Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self

Zomorodi, host of the WNYC podcast Note to Self, issues a paradoxically lively treatise on the benefits of boredom. In 2015 she asked her listeners to rethink their relationship to their digital devices, issuing a week-long challenge to reclaim time to “space out” and embrace boredom as a productive state of mind. Feedback from the 20,000 participants in the challenge is featured here, as well as Zomorodi’s illuminating discussion of boredom’s history as a concept. She cites research by social scientists and psychologists throughout in support of her belief that unplugging, disconnecting, and getting “bored” fosters creativity. Zomorodi outlines a reasonable, easily implemented program for improving “your capacity for boredom,” consisisting of seven steps. The first six are: (1) track your digital habits, (2) eschew media while walking or driving, (3) have a day when you don’t take any pictures, (4) delete the app you think you can’t live without, (5) take a “fakecation” (go to the office but do not reply to electronic messages), and (6) choose one thing in your environment to observe in depth. Step seven consists of advice on putting your newfound sense of boredom to work. Zomorodi’s engaging and provocative presentation will appeal to her established fans and also draw new ones. Agent: Stuart Krichevsky, Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency. (Sept.)