A one hour drive turned into six. By the end, I was grateful for it.
I dropped my son at the Vancouver train station and started the drive to Whistler, normally a leisurely one hour drive. I stopped for a hike to a waterfall on the way and jumped back on the highway.
Fifteen minutes later, the highway became a parking lot. I figured it was a stalled car and we would be moving soon. I checked my phone, no signal.
The boredom hit fast. I had one audio book downloaded, good for an hour or two.
Two hours in, still not moving, I got out of the car and stretched. People were starting to get out of their cars, hunting for pee spots, asking others for water.
I did not handle it well. I was impatient. I swore at my phone, trying to get the map to load. Once I realized my phone could no longer entertain me, I did some meditation, finished the audio book, and mostly just sat in silence, impatient and bored out of my mind.
People starting turning back to Vancouver so we all moved a little bit. I got one bar of signal and called Kerri. She found out that there was a terrible head on collision. The investigation was ongoing with both lanes closed.
This news ended my pity party. Families were getting the worst news of their lives right now. My boredom was not a problem, it was a gift.
The sun went down and the temperature dropped below freezing. Thankfully I had half a tank of gas, a liter of water and a couple snacks. My mind got creative as it wandered.
Five hours later, we started moving.
But the lesson keeps on giving.
THE SCIENCE
When your brain has nothing specific to do, it doesn't turn off. It switches into the default mode network, a system of interconnected regions that activate during rest, mind-wandering, and unstructured thought.
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang at USC, writing in Perspectives on Psychological Science (2012), described this network as essential to the kind of thinking that defines human intelligence including self-reflection, empathy, future planning, and creative insight. These are not outputs of your focused work brain. They are outputs of your rested, wandering brain.
The default mode network activates when you stop feeding your brain with nonstop information. Every time you reach for your phone, open a browser tab, or fill a quiet moment with a podcast, you short-circuit the process. You're keeping the engine running and not letting it idle. A motor that never idles has a short life.
For leaders who run back-to-back meetings, consume information constantly, and treat idle time as wasted time, this has a real cost. The strategic thinking, pattern recognition, and creative problem-solving is the work we are actually paid for and it is default mode network output.
Run with no idle time and you starve the system that does your best thinking.
THE TAKEAWAY
Boredom is not a failure in productivity. It's a signal that your brain is about to do something useful. Connecting ideas, seeing around corners, and generating novel solutions happens in the spaces between tasks, not during them. Protecting those spaces is a leadership skill.
YOUR EDGE THIS WEEK
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Leave your phone behind for one meal this week. Not on silent. Not face down. Leave it in another room. See what your brain does without the option to reach for it.
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Add a 10-minute no-input window after your longest meeting of the day. No phone, no email, no podcast. Walk outside or sit somewhere quiet. Stare at the wall. Consider it work, not a break.
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Notice the discomfort when nothing is competing for your attention and stay with it instead of reaching for a screen. That discomfort is your brain learning to idle again. It gets easier.
No six hour traffic jam required.
Be well,
Eric
P.S. Want to build more of these gaps into your week on purpose? Try my Calendar Coding Exercise.
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