When I do assembly programs for kids I begin by leveling the playing field so that we can connect. I recite a poem I wrote when I was 11 years old:
A Boring DayOn a dreary, gray, cloudy dayThere's nothing for me to do or play."Why don't you dance?" my mother says,"Or cook a meal or make the bedsOr read a book, or play with Elly.And if you're hungry eat bread and jellyPlay the piano or fuss with your hair.Don't just sit around and stare.I can name hundreds of things you can do.""I know that," I say "But I don't want to."
The most boring, least active time in Sir Isaac Newton's life was also his most creative period. While most of us hate it, boredom has helped some of history's greatest minds to synthesize their thoughts.
But all the recent reading I've been doing about the impact of technology on behavior, particularly on the behavior of children, has got me wondering. What happens when we're bored is that we're suddenly thrust back on our own resources. We have to do something to escape its pall. We look for diversions outside ourselves with varying degrees of success in snapping out of it. I have discovered that I always experience a period of boredom prior to a period of intense creative activity. Hmmmm... Is there a connection here or is it a superstition?
I'm not a neuroscientist, but I have learned how to make my brain come up with stuff. I treat it just like the computer it is. I feed it information in small and large chunks including reading and experiencing and interacting with others. Lately I've been on a very steep learning curve. I've just attended an online global education conference and listened to many fascinating people speak. I'm reading Kevin Kelly's book "What Technology Wants" after reading "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains" by Nicholas Carr. I'm interacting with lots of new people after leading a pretty solitary existence for years as a writer. So there's a lot being put into my head that I haven't yet sorted out. If I have an assignment (and lately with all my blogging I always have an assignment), I give my brain instructions. I tell it to think about the assignment and the information I've put into it. I tell it to make connections. I also give it a deadline to sort out the information and come up with the big idea. Since I don't like working at the last minute, I always give my brain plenty of lead time. Then I wait. Sometimes something I come across triggers a connection. Sometimes nothing happens for a long time -- days, even weeks. I get bored and depressed. I find other activities to do. Then suddenly, when I'm just waking up or I'm in the shower or I'm taking a walk, ideas start popping into my head. The pressure builds and I can't stay away from my keyboard. Blat! It comes out of me, fingers flying feverishly. I perseverate and read it over and over, tweaking words here and there. I sleep on it and review it the next day and always see ways to make it stronger. This can go on for a while until I see no more changes to make. Then I let it go. (Now, whenever I get an inspiration, I rush to write it down, stockpiling work, so I have something to turn in when I'm too busy to think.)
Time and boredom appear to be integral parts of the creative process that has limits on the speed of turnaround. When the Great Plague broke out in England during the mid-17th century, young Isaac Newton was a student at Cambridge. He retired to the boring countryside to wait out the siege and entered the most creative period of his life (1665-1666 "the prime of my age for invention") possibly because he had no distractions. The poet laureate Billy Collins said, "What I need to write is boredom. I need stretches of inactivity, of doing nothing in order for the poem to get generated. I think boredom is like the mother of creativity."
Although I hate to be bored, I'm rethinking it. Boredom, for me, is now a harbinger that something good is about to happen. Now I worry that kids have no time to process what they input and no periods of boredom when it gestates into something new. I'm worried that their brains will be permanently numbed by overstimulation without time to recover. I'm worried that if we're never bored there will be a hefty price to be paid both personally and by society. And now I hope I've given you something interesting to think about.
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