Why Doing Nothing Makes You More Creative - The Hidden Power of Boredom - Future IQ
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Wait, is this logic right? •
May 22, 2025
Slog Reference: The Importance of Boredom
Description
Stop scrolling. Get bored. Get brilliant.
Would you rather sit quietly for 15 minutes… or zap yourself with an electric shock?
Believe it or not, most people choose the shock. In this episode of FutureIQ, we explore the hilariously tragic truth about boredom—why your brain would rather be electrocuted than be left alone with its own thoughts. But what if boredom isn’t the villain? What if it’s the unsung hero of creativity, focus, and emotional intelligence?
We dive into bizarre experiments, evolutionary insights, and ancient wisdom (hello, Vipassana!) to uncover the surprising benefits of being bored. Turns out, boredom can reduce impulsivity, boost creativity, reorganize your brain, and even help your kids stop asking, “What do I do nowww?” every 5 minutes.
From smartphones to shock machines, parenting myths to Zen proverbs, and even animals getting bored (yes, really), this episode proves that boredom isn’t something to run from—it’s something to schedule. Because if you’re always entertained, you’re probably not evolving.
00:00 Introduction
01:26 Negatives of Boredom
02:28 Evolution of Boredom
04:23 Boredom boosts creativity
05:36 Meditation and Boredom
06:54 Let your kids get bored!
10:19 What to do if you get bored
11:35 Learn how to get bored correctly
More Videos:
Finishing Every Book Is a Waste of Time - 6 Hacks to Read More, Better, Faster: https://youtu.be/yViCi9qhzC4
Follow Your Passion Is A Terrible Advice: https://youtu.be/NG6tm5FlONk
A Better Way To Learn And Remember Things: https://youtu.be/JAPwrsm5OeA
This Bhagvad Gita Lesson Will Change Your Life: https://youtu.be/95Zi_4OthbY
Links:
People prefer electric shocks to boredom: Popular Article, Actual Paper
Book: The Science of Boredom https://www.amazon.com/Science-Boredom-Why-Good-ebook/dp/B01MYDJFBE
The function of boredom: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328x/3/3/459
https://childmind.org/article/the-benefits-of-boredom/ The Benefits of Boredom
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/well/family/kids-summer-boredom.html: Let Kids Get Bored. It’s Good for Them.
Animals get bored too: https://www.rvc.ac.uk/research/research-centres-and-facilities/rvc-animal-welfare-science-and-ethics/news/new-concepts-in-research-suggest-that-animals-suffer-boredom-too
Boredom increases risk-taking: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bdm.2160 (edited)
Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant
Would you rather sit quietly for 15 minutes… or zap yourself with an electric shock?
Believe it or not, most people choose the shock. In this episode of FutureIQ, we explore the hilariously tragic truth about boredom—why your brain would rather be electrocuted than be left alone with its own thoughts. But what if boredom isn’t the villain? What if it’s the unsung hero of creativity, focus, and emotional intelligence?
We dive into bizarre experiments, evolutionary insights, and ancient wisdom (hello, Vipassana!) to uncover the surprising benefits of being bored. Turns out, boredom can reduce impulsivity, boost creativity, reorganize your brain, and even help your kids stop asking, “What do I do nowww?” every 5 minutes.
From smartphones to shock machines, parenting myths to Zen proverbs, and even animals getting bored (yes, really), this episode proves that boredom isn’t something to run from—it’s something to schedule. Because if you’re always entertained, you’re probably not evolving.
00:00 Introduction
01:26 Negatives of Boredom
02:28 Evolution of Boredom
04:23 Boredom boosts creativity
05:36 Meditation and Boredom
06:54 Let your kids get bored!
10:19 What to do if you get bored
11:35 Learn how to get bored correctly
More Videos:
Finishing Every Book Is a Waste of Time - 6 Hacks to Read More, Better, Faster: https://youtu.be/yViCi9qhzC4
Follow Your Passion Is A Terrible Advice: https://youtu.be/NG6tm5FlONk
A Better Way To Learn And Remember Things: https://youtu.be/JAPwrsm5OeA
This Bhagvad Gita Lesson Will Change Your Life: https://youtu.be/95Zi_4OthbY
Links:
People prefer electric shocks to boredom: Popular Article, Actual Paper
Book: The Science of Boredom https://www.amazon.com/Science-Boredom-Why-Good-ebook/dp/B01MYDJFBE
The function of boredom: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328x/3/3/459
https://childmind.org/article/the-benefits-of-boredom/ The Benefits of Boredom
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/well/family/kids-summer-boredom.html: Let Kids Get Bored. It’s Good for Them.
Animals get bored too: https://www.rvc.ac.uk/research/research-centres-and-facilities/rvc-animal-welfare-science-and-ethics/news/new-concepts-in-research-suggest-that-animals-suffer-boredom-too
Boredom increases risk-taking: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bdm.2160 (edited)
Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant
Related Slog Matches
The Importance of Boredom
100.00
Manual
Transcript
If you were getting bored, would you give yourself shocks just to be entertained? No. Why would I? Okay, let me make it more precise. Okay, if you were told to spend 15 minutes in a room with no books, no internet, no devices, no music, nothing. Just you have to sit and think and at that time you had available to you a device that could give you electric shocks which are known to be painful. Would you do it 15 minutes? No, I would spend 15 minutes sitting. There is research which shows that 67% of men and 25% of women choose to give themselves shocks, electric shocks rather than sit for 15 minutes.
Many of them give up after 6 minutes. What? Why? Why would they do that to themselves? Because people hate getting bored. They hate it so much. I mean, okay, young kids these days get bored very easily. We know that for a fact. Not true, right? They looked and they found that there is no correlation with age. Really? Not there is no correlation with income either. What was it? Was it because they were in an unfamiliar place, a new place and they were not sure what to do? Well, the researchers thought of that also. They rated the experiment at home instead of a lab setting and the people were worse.
Really? Yes. Okay. But in a sense it is good. No, as in we don't want to be bored because boredom leads to lethargy and lethargy is not necessarily a good thing for us. Yeah. Well, actually there are many other negatives to boredom. Serious negatives, right? So research for example shows that boredom affects your ability to get things done. Right? If you're doing work and you find it boring, research shows that the quality of the work gets much worse. Y if you find it boring, research also shows that your cognitive abilities go down. True.
Another thing with boredom is that it increases risky behavior. If you get bored easily, it increases the chances that you will gamble, you will get addicted, you will get into binge eating, online shopping, and just excessive social media usage, right? All of those are obviously pretty bad for you and your life. Yeah. This makes me wonder why boredom even exists as a thing in in human life. Yeah. So I can answer that using evolution, right? I I should have known this was coming very honestly. How how does evolution explain boredom? Yeah. Well, boredom is a signal to your brain. Okay. One thing is that it basically says that whatever you are doing right now is not using up your
brain and that something else can happen. Right? So one thing that does happen as part of this is that your brain can disengage and it can start doing maintenance jobs inside your head. Okay? So this involves uh organizing your recent thoughts and your memories and so on and that is the kind of thing that leads to new connections, creative thinking and so on. There is research showing that. Okay. Second is that if you're doing something repetitive and you keep getting bored then your brain which is getting bored and irritated by this will try to find ways to not do this or to do it in a different way to automate it. Basically innovation comes out of boredom. Isn't that the opposite
of boredom? Because you are now working to stay off the boredom. Yes. And the results of that are very good. But let us understand why we are talking about this today. Okay? Because today when you get bored that is not what happens. Today within seconds we pick up a phone and we start browsing res. Yes. Which means that we never actually get bored. And which means that all those nice things that I talked about which your brain does to stay off the boredom those never happen. Correct. Okay. And that is what we are losing out on. Ahu. So we in the pursuit of instant gratification aren't giving our brain enough space and time to develop creativity. Yes,
absolutely. There is research showing that if you are bored and then you are given a creative task immediately after that you do a much better job than if you were not bored. Right? So boredom does lead to creativity proven. Right? Another possibility, not proven but probably true is that people who get bored quickly but who are also ambitious, right, are likely to achieve more in their life because what they end up doing is that they're constantly looking for something to do, right? So they are like the more of the doers rather than just sitting around doing nothing. Sitting around watching reals and watching ress is doing nothing. I wonder if animals also get bored. Oh,
there is research on that also and the answer is yes, animals also get bored. It was a random question and he actually went and found an answer to that. Okay, fine. Boredom is good. But the thing is in this day and age, even if you're not watching reals, there is so much to do that you don't have time to get bored. Yeah, you know there is this lovely Zen proverb which says you should sit in meditation for 20 minutes every day unless you are too busy for that. In that case, you should sit for one hour every day. What the point being that if you're so busy that you don't even have a little bit of downtime, that means you
are very likely going to be stressed, right? Your brain doesn't get any time to chill and that is necessary for your brain. We already talked about how the brain uses that time to reorganize your thoughts, but also that downtime is needed to reduce your negative emotions like anger and grief, right? It will increase your clarity and your judgment. It'll give you a calm mind. It'll give you self-control. It'll give you a sense of peace, right? See, but here's the thing. Even when I decide to sit and be bored, my mind is still constantly racing with a thousand things, questions, things to do, tasks and plans and projects. Yeah. So, in fact, there are a lot of techniques which help you
to slowly get into a point where that is not happening in your brain. Right? Uh I mean meditation is one. There's a lot of literature on that. Vipashana is another something that can be tried as in just you know you spend 10 days and in the first couple of days all these things running in your head settle down they get tired and then your final brain calming down starts right lots of people have good experiences with that okay I agree that vipashana will help me calm down all of these things running in my head but what about the things running outside of my head kids should we send kids to vipashana no you can't send kids
to vipasha But you don't want to, okay? You want kids to get bored. It is normal, natural, and healthy for them. Okay? On Twitter, Doc Bushan, a child psychiatrist, points out that a lot of modern parents believe that it is their responsibility to keep their kids entertained at all times. And if the kid is saying, "I'm bored," they see it as a personal failure. That is not at all true. As a parent, your attitude should be this is not my problem. Okay, the kids can figure out their own entertainment or they can sit and get bored. Okay, but finding their own entertainment usually means some device of some kind like a TV or a a tablet or
a screen. Absolutely not. Do not give them access to devices. Okay, without devices, let them figure out their own entertainment, right? Pen and paper is okay, books is okay, just blocks is okay, empty boxes, okay? Anything. Okay, let them get bored and a bit more after that. Okay. Okay. Boredom is teaching them important skills like what? So, first of all, when they get bored, they will find by themselves something to do. Okay. So, they will do things that interest them as opposed to being fed by the parents or by devices. Okay. Second is that it will teach them to manage their frustration. a very important skill later in life. Third is that they learn planning out of this whole
exercise. The most fascinating thing is that even watching grass grow can become interesting after a while. Watching grass grow. Absolutely. I have seen a fascinating summer course in which the teacher took the kids outside, made them sit in front of a tree and said, "Okay, just watch." And obviously the kids were bored and the teacher said nothing doing keep watching. 5 minutes kids are complaining and she's like stop complaining just watch. By the 10th or 12th minute suddenly the kids started noticing things in the tree and like oh my god look at that. Did you see what happened? And they noticed squirrels.
They saw a hummingbird come in. And after 15 minutes it had become one of the most interesting things they have done in a while. Okay. So yeah, it's just that you know some things are slow. You have to get bored to notice them. Very interesting. In fact, uh this seems like the kids version of vipashana allowing them to get bored and then allowing that boredom to let them discover new things. And everything I said about kids, apply them to yourself. Because as Bla1 Pascal pointed out, all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Technically, all of humanity's solutions also come because of man's inability to sit in a room quiet and
alone. None of those solutions would have occurred if that man was given Instagram res to scroll. Okay, that is true. That is true. So the next time I find myself being bored and reaching for my phone to scroll res, what should I be doing instead? The bunch of little techniques you can do. Okay, simplest is that you can try to find a way to learn something new while you're doing it, right? If like you have to cook every day, that is boring. But if you convert it into well, I will learn a new cuisine on a regular basis, it becomes less boring, right? Okay. uh you are forced to do data entry try to find a way to learn
programming to do the data entry and automate it right commute your commute is boring switch to audio books I have seen people whose commute became much more interesting and they look forward to their commute when they switch to audio books instead of listening to bad radio right not all radio is bad but I do agree with some of that statement not 100% other things also which is sometimes what you find boring is simply a matter of how you perceive that thing right if you analyze it carefully and why am I doing this and what is the positive that I'm going to get out of this then it can become less boring so I guess the crux of the whole thing is
that you have to give yourself time to get bored and reaching for that phone to scroll those Instagram reels is not giving yourself time to get bored more accurately you have to learn to get bored correctly. Okay? And to take the title of a book by Sylvia Bourin, a meditation teacher. Don't just do something, sit there. Okay? That's really funny because what usually is heard is don't just sit there, do something. No, don't just do something. Sit there. Get bored. Get bored. More importantly, because it is around summer vacation, let your kids get bored and then see their creativity flourish. More importantly, allow them 15 minutes to watch Future IQ and then get bored.
Okay, Naven. Future IQ.