Tag: focus

$$$ WHY BOREDOM CAN BE VERY GOOD

$$$ WHY BOREDOM CAN BE VERY GOOD

For me I define boredom like this: It’s when you must be fully engaged and present and actively working on a project…AND it is always a monotonous one, one that you must FORCE yourself through.

Working at a pre-K twice each week has really shown me what boredom is. You have to be engaged in the scheduled activities of the two-year olds. You’re going through all the motions and unlike an arduous hike where you get to view the gorgeous scenery at the summit, or a workout where you feel the biological surge of blood flow and adrenaline as well as the knowledge that you’re actively improving your physique and making a difference in your health, working with two year olds you feel like you’re just keeping them in the right place. Your attention isn’t free to wander; it is consumed by each child’s every second impulse to throw something or to escape. Also, you’re not really getting to see the progress that they’re making because they won’t be with you next year and they’re someone else’s children.

 Lately I have become fascinated by whether boredom can have an impact on motivation levels. Could it help develop the right mental framework for experiencing the dopamine drive, the feeling to engage in a task and to enjoy doing it? Could it bring about new ideas?

 I am actively trying to lean into boredom. I want these moments of boredom to fill my days so that I can be more creative and come up with a variety of useful and novel ideas. I’m using boredom as a tool to ultimately sharpen my senses and my experiences.

 Just as buying more lottery tickets increases your chances of winning, more ideas increase your ability to generate more ideas from your subconscious. These are the kinds of ideas that can be streamed into the pipeline of your awareness. The more of these you have, the more likely you are to come up with an original synthesis. This could be an invention, business idea, or a strategy to do something that no one has ever thought of before.

It’s absolutely fascinating to consider that all the raw materials of the universe surround you on a moment-to-moment basis. But these must be extracted from the chaos; they must be rearranged. You can come up with something out of the drudgery of your own life and produce an original idea.

 Let’s pivot back to boredom. The more I learn the more I see that punctuating your day with 20 minutes of monotonous boredom is a recipe…a conduit to having divergent thinking. Only then can you piece the strange or unseemingly disconnected thoughts together.

It’s the fusion of ideas that we desire. Often, it’s a problem that requires a solution.

Say, you don’t like the way your house looks. Or, you don’t know how to attract more followers to your Instagram account. Maybe you really want to figure out a way to develop a line of interesting home decor items that reflect your aesthetics, your artistic tastes and personality. Perhaps you want to figure out a way to make more friendships and more personal connections in your day-to-day life.

One of the interesting things about our brains is that when we are truly bored, when we’re going through repetitive thoughts our brains default mode network activates. This is considered the opposite of executive function. If executive function is when your brain is engaged in a complex and detailed thinking, the default mode network is when you’re NOT attempting complex or detailed thinking…you’re not doing high level math or constructing elevated literary prose. These require lots of conscious effort. They need the management of your attention so you can retrieve information from your memory to compose or create something or understand something.

 How do you know when the default mode network turns on? The best way to know is if you suddenly hear the voice within your head. You hear not just the ruminating thoughts about “what you should have said” or “why did she say that to me?” but you hear things like, “Maybe I should turn one of my living room walls into a “Butterfly Wall” with lots of pictures of butterflies.

 In other words, when the default mode network arrives, random ideas start coming. Ideas that may or may not be useful. You will notice that they start to flutter through. They are allowed through the gate because you have deactivated the main executive controller—the pre-frontal cortex. You’re doing mindless tasks like folding laundry, going for a walk, taking a shower, or washing dishes. A new idea comes at you. You think, ahh, maybe I should try that…maybe I should research that phenomenon? Maybe I should write about that phenomenon! When these kinds of thoughts start coming, you know you are in the default mode network.

 When you’ve finally arrived (and ANY music, listening to podcasts or beeps from your phone will not help you get there as quickly) you need to know that this is where interesting connections between ideas are made. This is where the real MONEY-MAKING CONCEPTS HAPPEN.

 Different things that your subconscious may have picked up at different times of the day or days ago or even weeks ago may spontaneously bubble up and combine to make a very wonderful idea. This is where inventions happen. This is where powerful plots to movies break out, where two pieces of disparate data reproduce a new concept. Sometimes these concepts are quite useful. They may help resolve in earlier conflict period you have been dealing with.

New approaches, new inventions, new paintings, new business plans, new plots to novels or plays or gardening landscapes develop in this state. They make themselves tangible to your conscious state brain.

This is exactly why periods of boredom, monotony, and stillness end up giving you such a wildly incredible edge. But it makes total sense! You can’t understand brightness without the dark, and you can’t see the bright ideas without the simultaneous background of monotony…your own feelings and experiences of deep boredom. Yes, going through repetitive motions will get you there.

It is a literal fact that your brain will start to conjure up its’ own unique creations if you let yourself step into boredom and monotony on a regular basis. You need this kind of “contrast state” to push your brain to rearranging and re-managing itself as it works with less stimulation.

I can attest to these many times over the course of my life. The times where I really allowed boredom to prevail, the more likely my brain could reconfigure itself, bring up storage boxes from the basement, so to speak. More storage boxes to look through? More stuff for it to work with!

FINDING CREATIVITY

FINDING CREATIVITY

Having everything done on my to-do list and my feet resting flat on the floor is becoming the trick to ushering in the expansion of my creativity. I’m whittling stuff off my to-do list. I’m simultaneously realizing I don’t need to keep taking expensive college courses that interfere with my life. I’m focusing more on my children and anything that truly piques my interest.

Nursing school was fine. I did it! I got my RN. Truthfully, nursing isn’t something I think I can be good at as a profession. There’s just too many demands at the same time. You’re never done. People fall and you have to catch their bodies. I’ve worked with nurses who are still undergoing physical therapy themselves due to catching falling patients. Working in a nursing home taught me that. I only did it because my Grandmother chided me for pursuing an Esthetician license saying “Do something real! Do something that’s actually useful!” So, I took on nursing. Now, I have both a nursing (RN) degree and an Esthetician license. Since graduating in December of 2014, I’ve only had a couple nursing jobs and a few volunteering positions.

I’ve SLOWLY and recently released the grips my ego has over me. My ego seems to want more college education–to go further! My EGO wants me to forge a path ahead and grab ambition and accomplishment and knowledge and squeeze their products into a pitcher as one squeezes lemons for the delicious result of lemonade. Like everyone else, I seek the same applause from effortful pursuits. There is another desire I’m finding… to see creativity unfold.

But…I’m realizing if it’s not for the sake of creativity itself, it is just a vain attempt to build a greater self-empire. The ego wants to behold itself and showcase all of what it’s done.

No longer. I want to exemplify creativity and seek creative pursuits in all their forms for the sake of creativity itself. Not for money, or recognition or fleeting applause and approval but simply for learning and recreation. Creativity is fun. It satisfies itself. It needs nothing more.

Creativity is about finding the interconnectedness between two things. It asks, how can we look at something from a BIG picture or a SMALL picture? Creativity is a curious endeavor and requires that we look at things through various angles. FOR INSTANCE, LAST NIGHT I HAD A SUDDEN EUREKA MOMENT. A volcano is like an acne pimple or lesion. There is swelling, inflammation and heat that starts to roil beneath the surface. The volcano lifts the surrounding terrain in a cone shaped form as does the acne pimple on the skin. Both the pimple and volcano explode out onto surfaces. For the pimple it is the skin and for the volcano it is the surrounding terrain. The damage done below the surface of the skin can cause an acne scar in the formation of a crater as the skin starts to settle. In the same way, as the volcano settles, the terrain can form a caldera or crater.

This is how creativity can start emerging. In the example above I started to look at two things as though they may be connected. When you do this you start to recognize intriguing relationships between disparate phenomena! And it just keeps going from here. It can get very exciting and addicting and you’ll start pursuing creativity for its own sake.

How can you find creativity in your life? What I’m realizing is that YOU NEED BLOCKS OF UNINTERRUPTED TIME. No tuned-out periods of phone scrolling, no children screaming in the distance and no interruptions from surrounding clutter. Clutter can be a huge distraction because it signals to the brain that you HAVE SOMETHING ELSE THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE. Even if you try, it’s still there, it’s visual phenomena. It’s saying, “shuffle your attention over here from time to time”. Getting rid of stuff and cleaning your workspace will have a dramatic effect on your ability to engage in deeper creativity and approach the psychological experience called “Flow”. I’ve had flow several times and it’s one of the better gifts of human experience.

Thus, you need time plus an environment to start making creativity happen. It’s hard to get started but once you start rolling you start going. It’s really just an openness to possibility. It’s seeing every moment in a novel way. It’s asking, can I reframe this moment to make it better? You can adjust a tilted picture frame by moving it ever so slightly. In the same way, you can adjust your current reality by tilting it a bit and making it appear more novel. Take a moment to realize you can notice different things and then you take a different approach. Try zooming out with your focus and then zooming way back in. It’s all this adjustment and provides new insight and perspectives.

Also, don’t forget the power of sleep! I’m always way more likely to both think creativity and have more motivation to be creative when I get adequate sleep. When I’m well-rested, I have better resilience for my own failures or when people reject me or give me the cold shoulder. I have higher tolerance for so much more! When pursuing creative ambitions, you really need lots of tolerance because it’s a struggle to get going with creative pursuits and a struggle to KEEP GOING. You can have all the ideas in the world but its easy to flounder and stop.

Sometimes you do need moments of blandness and boredom to eventually get to more profound levels of creativity. It’s like your brain needs the contrast. I find that the most scintillating insights arrive when I’m doing very mundane tasks like moving about putting things away. My brain is slightly disengaged but yet there must be subconscious processes that are still occurring. I’ve discovered that very intense bursts of cardiovascular exercise seem to prepare me both mentally and physically for that calm that comes before the creative storm. I also feel good for exercising and exerting a form of self-discipline.

I’m eager to discover more synchronicities and possibilities with anything that I interact with. When you discover more and learn more you can see more connections that can lead to novel inventions, ideas or ways of doing things. I don’t have a formalized, set structure for discovering creativity but I’m deeply curious if perhaps there is a method that I will soon discover! I’m working on this!

I took my 6 Year Old Son’s ADHD Medication

I took my 6 Year Old Son’s ADHD Medication

Recently I tried a little of my son’s ADHD medication (methylphenidate/Ritalin). I’ve been curious for a while about its effects–so I decided to live a bit on the edge. I’m a risk taker when it comes to almost anything with the exception of my ego. I love to try new things. I love to gain new experiences. I’ve plunged myself into way too many hobbies of late. It’s no wonder that I may have some attentional or jumpy-around tendencies myself. I have a hard time finishing any task that requires many steps, or I find myself procrastinating or just not forging the mental stamina to continue. I embark upon many tasks at the beginning of the day, I whip up all the motivation I can, but the follow-through just kicks me down. Additionally, my mood is often not at its peak. I can sometimes feel what depression or despondency must feel like. I was eager to see if taking some of my son’s medication would have any impact on my mood, motivation, or even my mental stamina.

What I discovered was nothing short of brilliant. I felt AMAZING. Once I could feel the activation of the medicine, I suddenly enjoyed what I was doing. Sitting down and helping my 4-year-old learn to read is typically a very boring hard to endure slog. On this day, it was like a sudden epiphany for my mind. My exact thoughts were “Oh, I kind of enjoy this task! I feel like I’m in the moment and I’m accomplishing something that is useful for my son!” Needless to say, we made it through 5 books. I just was able to stay on task and didn’t tire from it.

That’s really what I noticed–the ability to NOT TIRE OUT. To NOT MOVE ON. The focus makes it so that you can complete more boring, mundane, step by step tasks or even attempt more arduous or challenging tasks. The brain really needs a particular cocktail of neurotransmitters to deal with the day-to-day drudgeries. I didn’t realize what I was lacking–or how much more focused I could actually be. Do some people have the privilege of functioning like this regularly? If so, I’m so jealous! What a treat to stay focused and have that accompanying sense of satisfaction.

According to my son’s pediatrician, everyone’s brain can actually benefit from methylphenidate (though it’s typically reserved for those with a true ADHD diagnosis). Recent studies reveal that this medicine can probably help anyone, even adults, and it does not cause addiction because it is short-acting. It helps while it’s in the body and then starts to fade within a few hours. It helps my son tremendously especially while he’s learning something. He can hold his gaze on any learning material longer than without it. And if he holds his attention on some bit of knowledge or information for longer, he stands a FAR BETTER CHANCE OF LEARNING AND RETENTION.

That day I was able to trim 3 different bushes (topiary style!) and stay on task with every other item on my to-do list. I felt a sustained energy and contentment for whatever it was I was doing. I was reminded of the brevity of life and how one of the values I have crystalized for myself is my POTENTIAL. Am I doing everything in my power to achieve my potential? Am I making efforts each day? Could regularly or occasionally taking this medication help improve my mental function and output? I’m left to deliberate about my options and if I will talk to my doctor about getting a methylphenidate prescription myself for occasional use.

If you are the type that just tires out from the long-list of day-to day life or “mentally checks out” you also might benefit from an ADHD evaluation or (potentially) a prescription from your doctor. I think that brain function is absolutely critical for overall health and good, everyday life experiences. It’s hard to enjoy life when you can’t stay on task or accomplish anything big or bigger. We all are dreamers and can see things that we would like or that need to get done. Our brain can easily conjure up grandiose images of what we would like to accomplish or all the possible creations we would like to make. The wherewithal, stamina and sense of satisfaction on each step of the way is where the difficulty lies. This is what I discovered by recently embracing my curiosity and trying my son’s medicine.