Zomorodi starts with her personally story, where she tells the audience about how her son and the iPhone were born only three weeks apart. Instead of taking her journaling career further, travelling and using this brand new masterpiece of technology, she was spending most of her time tending to her son. Her son had be colicky, restless, fidgety, unless she walked him in his stroller down the street. Zomorodi, says, by the third month her mind started to wonder about what she would do when she finally was able to sleep and rest again. That time came, and she was able to get herself that magic smartphone. Starting her dream job as a radio host, she pondered how she could draw in a bigger audience, or topics to speak about. Unfortunately, she was clueless to the wall in front of her. The journalist couldn’t think of any tangible or good ideas, and her mind started to drift back to when she had good ideas in the past. When she was walking with her restless infant.
She hypothesized boredom to be linked with creativity, and endless flows of ideas. To confirm this, she spoke with neuroscientist Sandi Mann, who validated her idea. Mandi concluded, “Once you start daydreaming and allow your mind to really wander, you start thinking a little bit beyond the conscious, a little bit into the subconscious, which allows sort of different connections to take place.” With this new information, Zomorodi goes on to explain how she began to see her phone as a block to this state of daydreaming. Checking her emails, updating google documents, looking at new headlines, those tasks were occupying her time that she could have spent thinking of deeper questions in life, or creative processes waiting to be unearthed.
That is where the podcast author started her newest project, Bored and Brilliant. This would be a week of challenges to disconnect oneself from their device, and start to think deeper into different aspects of their life. The results of these challenges would then be taken to neuroscientists and data analysts, who would see if the average person's phone time had decreased. It began with simple instructions, such as putting your phone in your pocket for the day. Challenge partakers admitted to feeling loneliness, or the itching need to check something to replace the boredom. However, some participants felt an increase of creativity, and began to spend their time more wisely reflecting on theirself, or doing activities to promote their wellbeing. Despite the number of people who had felt freed from their chamber of boredom, the numbers were found out to have only cut down phone-time by six minutes. Zomorodi felt disappointed that her experiment hadn’t done much, but the scientists reassured her that it was a feat rarely accomplished. In such a short amount of time, that amount of process was made! It was alievating to her. In the end, the participants of Bored and Brilliant cut down their minuted by ninety percent, and seventy percent said they had more time to think.
Zomorodi, a journalist and mother began this podcast with the thought in mind to make a profit and expressed herself, but her curiosity lead her into thinking deeper about our brain activity and time spent focusing on creativity. With her challenges and data, and the help of scientists and statistical analysts, she came to the conclusion that phones and technology are becoming distractions that block our creativity. Using her podcast, she offered a challenge to her faithful listeners who delivered, and in all, created a beautiful TED talk.
I found this personally interesting as somebody who is attached to their phone. That tiny little box is basically my lifeline, as I don’t have lots of people in real life to speak to. It fills my days from loneliness and boredom, but I disagree with Zomorodi on a personal scale. Generally, I agree with her and her statistics, and found her data valid. People seem to be too attached to their phone when they have more to do, or better things to fill their time with, yet the internet is still used by lonely people who try to fill their extra, empty time with some form of socialization or laughter. I learned a lot about the mind and it’s cognitive state, and the staggering statistics that revealed the truth of today’s generation. It was interesting to learn about how our mind goes into that state of boredom to alleviate stress and promote creativity. Furthermore, this is relevant to our class even, as it illustrates how technology may be beautiful, but it is also an addictive tool. The TED talk highlights how we should be conscious of the way we spend our time, and the way our creativity and important values are impacted by the amount of time we spend distracting ourselves rather than using that boredom to our advantage.
TL;DR: Zomorodi created a challenge on her podcast to put down your phone for a week, and it led to amazing results in data about brain activity, distractions and creativity. I thought it was interesting, but disagreed with her on a personal level due to my use, and my friends' use, of technology to social and express ourselves. The data about brain activity was interesting to me, and I think it's important for us, especially in a media class, to take time to reflect on how we spend our time daily.
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