I've been thinking about this very recently. I have hit my chess goal (huzzah!), and have belatedly realized just how much time I was spending on chess. For various reasons, I don't see it as useful to spend that time now that I've hit the goal, so I am left with a lot more time in my day than I used to have... for a while.
Some days there is a work emergency and the extra time goes away. But I've had days with room to breathe, now. And the main thing I've noticed so far is that the space to breathe, the relaxation of dipping into boredom, unclenches my brain and makes it easier to do the hard things that I want to do. I went back to my game without the subconscious fear that the next thing I write will not be as good as what I have written recently, that I'm about to fall off a cliff. I've been asked some hard science questions this week and felt like I could work through them fully instead of reaching for the easy way out. I can pick up a book and get lost in it instead of racing through to the next chapter.
(Incidentaly, on unclenching -- I was practicing break falls out of kotegaishi in aikido yesterday, and they felt close, but not quite there. The nage stopped me: you're clenching your way into the fall. Just let go. Easy enough to say, just let go into falling over yourself at high speed. But, perhaps empowered with more space for my brain to relax, I tried letting go, and suddenly I was break falling without fear. I think it's the same kind of thing you talk about in your post, boredom enabling us to let go, which is hard to do when we're fried, and opens paths that our eternal busyness closes off to us).
Here's to boredom!
I've been thinking about this very recently. I have hit my chess goal (huzzah!), and have belatedly realized just how much time I was spending on chess. For various reasons, I don't see it as useful to spend that time now that I've hit the goal, so I am left with a lot more time in my day than I used to have... for a while.
Some days there is a work emergency and the extra time goes away. But I've had days with room to breathe, now. And the main thing I've noticed so far is that the space to breathe, the relaxation of dipping into boredom, unclenches my brain and makes it easier to do the hard things that I want to do. I went back to my game without the subconscious fear that the next thing I write will not be as good as what I have written recently, that I'm about to fall off a cliff. I've been asked some hard science questions this week and felt like I could work through them fully instead of reaching for the easy way out. I can pick up a book and get lost in it instead of racing through to the next chapter.
(Incidentaly, on unclenching -- I was practicing break falls out of kotegaishi in aikido yesterday, and they felt close, but not quite there. The nage stopped me: you're clenching your way into the fall. Just let go. Easy enough to say, just let go into falling over yourself at high speed. But, perhaps empowered with more space for my brain to relax, I tried letting go, and suddenly I was break falling without fear. I think it's the same kind of thing you talk about in your post, boredom enabling us to let go, which is hard to do when we're fried, and opens paths that our eternal busyness closes off to us).