How Overstimulation inhibits creativity, and how to fix it

Several years ago, I noticed a pattern. Over summer and winter breaks, my creativity would be at the levels I remembered it being as a kid - ideas for new projects came to me easily, my curiosity was high, and I even had more memorable dreams. But every year during the school semester, my creativity would be at rock bottom; all of the energy I had would leave as soon as syllabus week started. I took a creative writing class once in an attempt to avoid this but instead found myself staring at a blank Word document for an hour straight three times a week. Even when I carved out time to go sit at a coffee shop and work on anything other than homework, it was difficult to get my brain working creatively. It was frustrating and made work harder. So, over this past winter break, I tried to notice what exactly helped or hurt my creativity. 

The biggest factor in my creative block was being overstimulated - with content, sound, interactions, anything. I noticed that when I woke up and wrote before I looked at my phone, it was easier to write a lot more and a lot better. On days where I had had many interactions with others or consumed a lot of digital content (HBO, anyone?), I was tired and uninspired. Many times, this overstimulation happened on days where I went from one thing to another - from class to class, or from meeting to meeting to the gym - without breaks. I realized that not only were  breaks important to do things like, you know, eat, but also that they were key to being bored. I am not a person who enjoys being bored. I am very comfortable with packing my days full and avoiding downtime as much as possible. But I looked at my winter break and noticed that the more I was bored, the more creative and the more motivated I was. 

This idea of boredom facilitating creativity is not new. Researchers have found data that supports this idea in many different activities and organizations. However, I think it’s important to keep thinking of new ways to emphasize this idea, especially for people my age. We’re the generation of the side hustle, the first digital natives, and carriers of crushing financial debt - we’re trained to fill our time in a “productive” way no matter what. Add in the less-than-ideal reality we’ve been facing since COVID-19 hit, and I’m willing to bet most of our coping methods involve overstimulation and overbooking, if only to block out some of the processing we should be doing. Boredom requires us to sit still, and that is one thing Gen Z is not great at.

So, how do we get better? I certainly don’t know, but my first guess would be to start looking at boredom as essential to the creative process. Having a few hours of nothing in my week produces far better ideas (and more of them) than when I cram in a scheduled brainstorming session in the middle of hours of work. I also think collaborative boredom could be a conduit to improved creativity. Some of my best memories as a kid only exist because my neighbor and I had extra time to burn after school and created scenarios or games to entertain ourselves. Setting up time to be bored together might just be the best way to boost our creativity and quality of work.