He felt 'creatively dead', then harnessed the power of boredom

For how long have you practiced meditation?

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?

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.

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.

I too had a journey with journaling already, but the very specific and clear parameters of the morning pages really made it click. I still actually journal on my laptop, but the purpose of journaling has become clearer. The morning pages are not intended to be read, but the journal is.

> Likely there are other ingredients. Some sort of catalyst may be needed for the process to get into gear.

Are you talking about the process outlined by the whole book and her philosophy, or something else? If so I think it's just life. If I had picked up this book 10 years ago I would not have been able to read past all the allusions to god. I still reject that concept, but I'm a lot more spiritual and I'm able to translate into my own beliefs or look past it when it gets a bit too heavy.

I think it's hard to start from absolute 0 and pick up this book and follow through. I was already on the path of nurturing my inner artists and general self discovery and this book reached me through a dear friend and it was exactly what I wanted.

What week are you on? I had an interesting 4th week because I'm a heavy reader, and I decided to cut off social media too.