Studies in Stupidity: Why boredom is dangerous

Read time 4m35s

This is the first issue of Studies in Stupidity, When we asked the question “Would you be interested in an occasional longer story,” 85% of you said “yes.” So, please send me comments, emails, likes, or whatever feedback you have to help shape this new product. Thank you, GP.

Believe it or not, boredom is an evolutionary defense mechanism. If our brains were never bored, then we would always be excited and interested in everything we see and experience.

Our inability to separate important and non-important tasks could be fatal. It’s good that watching paint dry doesn’t excite us. It’s boring. But seeing a mountain lion on our weekly hike, well that’s important and our brains tell us “Not boring, pay attention!”

On a larger scale, boredom affects all our lives, especially in our careers. How many times have you said or heard someone say, “I think it’s time for a change.” A perfectly rational train of thought.

But what about when career boredom creates problems for you? There are numerous examples of this all around us, but let’s focus on some of the more high-profile ones.

First, it was the girlfriends. Olivia Munn, Danica Patrick, and Shailene Woodley to name a few. All glamorous and all in the media every week – and so was Rodgers. So much for being just a hall of fame quarterback. Rodgers got bit by the media bug. Throw in his guest-hosting gig on Jeopardy, his State Farm ads, his highly scrutinized evasiveness on whether he was vaccinated against COVID, and suddenly, Aaron Rodgers was everywhere

Next was the hair. The clean-cut star quarterback grew out shoulder-length hair and started sporting a man-bun.

My favorite was his darkness retreat. I guess the media attention from everything else was not enough, so he announced he was going on a five-day darkness retreat to decide on his future. The purpose of the retreat:

To have a better sense of where I'm at in my life and surrender to whatever thoughts come through.

As the sportscasters who cover Rodgers would say, C’mon man!

Rodgers got bored and wanted to be somebody else. There is nothing wrong with that at all. I applaud him for it, except for the fact that he lost his way as a quarterback. In the 2022 season, after many of these “distractions” had come and gone – and a few that were still ongoing -- Rodgers ranked 18^th out of 25 quarterbacks rated by Fox Sports, his lowest ranking in nearly a decade. To torture a pun, he took his eye off the ball.

As the Chiefs have become one of America’s favorite teams and a Super Bowl contender every year, Kelce’s relationship with Taylor Swift became one of the dominant story lines of the 2023 NFL season.

So, there were Kelce and Swift being photographed and recorded every time they shared french fries or dabbed whip cream on each other’s noses. Gimme a break! There was Taylor Swift in the skybox rooting for the Chiefs every week. Kelce groomed the obligatory celebrity mustache and spent the NFL offseason following Swift around the world on her Eras Tour. Who can blame him? Who doesn’t want to be a rock star?  

If all this weren’t enough, throw in the Kelce-Swift appearances at the U.S. Open Tennis matches and the New York Yankees playoff game – both in September and October in New York. But aren’t September and October the heart of the football season, when players are watching films all week, lifting weights, and trying to gain every conceivable edge over that week’s opponent? Maybe Kelce was working remotely or something.

Maybe the answer to “Do you wanna be a rock star” is this: If you are under contract with an NFL team to perform as a tight end, play tight end, win Super Bowls, then worry about the rock star gig when you retire. Try to do both? Good luck.

For example, prior to the 2024 season, Kelce averaged 93 catches and 7+ touchdowns per season. After the Eras Tour, the mustache, the non-stop pitchman thing, and the New York appearances, Kelce is on pace for less than 80 catches this season and has yet to have a touchdown reception. This is what boredom will do to a stellar career.

In today’s world of doomscrolling, infinite video options, non-stop tweets, and attention spans that have shrunk from 12 seconds to eight seconds since the internet went mainstream, if you have the ability to get people’s attention – if you can get the clicks and likes and eyeballs – you have the gold. Who cares about scholarly research or if you have something meaningful to say? Nobody does.

And that’s the temptation that this generation of athletes and entertainers face: I can earn several times my annual salary in off-field promotions. These opportunities did not exist 20 years ago. Most athletes were happy supplementing their on-field income by pushing a cheesy ad for the local car dealership.

So, what did Bezos do next? Amazon decided it needed to get into the video business. Hollywood! Bright Lights! Movie Stars! Not exactly what Bezos spent 30 years building. He got bored with being one of the most revolutionary businesspeople in the world, hired a personal trainer, got buff, dumped his wife of 25 years, and is now engaged to Lauren Sanchez, a Hollywood “news” reporter. (Full disclosure: As a young man, I sat next to a young Lauren Sanchez on a coast-to-coast flight and then tuned in for the first and only time to watch her on Showbiz Tonight. No, she didn’t call me or anything after our flight.)

Bezos remade himself into a movie mogul. Good for him. But he also had a management succession plan in place and Amazon remains a juggernaut as its founder pursued his media career and his passion for space by getting heavily involved in his space-travel company, Blue Origin.

We all get bored. But how we manage that boredom is critical to the survival of our careers and, potentially, our most precious personal relationships. When we get bored and start to drift away from the core mission -- like throwing or catching passes in the NFL -- there is no way we can split our concentration, stamina, and force-of-will across disciplines: something will break, and it could cost you a job or relationship.

Key Takeaways

1. Learn to recognize the early warning signs of boredom: not fired up about going to work, spending most of the day doomscrolling, etc., and get ahead of it. Take some time off and reflect on what you have in hand (a good career) and think about the consequences of getting fired for screwing up because of your daydreaming.

2. Maybe consider a side hustle, an “avocation” to go along with your vocation, but understand the difference. It keeps your mind fresh and might even bring in a few bucks. Once the side hustle starts consuming more than, say, 10 hours a week, it’s time to make a decision: keep it small and fun or quit your day job and go all-in. But do not get stuck in the middle. As a traditional Japanese proverb would have it: he who chases two rabbits catches neither.

3. The overall key is self-awareness: see your own boredom for exactly what it is. This is also what friends and mentors are for, to help you understand your situation in the right context. Aaron Rodgers and Travis Kelce clearly need mentors to remind them how good they have (had?) it. If the advice you are getting from friends, family, and mentors requires you to think deeply about where you are -– you don’t need a darkness retreat, but take a long walk around the block, come back, and realize that your best life might be the one you’re living right now.

#TaylorSwift #TravisKelce #AaronRodgers #JeffBezos
Thanks to JD Kleinke for editorial review of this post

Popular Posts