You’re bored, yet "wired"

Happy Thursday,

My coach recently asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks: Kenny, when was the last time you were bored? I could not answer. More scarily, it made me think how I tend to ‘feel’ boredom, despite my days often being surgically packed with work and life commitments. That question landed hard. Most of us have a life designed where our mind never has to sit, unoccupied, for more than thirty seconds. Even the thought of doing nothing feels like a ‘waste of time’. The right kind of boredom is not the enemy, but the wrong kind certainly is. Let’s explore.

🧠 LEARN something.

Psychologists describe boredom as the state of wanting to be mentally engaged but finding the present situation under-stimulating or meaningless. In theory, that’s fertile ground where creativity and insight can emerge. In practice, most leaders treat that boredom feeling as an ‘efficiency error’ that needs fixing with another meeting or a more meaningful task that needs input. In fact, I personally know a leader who will literally turn on their laptop in the middle of a group meeting and get on with other work, because they find the content of the meeting uninteresting and meaningless, and because they are busy. In reality, there is also an in-between state that is even worse: you being bored by meaningless tasks yet still overstimulated by the sheer volume of those tasks. Including constant notifications, emails and low-level noise. The result is the worst of both worlds. Your work feels boring, but your brain never drops into the quieter state to generate original thinking. You are neither fully “on” nor truly “off,” just mentally jet-lagged.

The more senior you are, the more you need to give your brain a chance to consolidate, integrate, anticipate, and make connections. Boredom, used intentionally, is structured slack in your brain. Some additional bandwidth where meaning and sense can catch up with what’s happening. There is experimental evidence behind this too, like a study published in the Creativity Research Journal in 2014 where participants who completed deliberately dull tasks before idea-generation exercises produced more creative outputs than control groups. The boredom primed their minds to search for novelty. Boredom, used intentionally, gives you the additional bandwidth to think and make decisions. When you are bored and overstimulated at the same time, it is a signal that your calendar is full of work that does not deserve your level of cognition, while your best thinking never gets protected conditions to emerge. A state of bored, yet wired.

🤔 REFLECT on an idea.

That coaching question, “When were you last bored?”, goes deeper when you are stuck in the “bored yet wired” trap. Tasks drain your focus with shallow noise, yet constant pings and switches block the quiet your brain craves to connect ideas. Protect that space, or your sharpest thinking stays starved.

😊 SMILE a little.

I love a good productivity hack! Nothing makes me feel more accomplished
than colour-coding work I’m still avoiding 😂

✅ DO IT to get results.

This week, run one tightly defined experiment. Open your calendar and add 3x 20-minute blocks. Call them space to think. I know… ‘blocking out space’ sounds like cliché advice, so I am going to go one further and suggest three questions so the space feel meaningful and not a waste of time. No phone, no email, just a notebook and a question:

• Block 1 (Postponing): “What important conversation am I postponing on because I am ‘too busy’?” Schedule it straight after.

• Block 2 (Protecting): “What recurring task leaves me bored yet wired, that I need to protect my brain from?” Delegate, streamline, or batch it so it no longer fragments your attention across the week.

• Block 3 (Procrastinating): “What decision am I procrastinating that would free the most mental energy if I made it now?” Decide it.

The aim is simple. Build space on purpose. Use it to think. Then act. If you do not design margin, busyness will design it for you.

🌱 How we can support you and your team.

We provide strategic leadership solutions tailored to align with your business strategy, size, and budget. We can support your with:

• 1:1 Leadership and Performance Coaching

• Team Coaching, for high performing teams

• 1:1 Health & Lifestyle Coaching for busy stressed leaders.

• Workshops, offsites and team development.

• Or our flagship individual Leadership Coaching Programs.

Kia pai tō wiki

Kenny Bhosale

CEO & Founder, The Bridge Leaders