When was the last time you were bored? Think about it. We're never bored anymore. Incessant scrolling, streaming, guides, menus, and algorithms ensure it. Here is the problem; creativity thrives in boredom. How long does your mind have to be bored before it starts to think creatively?
15 minutes.
At the 15-minute mark, you start to think creatively. And what is creative thinking? It is beginning to see connections between things that were previously unseen. It is the essence of problem-solving. The challenge is life is too noisy. Our allergic condition to boredom never lets our brains go quiet so we can think creatively. Pastor Kevin DeYoung describes our current plight well when he said, 'We are always engaged without thumbs but rarely engaged with our thoughts.' Ryan Holiday describes this as 'drowning in information.' Holiday says, 'It's tough to think, act clearly, or even maintain our happiness when we are drowning in information. It's why lawyers attempt to bury the other side in paper or why intelligence operatives flood the enemy with propaganda.'
We are immersed in the noise of information and that requires a trade off. Trade-offs drastically impact life. At any moment, most moments, we are trading the future for the present or the present for the future. And the tradeoff for being fully immersed in noise is steep. If you were to pause and think about it, you'd think it was a bad deal. Here are five things you are trading for noise, and it is a bad deal.
Noise is a bad deal for your PURPOSE - Much of the noise we deal with is watching others on screens live their lives or give their opinions. You were created for a purpose and it wasn’t to watch others live their lives. Dr. Dallas Willard said it clearly when he said, 'As water runs downhill, you were made to matter.' Your purpose is not to be famous, or change the world. It's to live a meaningful life that adds value to others right where you are. And you will change YOUR world.
Noise is a bad deal for your PRESENCE WITH PEOPLE - We all want to be critical of teenagers who have their faces down on their phones, but research reveals an entire generation of parents raising their children while their faces are down on their phones. The noise is drowning out your presence with people; the people who feel it the most are the ones who mean the most.
Noise is a bad deal for your PRODUCTIVITY - Have you ever swiped open your phone to accomplish a meaningful task and found yourself jumping from app to app, forgetting the productive thing you intended to do? Or how often do you walk into a room and forget why you walked in there? This is the effect of noise. It's drowning out your productivity.
Noise is a bad deal for your PEACE - Imagine your mind is a stomach, and all the information we consume is food. We are constantly consuming, never digesting, processing, expelling, or soaking in the information. How sick would your stomach get if that's how you treated food? You would not be able to find any physical peace. And that is precisely what happens mentally and emotionally when we live a life full of noise.
Noise is a bad deal for your PRIORITIES - If you are reading a blog like this, you have a sense of what you would like your priorities to be. However, as Jordan Peterson says, 'If you want to know what you actually believe - not think you believe - just look at your actions.' You probably would like to be the type of person who is purposeful, present, productive, and at peace. Don't let the noise of our current times keep you from being that person.
Keep on, keepin' on, friends!
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