OUTWORK Everyone By Being Bored

 

Have you ever found yourself, sitting down to do some work and no matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to focus, you keep looking out of the window, checking your phone and 10 minutes feels like an hour

Fortunately there is a solution to help you fight procrastination and achieve a state of deep flow in work you may not even enjoy doing. Unfortunately, most people won’t do it. So what is this miracle cure? 

Boredom.

A heavily neglected and stigmatised part of modern society, acting as both the problem and the solution. Hear me out.

Social psychologist Timothy Wilson conducted a study, placing volunteers in a room with nothing but a button. If pressed they would receive an electric shock. After 15 minutes of sitting in an unfurnished, completely empty room alone, 67% of males and 25% of females chose to willing electrocute themselves over doing nothing, with some participants deciding to press the button multiple times. It is also worth pointing out that the volunteers had previously stated that they would be willing to pay money to avoid the pain of such an electric shock.

If we read in-between the lines of this study, it perfectly illustrates how boredom can be utilised as a tool, incentivising you to be more productive.

Imagine you locked yourself in a room with nothing but the work you need to complete, getting rid of all distractions like your phone, making it either do work, or do nothing. You will find yourself choosing to do the work most of the time, as sitting doing nothing is uncomfortable, even borderline painful.

You will also find the work far more stimulating and entertaining than it would have otherwise been if you had other options of where you could direct your attention allowing you to remain more focused, for longer.

The simple act of checking your emails for 30 seconds in the middle of a work block puts your mind in a more distracted state for up to 30 minutes after the initial check according to Cal Newport, author of the bestselling book “Deep Work”, who calls this switching between 2 different tasks, “attention residue”, being likely to demonstrate poor performance on that next task as a consequence.

The Deep Work Hypothesis:

 “The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive”

On the flip side, boredom is equally important in breaking you out of feeling complacent and “comfortably numb”. Overstimulation being the reason for the vast majority of the population remaining in a sub-optimal lifestyle, soothed by video games and social media. Living a life directed by impulsivity rather than intentionalit.

Do you think Christopher Columbus would have embarked on his voyage and discovered America if he lived in a world where he could get jacked up on Prozac and play Minecraft? Its lack of stimulation which allows us to stop tearing up your brain and think clearly, naturally allowing novel ideas to flow.

The need for constant stimulation is what keeps you trapped in a comfortably numb state, where development feels unnecessary, because life, is just “good enough”.

The key principles for getting into a state of deep work, or flow are to time block - Allocating certain hours of the day, dedicated to only deep work with a go to space that has minimal distractions where you carry out this work, as to also create an association so your brain knows that when you are there, that its time for work.

Write down what you want to get down each session so you don’t waste time trying to figure it out when you’re meant to be working, thus avoiding future distractions. Before you sit down to do the work, make sure you have everything you need such as water near you do minimise unnecessary breaks, and being broken out of the state of flow.

Next, try and perform a “grand gesture” such as investing time or money into improving your deep work routine, such as moving out of your house for a week, with the intention of only working when you’re away, or just by investing in a good pair of noise cancelling headphones, will raise the perceived importance of the task, allowing you to work more efficiently and better integrate it into your routine, making it a long lasting habit.

And finally, one of the most overlooked aspects of getting into deep work, is downtime. In your breaks between blocks, go for a walk, take a nap, or meditate. A good rule, is to only do things that are low stimulation during this downtime, otherwise, as previously mentioned, will create attention residue creating a more clouded brain as your mind can’t change between stimulating tasks well, carrying the thoughts of one, over to the other.

A bonus tip to improve focus, is to listen to binaural beats at 40Hz, which has been shown in multiple studies to improve concentration, in part by increasing the levels of neurochemical dopamine and acetylcholine in the brain. You can do this throughout the whole of your work session, or you can just listen to 5 minutes of the binaural beats prior to the session as a form of “warm up”, the same way you would warm up for exercise.