How Can We Boost Our Creativity 100% by Doing Nothing

Steps to experience doing nothing to be more creative

Do you know the phrase to have a monkey mind? You continuously write, read, watch, and do nothing. The monkey mind is in a state of hunger for knowledge, but it’s a whirlpool. Because this labyrinth has no end, you always want more.

During the pandemic, many of us lost the will to work and live due to this excessive information consumption. Often we felt exhausted. All our plans had canceled. And the pandemic situation was uncertain.

I eliminated the burnout of producing too much, but I didn’t know what to do. How could I comfort myself?

I thought the opposite of what caused burnout.

Doing nothing. Maybe just sitting.

After detoxing for just one week, I realized that I shouldn’t take life so seriously. It also boosted my creativity. I am grateful that my job allows for this. Doing nothing for a week can be a luxury for you, so you can reduce it to a day and join this detox.

Being able to stop doing nothing

For years they have made us believe that doing nothing is laziness. But what if we need to learn to do nothing to be more creative?

Doing nothing sounds strange and empty, but it has a massive impact on our creativity. Being busy continues to climb to the top as the new disease of our age. It’s not a lie that we’re busy, but it’s ridiculous not to be idle for even 5 minutes.

But recent research proves that being always busy harms our productivity. According to the article published in Forbes, multitasking also reduces your attention. Microsoft makes an interesting study by testing the effects of doing over one job simultaneously on employees.

According to the test results, when employees take a break from work for phone calls and email checking, it takes longer to return to their primary task. Doing multiple jobs at the same time reduces productivity and increases uptime.

Below, I have listed 5 items that will reduce your engagement and trigger your desire to stay idle.

Support your boredom

When we bored, we usually change the television channels quickly, and we would like to come across a program that will keep us busy. Now we’re killing our boredom with the scrolling features of social media. But this is wasting our creativity.

When our boredom arises, we must turn our attention to that unpleasant moment of emptiness. Not your phone. It bases boredom on creating some space in the mind so that a new idea can grow.

When you’re not trying to quell your boredom, it can offer you the opportunity to do things you didn’t think of before. In the Washington Post article, I have read that people stuck at home during the COVID era are starting creative hobbies using boredom, which leads us to the following question. What should I try today as something new?

Keep your breaks wide and comfortable

Taking long breaks is believed to undermine our work and reduce productivity. But here we need to draw inspiration from the break areas that Google has developed for its employees that support comfortable working.

The article published by the CBS news emphasized that Google’s comfortable resting areas positively affect creativity.

Google’s working principle supports its employees to work more efficiently by providing the most comfortable environment. That’s why they design extraordinary study and meeting rooms. Google has an office in Zurich shaped like a ski gondola and a pub like a meeting room in Dublin.

Whether you are working at home or in the office, try to create that “dream place” that will make you comfortable. This place should always be away from the area you are working in. Let it isolate you from life for a moment with its decoration. Take advantage of the relaxing effect of places on your creativity, using the example of Google.

Develop a loafing practice

People of wealthy countries like to sit idle!

Let’s think why these people might have turned laziness into a model of relaxation? In our age, when we look at the working patterns of robust economies such as Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Japan, and the Netherlands, we also see an effective help method.

Let’s look at the nap times that developed countries have created for themselves;

Swedish Fika — — Fika, called a coffee meeting, comprises 10 minutes of happy moments of the day. There are few things a Swedish likes more than Fika-ing. Grab your favorite dessert and coffee and get creative in 10 minutes.

Dutch Niksen — — Niksen means doing Nothing. Niksen’s nurturing of your creativity comes from providing you with a comfortable space. Niksen’s actions include watching around and wandering. Niksen brings significant creativity opportunities by offering people’s mindful time. Japanese Izakaya culture — — Izakaya is culture beyond a place in Japan. Japanese people who socialize in Izakaya pubs after work can better focus on their job by relieving the day’s tiredness.

All of them lead us to a single thought as examples supporting a little “nap in the middle of work.” How can we use idleness more efficiently instead of being a harmful action?

Increase your quiet walking sessions

This mundane act we do every day is one of the most nurturing routines for creativity. Walking is a chain of rhythmic movements that move our mind and body at the same time. Even after a 5-minute walk, your mind works as if you brainstormed for an hour.

As you continue walking, you realize that it complements some missing pieces by one another. Walking gives you new insights. This autopilot action has a unique algorithm.

We know that famous thinkers, writers, and explorers throughout the ages also increased their creativity by walking. While Einstein took long walks on the beach to find solutions to complex problems in his mind, Charles Dickens found the inspiration for his novels on long night walks.

And in the 2000s, we come across Steve Jobs exchanging ideas with his colleagues while walking, using the walk to talk method. In all the examples, we see that walking unleashes our inner genius. So we have to walk more often to sharpen our creativity.

Use the mind-feeding daydreaming throughout the day

We can define daydreaming as the mind dreaming instead of focusing on the present while working during the day.

If you daydream while working on a project, complete it, and you can stop feeling bad. According to a Georgia Technology Institute’s study, if your mind frequently drifts into daydreaming, you can have an efficient mind.

According to the study data, they observed that those who said they dreamed more were more successful in jobs requiring creativity among the participants in the experiment. Their brain activity measured on the MRI machine also confirmed their more efficient brain activity.

So how can you use daydreams in your daily life?

Just as you take time for your routines, meal breaks, meditation, you will also spend time in daydreaming. Even if this is 10 minutes, it will save you from the monotonous, intense chaos of the day.

Takeaways

So far, we talked about the function of doing nothing more than being a “waste of time.” We have also seen how this cliché behavior, which sees as practically unnecessary, feeds our minds and contributes to our being more productive.

To summarize, to be more creative and productive;

• We must learn to make time for ourselves.
• We must feed our boredom.
• We must keep our breaks comfortable and wide.
• We must practice being idle and inspired by the relaxation tactics of people from different cultures.
• We must walk more
• We should add dreams during the day into our habits.

If you have lost your creativity and feel exhausted, get out of your mind and turn your attention to the lightness of doing nothing. Like I said, doing nothing can be a luxury. But you deserve this luxury, even if it is 1 day a week.