Bringing Boredom Back
January 25, 2015 9:28 AM   Subscribe

Inspired by recent research on how boredom and mind-wandering contribute to creativity, public radio show New Tech City is launching a pro-boredom project. Bored and Brilliant invites participants to track how they use their phones to prevent moments of mental idleness, to try to reclaim free brain space and find oases of time, complete a week of creativity challenges, and contribute their responses to the conversation. BrainPickings' Maria Popova and artist Nina Katchadourian (who both joined the project's launch party to talk about how they"owe their careers" to boredom)and RadioLab's Jad Abumrad.
posted by Miko (21 comments total) 43 users marked this as a favorite
 
Side note - since we were just recently euologizing SkyMall, it's interesting to see how important it was to the "Seat Assignment" projects Nina Katchadourian talks about in the video.
posted by Miko at 9:31 AM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Still tring to work out what "Jad Abumrad" is an anagram for.
posted by w0mbat at 9:33 AM on January 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


Well, that will keep me busy during the challenge. Thanks w0mbat.
posted by Miko at 9:34 AM on January 25, 2015


Obligatory.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 9:41 AM on January 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


there are two kinds of boredom. Acute and chronic. Acute is the kind being discussed here. If you're suffering from it, you generally try to do something about it, and sometimes the results are quite creative, beautiful even. Chronic boredom on the other hand is much more insidious. You've been suffering it so long, you're not even aware of it anymore. And very many people are suffering from it. You might call it the plague of our time.

It manifests as stupidity.
posted by philip-random at 9:46 AM on January 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


"Bum Jar Dada" is the best I could come up with...
posted by mrjohnmuller at 9:47 AM on January 25, 2015


A Dumb Jar Ad
posted by Quilford at 9:58 AM on January 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


To run the boredom-tracking app I need iOS8. Supposedly, updating makes an iPhone 4S nearly unusable. This could be a very successful experiment for me.
posted by michaelh at 11:11 AM on January 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


A Bar Jam Dud
posted by Splunge at 11:33 AM on January 25, 2015


How bored do you have to be to find an anagram for J Burma Dad?
posted by lothar at 12:04 PM on January 25, 2015


Somewhat related: a study that says that Overall, frequent internet and social media users do not have higher levels of stress. [...] Compared with a woman who does not use these technologies, a women who uses Twitter several times per day, sends or receives 25 emails per day, and shares two digital pictures through her mobile phone per day, scores 21% lower on our stress measure than a woman who does not use these technologies at all.

posted by blub at 12:40 PM on January 25, 2015


Seems like there could be a correlqtion/causation thing going on there - you have to be pretty active, motivated and outgoing to send that many messages in a day, and those qualites are also linked with lower stress.
posted by subdee at 2:21 PM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


lothar: "How bored do you have to be to find an anagram for J Burma Dad?"

Not very.
posted by Splunge at 3:38 PM on January 25, 2015


To run the boredom-tracking app I need iOS8.

Personally, I have an iPhone 4s and updated to iO8 with no trouble, though I did wait to install it until an IT-guy friend assured me that the concerns were overblown. In fact, I found it really improved the phone experience. Just to clarify for others, there is an Android option as well.
posted by Miko at 3:42 PM on January 25, 2015


All right dollface, come on and bore me.
posted by charlie don't surf at 3:42 PM on January 25, 2015


I'm soooo getting that app. I have really been struggling lately with how much time I spend looking at my phone. I would like to not be addicted to it but I guess as addictions go it's pretty benign. But still I would rather replace it with something more wholesome. Like... existing in reality.

And BTW I have a 4s and upgraded to ios8 with no problem. The key for all Apple upgrades is to not listen to the media hype about how much the upgrade sucks when it comes out - it always sucks, because they release half-baked shit and make the public do their quality assurance testing for them for free. Wait for that to be complete and then upgrade and it will be fine. And you have to not be storing every photo you've ever taken and every app you've ever downloaded.
posted by bleep at 4:06 PM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


The reviews on the app made it seem creepy and ineffective so that's disappointing.
posted by bleep at 8:09 PM on January 25, 2015


Well, you can certainly just follow the project and read the stories if it interests you.
posted by Miko at 8:11 PM on January 25, 2015


No I need something that forcibly smacks the phone out of my hand.
posted by bleep at 8:18 PM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Miko and bleep, you don't find that everything takes longer to open? I saw some worrying benchmarks even after the fix.
posted by michaelh at 8:29 PM on January 25, 2015


I haven't installed it yet - I posted this after reading everything but before trying it. I'm wary about having time to mess around with it and do the projects, though the overall focus is something I care a lot about.
posted by Miko at 8:34 PM on January 25, 2015


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