Bored As Hell. Excited As Ever.
By Cory Montero
Your mind is stuck in traffic.
The kind of traffic where Google Maps says you’ve got 48 more minutes to go to the next off ramp, and the dad in the next lane has been singing off-key to Journey for three miles. You’re not scrolling, you’re not on a call, you’re not frantically scribbling notes for your next project. You’re just… there.
And then it happens.The idea. The one you didn’t see coming. The one you’ve been chasing for weeks intrusively slides into your brain.
Boredom Working Its Magic
As famously stated by the greatest living graphic designer of our time, Paula Scher, partner at Pentagram, said, “We get ideas waking up or falling asleep, by taking a walk or taking a shower. We get them driving or sitting in traffic or in a dentist’s waiting room or standing in a ticket line and mostly by daydreaming or by simply being bored.”
Disingenuous, masochistic yappers have convinced us that the path to creativity is paved with endless work, more projects, and always saying “yes.” But here’s the truth: working in a constant state of “go” turns your ideas into recycled, surface-level knockoffs of your last five solutions.
It’s like painting a bathroom wall. Sure, there’s a flicker of interest when you have to paint around a light switch or curve around a corner, but otherwise, it’s just monotony. Roll on some beige paint, call it a day. Easy, fast, forgettable.
Too many creative solutions are just beige bathroom walls. No zest. No hoodzpah. No staying power.
Boredom is Meditation
Boredom isn’t the enemy. It’s the rest stop your creative soul has been begging for. It’s meditation. When you’re bored, you stop hammering the same neural pathways into the ground. Your overstimulated, problem-solving brain resets, and suddenly, it’s open to influences you’d never considered: typography on that old sign you walk by everyday, half-heard conversations of someone trying to convince their friend that pizza is an open-faced sandwich, the random shape of clouds.Let’s face it, we’re all addicted to some form of digital gluttony. We comb through Behance, Instagram, and Dribbble for all the same regurgitated “inspiration” everyone else has access to stealing. But when you take in too much, you trap yourself in a vacuum. The only air in there is made of the same recycled thoughts, and the work ends up tasting stale.
But step away. Take a walk around the block and let the mind wander, and new, thoughtful, and unexpected ideas start to breathe.
And yes, deadlines happen.
Yes, multitasking is sometimes unavoidable, especially early in your career when you’re cutting your teeth. But beware of intentionally never taking your foot off the gas pedal. That’s where the creativity vampires come out from their corner offices.
The “always-on” culture breeds habitual laziness. Not laziness in effort, laziness in imagination. You’re too afraid of missing a client deadline, or upsetting your boss to think past the easiest, safest, fastest solution. That’s when your ideas stop living and start limping.
Get Comfortable Being Bored
If you’re allergic to the idea of doing nothing, here’s your entry-level fix: turn off the radio on your drive to work. Drive in silence. No Taylor Swift podcast, no summer vibez playlist, no news about the impending doom of WW3. Just you, your thoughts, and the hum of your tires on the road.
It’s awkward at first. But give it time. You’ll be surprised how much creativity has been locked in your head, waiting for a quiet moment to make its escape.
The Landlord Special Test
We all know the “Landlord Special.” You’ve got a new tenant moving in next week, and you need to add a splash of “newness” to your outdated 2-bedroom flat. Problem is, you’ve also got three other units to turn over across town, and those tenants move in tomorrow. You planned to paint last week, but that went out the window when you had to replace a fence after a tenant’s rager ended with a drunk friend driving onto the lawn.
So, you grab the cheapest five-gallon bucket of beige you can find and blast through the job in record time. The result? Fresh-ish walls… and thick beige blobs coating the light switches, the trim, and that one mystery spot on the ceiling.
That’s what an overworked, overstimulated brain does to your creative work… it just slaps on a quick coat to get it done.
Next time you come up with a “solution,” ask yourself: Is this just another Landlord Special that is fast, forgettable, and slapped together, or is it something with real character, story, and staying power?
If it’s beige paint, you’re still uninspired because of being in work-mode for too long. Step away. Get bored. Let the better idea find you. But I promise it won’t show up while you’re painting another beige colored wall.
“I’m a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything.” — Steve Jobs
