Space Out to Create

For Writers with ADHD, Learning to Tolerate Boredom Can Boost Creativity

I’ve written hundreds of articles as a journalist, and the process is always straightforward: find a topic, gather the facts, and arrange them in a compelling way, the chief aim being to impart information. If the subject intrigues me, this never fails. But when I try to shift to creative nonfiction or fiction—I often hit a wall. It’s not that journalism isn’t creative, but it’s a matter of curating and organizing details in a logical, persuasive way. More innovative writing requires an ability I’m only beginning to develop: to let my brain run on idle long enough to see where my imagination might take me.

That’s a skill writers like me—those with ADHD—find exceedingly difficult: to still our minds and let thoughts arise. For us, that’s a prescription for boredom, which is our nemesis. So the notion that we have to quiet our minds to let the magic of writing happen makes us want to jump out of our skin.

The ADHD-Boredom Paradox

It sounds like a paradox: vulnerability to boredom is a characteristic of ADHD, yet those of us who have ADHD are seldom bored. It makes sense, though, because since we find tedium so onerous, we’ll do almost anything to avoid it. We’ll pick up our phones, play a video game, binge-watch a series on Netflix, check our email, even if we just checked it five minutes ago.

But if we stuff all our waking hours with purposeful activity and entertainment to evade tedium we deprive ourselves of a powerful catalyst for creative thought, because monotony, research tells us, is an incubator for inspiration and imagination. A considerable body of research demonstrates the generative and restorative power of boredom. Psychologists at Pennsylvania State University, for example, found that bored experiment participants performed better than others in creativity tests. And at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK, psychologists Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman observed that individuals demonstrated greater inventiveness after engaging in a tedious task.

According to Mann, researcher and author of The Science of Boredom: The Upside (and Downside) of Downtime, boredom isn’t a matter of having nothing to do. It’s a matter of having nothing desirable to do. It’s a negative feeling related to an inability to find adequate stimulation. Everyone toggles between two states of arousal. If our brains are overstimulated, we may feel stressed and anxious. If they’re under stimulated, we feel bored.

But whereas boredom in neurotypical people might produce weariness or even deep discomfort, for people with ADHD it can cause dread, overwhelming frustration, and a sensation nearly akin to physical pain. That’s because we have an interest-based nervous system and a higher setpoint for stimulation.

In the classic book ADHD 2.0, experts Edward M. Hallowell, MD, and John J. Ratey, MD, explain that boredom is kryptonite, an “archenemy” to people with ADHD. As soon as we feel bored, “we reflexively, instantaneously, automatically and without conscious thought seek stimulation. We don’t care what it is, we just have to address the mental energy—the brain pain—that boredom sets off.”

We have lower levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which contributes to anxiety, impatience, depression, and an inability to tolerate frustration. We also struggle with executive functions—cognitive processes including task initiation, attention, emotional regulation, time management, organization, planning, focus, working memory, and motivation. To avoid this pileup, we may relentlessly pursue stimulation that triggers the release of dopamine, never letting our minds rest long enough to our imagination free.

Neurotypical People Aren’t Immune

People with ADHD may do so incessantly, but even neurotypical individuals increasingly rely on their devices and apps to ward off tedium. But monotony and distraction existed long before the advent of technology, and while no—everyone is not “a little ADHD”—everyone finds boredom unpleasant. Augustin de la Peña, PhD, whose career-long research was collected in Boredom Experience and Associated Behaviors, argued that the need to relieve boredom motivates most human behavior. In 1930, philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that “at least half the sins of mankind” are caused by the fear of boredom.

And Fyodor Dostoyevsky may have taken poetic license when he claimed that boredom “sets one sticking golden pins into people,” but scientists suggest he wasn’t far off. In one study, researchers discovered that most participants found it so unpleasant to be left in a room alone with nothing to do that they’d rather give themselves electric shocks. Painful stimulation was preferable to no stimulation. What’s so insufferable, the scientists concluded, was the pressure of having to “just think.”

Craig Mod, author of Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir, acknowledges the distress we experience when left with nothing but our own thoughts. Writing in LitHub, he observes that most people “have never so much attempted to dip in a ladle, let alone dive down into those uncomfortable waters made accessible through boredom.”

The Creativity Catalyst

If it’s so unpleasant, why should we force ourselves to “just think?” Why should we dive into those uncomfortable waters and sit with our potentially troubling thoughts? Because, it turns out, a little bit of discomfort can have a valuable payoff. Boredom, Mod explains, is the “great engine of creativity.” Philosopher and poet Friedrich Nietzsche called it “The unpleasant calm that precedes creative acts.” While chronic boredom can lead to a host of ailments, including depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behaviors, regular, brief, transient periods of tedium improve mental health and boost creativity.

When we’re focused on a task, our brains work hard. When we’re done, they slip into a replenishing state. But while it may seem that the brain is on pause, it’s actually quite busy; its different parts are working in concert in what’s known as the default mode network (DMN). Believed to be more active in creative people, the network is especially triggered when we’re bored—when, for example, we act as if on autopilot—washing the dishes, folding the laundry, or taking a walk.

Manoush Zomorodi, author of the book Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive & Creative Self, explains in a TED Talk that it’s in this mode that we solve difficult problems and stitch together disparate ideas. Flashes of insight appear to emerge out of the blue, but they’re being engineered by background mental processing.

With nothing vying for our attention—no compelling external source of stimulation—our minds look inward for arousal, directing our attention to our own thoughts and feelings. That shift from external to internal stimulation prompts what some experts call purposeful daydreaming—thought that’s independent of stimulus. This self-referential thought, our inner voice, becomes more dominant the more bored we are.

In this idle, detached state, we’re able to envision and re-vision, are more receptive to insights and epiphanies, and less likely to be self-critical or self-conscious. In the DMN, our brains cast around for new ideas, reminiscence, consolidate memories, weave disparate creative threads and find solutions to problems.

So it’s in those moments when we’re able to tolerate the discomfort of passively “just thinking” that the alchemy of writing happens.

As poet and author Maggie Smith told Jessica Nordell in a Who Are We To Each Other interview, “I’m no neuroscientist, but my very unscientific hunch is that when part of your brain is occupied with something menial, other parts kick into gear. Maybe it’s a bit like, ‘When the cat’s away, the mice will play.’ Part of your thinking is otherwise occupied, and play happens in the space that opens up.”

That’s certainly what happened for J.K. Rowling, who, while she was staring out of the window of a train that was delayed, conjured a boy wizard who goes to wizarding school. “Harry Potter and Hogwarts came out of nowhere in the most physical rush of excitement,” she remembered, “and ideas came teeming into my head.” She had no pen, nowhere to go, and nothing else to do for hours. All she could do was let her imagination run free.

How to Invite Boredom

If you learn to tolerate brief periods of boredom regularly, you, too, may enhance your ability to summon characters, develop plots, and build imaginative worlds. It’s a practice that can benefit all writers, though one that those of us with ADHD may find tough to master, like meditating. Not everyone will be able to do it, but those who persevere may find it will take their writing to a new level.

Unlike mindfulness, which encourages focused attention, the goal here is to encourage mind-wandering. These suggestions may help.

Set the stage: The first step, not surprisingly, is to put away devices and remove all distractions. A ritual might help—lighting a candle or ringing a starting chime. And consider rewarding yourself afterward.

Make time for it: Scheduling isn’t an ADHD strength, so try to stack the habit with something routine, like a workout. A bonus is that it’s easier to let your mind relax when you’re tired. Similarly, some people find it easier to disengage after meditating.

Build up to it: Begin with a minute or two and work up. If you do that regularly, you’ll find you can extend the amount of time you can unwind without excessive discomfort.

Don’t fight it: If you find yourself resisting, it may help to adapt a technique used in addiction treatment called urge surfing—acknowledging but not acting on uncomfortable feelings. Observe them rising and falling like waves and understand they’re temporary. Remember, it will get easier the more you practice.

Don’t take it literally: You don’t have to sit still. You can move, fidget, even exercise.

Experiment: Find ways to disengage from stimulation such as doing mundane activities without entertainment—no music, podcasts, or audiobooks. (Those of us with ADHD are likely to quickly forget an insight that arises during one of these sessions so it can help to have your phone close enough so you can ask Siri to take a note, but not so near that you can grab it and get distracted.) Following are some ways to get bored out of your mind…in a good way.

• Each morning, stay in bed as long as possible doing nothing. Writer Ling Ling Huang, manages to do this for one to two hours a day, “holding space for any thoughts that want to arise.” In “Against Algorithms: Why Tuning Out is an Essential Part of the Creative Process,” When she began doing this regularly, she writes, “All kinds of thoughts began to burble….” That’s more than most of us can manage, but even ten minutes can be helpful.

• Find a quiet spot in your house, if possible near an open window, or find a park bench in a quiet area. Make yourself comfortable and watch the world go by.

• Take a walk in nature. For the first few minutes, you’ll be stimulated by sights and sounds, but before long your mind will begin to wander.

• Do something outdoors that requires little if no conscious thought, such as gardening or raking leaves.

• Indoors, stack mindless housekeeping tasks like washing dishes, folding laundry, tidying your sock drawer.

• Do something repetitive that keeps your hands busy, like knitting, doodling, or whittling.

• Take a long shower. The list of writers who claim to have gotten their best ideas while showering is legendary. It so famously sparks epiphanies that it’s known as “the shower effect.”

To get the benefits of boredom, add doing nothing to your to-do list. Give yourself permission to daydream. Sit and stare out the window. Space out. Who knows, you may be visited by the hero of your next book

This post has no affiliate links or AI-generated copy.