Steve Jobs once said, “I’m a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity and out of curiosity comes everything.” Being bored is a powerful thing that we often take for granted. When one is bored, their brain automatically starts to entertain itself. You start thinking about things, coming up with ideas, and being creative. Great ideas come from great imaginations, and imagination comes from boredom.
Boredom is such a crucial part of creativity. It stimulates original thinking and keeps you thinking, which encourages innovation. It’s important to allow yourself to be bored from time to time and simply let your mind keep you busy. Sit in silence if you have too! Astonishing things come from silence.
The problem is that people never allow themselves to be bored. As soon as they feel slightly unentertained, they open up their phone. Maybe they scroll through TikTok, go on Snapchat, or browse Instagram, but whatever it is they do, it keeps them busy. They are thinking about meaningless videos rather than activating their brain’s personal source of entertainment: imagination.
Imagine a world without phones. A world without computers, without the internet, and without any technology at all. Would it really be so bad? Without a doubt, technology has shaped our world in many ways. We have an endless supply of knowledge, right at our fingertips. The answers to many different questions are all packed into one neat little rectangle called the iPhone. Digital technology has benefited our world in many ways, but it came with many negative impacts as well. Like automatically eliminating boredom. Because of this, people are losing their ability to think creatively – especially teenagers. All the great side effects of feeling bored are slowly disappearing.
NDB alumna Hope Tuck says, “I’m so glad that we didn’t have phones in high school. Nowadays, I watch people in restaurants and I see everyone just sitting on their phones, not talking to each other. When I was at Notre Dame, during lunch we would sit at the dining hall tables and hang out with each other. We would joke around, chat about the day, talk about our sports for the afternoon and our plans for the weekend. We would just sit and talk to each other.”
Thanks to phones, teenagers are never bored anymore. Rather than socializing with each other, they keep their heads buried in their phones. How are we expected to be creative, if we are never bored? Teens aren’t given the opportunity to do nothing, nor do they take the opportunity to do nothing. Today’s teens have packed schedules. Between balancing school, sports and other extracurriculars, it’s difficult to just stop and think. It’s hard to make time to literally do nothing, especially since everyone is constantly busy. It may sound strange, but when the opportunity comes up to do nothing, then take it.
This doesn’t mean you have to go throw away your phone right now. There is an easier solution than that. Simply allow yourself to be bored. Be creative. Spend less time on a phone, and more time thinking. Do whatever it is that interests you. Or learn something new. These things are guaranteed to leave a massive change in the way you think.
