will help listeners rethink their relationship to their devices without completely leaving the digital world.
Zomorodi also explores why putting greater emphasis on “doing nothing” is vital in an age of constant notifications and digital distractions. She speaks with neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists about “mind wandering”–what our brains do when we’re doing nothing at all, and the link between boredom and creativity.
Bored and Brilliant is about living smarter and better within a digital world. Technology isn’t going anywhere, and who would want it to? Bored and Brilliant teaches us how to align our gadget use with what we hold dear and true, and find equilibrium in this new digital ecosystem.
My thoughts;
I listened to this book while I was on holiday on audiobook and loved every minute of it. At the end of every chapter there is a small task you can set yourself if you want to go down the bored and brilliant path. If you want to disconnect just a little. They’re not meant to be done all at once, more on a week by week basis but because I listened in an all at once way, I couldn’t engage with it properly, so I think I’m going to have to give this book another listen, but at a slower pace and try to engage with the tasks at the end of the chapters They’re not difficult. They’re not something that will have you twitching in your chair. Though if you really are attached to your phone, they might, just a little. But, I think this book is worth it. Wherever I am I see the world face down in their mobile phones. No one is looking or interacting with the world around them.
I’m nowhere near as addicted to my phone as I used to be, I can put it down and actually walk away from it without stressing. But still, I am connected and it wouldn’t hurt me to assess my connectivity. One of the tasks in the book is just that, to assess your phone use. There’s an app that can do this for you, you install it and then use your phone for a week and it will tell you how much you use it. It might be an eye-opener.
And the whole point of this is to do more, wake up your creative mind, let it wander free and see where it goes.
Like I say, this book had a lot of good and sensible things to say, I now need to go through it again at a slower pace – that kind of seems a bit ironic but it wasn’t because I was tied up doing other things!
I’d really recommend this book, in whatever format you read like to read. Free up your creativity, cut the strings of your device and let go.
What an interesting-sounding book, Rebecca! And I must say, I absolutely love the title. I can see how it’s beneficial to ‘unplug’ and just ‘space out’ to recover creativity. Sometimes I think our minds are on ‘overdrive’ too much…. Glad you enjoyed this.
It would be really interesting to get that app that tells you how long you spend online. Although it could ne quite scary!