Kyle Steed is bored. He wants your kids to be bored. And he’s going to tell them how.
Steed is a Dallas artist who has written a children’s book titled A Kids Book About Boredom. He may be the only person in North Texas, maybe even the world, who describes himself as “passionate” about boredom. He says boredom makes him a better artist, makes his kids healthier, and makes all of us screen-soaked Americans a little saner.
I visit Steed in his Oak Cliff studio, an airy brick room where a breeze blows through warehouse windows. One wall is all white, with several large paintings, some of them unfinished, I think. There is a computer at a standing desk. Some plants. A bicycle. A hand-drawn poster reading, “I’m blue. Who are you?”
In the center of the room, a table is piled with paintings and open books, not like the workspace of an overtaxed mind; more like a visual stream of consciousness. Ideas left open, leading one to another.
Boredom is part of Steed’s creative method. It’s a practice, he tells me, his eyes searching for understanding through the bright blue frames of his glasses.
“I think we could all benefit from times of — call it boredom, call it stillness, call it quietness — just a moment of solace, a moment of solitude that isn’t having to be filled with screen time or with emails or with phone calls or meetings,” Steed says, and I can tell that quoting him is going to be difficult because, like an unhurried mind, there aren’t many full stops in his thinking. “Because we’re not robots. We’re not designed to be constantly churning and creating.”
Steed says his passion and his book were born out of his own boredom, both now and as a kid.
“I grew up in front of the TV. TV probably helped raise me at certain points. I was raised with a single mom,” Steed says. “If I’m looking honestly I’m like, yeah, that was my life. I just didn’t have those safe boundaries. It’s part of my lived experience.”
Now, Steed has two children of his own, girls ages 5 and 8. His wife, Amanda, earned a master’s degree last year and is studying to be a therapist. But even with a therapist and a boredom evangelist, the Steed parents struggle to practice what the book preaches.
“The screens! It’s a constant push and pull with trying to set healthy boundaries, encouraging free time, play time, getting into their imaginations,” he says. “But it’s so important. When I look back on my own childhood, those were the most powerful, really formidable moments.”
What Steed has written about, based on his own experience and intuition, is supported by much more scientific sources. Julie Fratantoni is a cognitive neuroscientist at the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas at Dallas. She says boredom activates a part of the brain called the Default Mode Network. (Throughout our interview, she uses the acronym DMN, which stands out to me because of my employer. Also because of my employer, I’m avoiding jokes about the connection between DMN and boredom. Fill in your own.)
Actually, DMN is not one part of the brain, but a network of parts, as the name suggests. Fratantoni says that network “comes online” when we are not actively engaged in anything. When we daydream or let our minds wander, we’re using the DMN. For that reason, the DMN is also called the “imagination network,” and it’s really good at producing insight — what Oprah calls “aha moments.”
“That’s why, when you take a break and go for a walk, that’s when it hits you,” Fratantoni said. “Or when you’re taking a shower or walking the dog or driving somewhere — when you’re not actively engaged in thinking through something, that’s when insight happens. That’s DMN.”
Fratantoni encourages a rhythm called 5x5, a five-minute break, five times a day. This isn’t the same thing as mindfulness, which seeks to be aware of thoughts and feelings in the present. It’s more like a break from the present.
“Your brain needs to rest, but it can recharge quickly,” she said.
For Steed, boredom isn’t really about breaks from the rat race; it’s about staring down his fear. In boredom, he says, he becomes aware of his fear of failure, fear of the future, fear of the unknown.
It’s like the intimidating feeling of standing in front of a blank canvas, or worse, an enormous blank wall. Steed’s work is mostly murals. He draws colorful shapes, interconnected lines, angular faces and bold lettering. He has painted on walls at Globe Life Field, and at offices of such companies as Google, Facebook, Warby Parker, Lululemon and Hotel Zaza. His first mural was on a mirror at Eno’s Pizza in Bishop Arts. Steed says every blank wall is a bully.
“It still stares me down every time. Every wall I stand in front of before I get started, it’s staring back at me asking me, ‘Alright what are you going to do?’ That’s why I call it a practice. The only way to become a professional. Practice doesn’t take away that fear but it alleviates the immensity. If I make one mark I’ve broken through that barrier.”
Steed isn’t creative because he’s bored. That’s an oversimplification, according to James Danckert, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo and the co-author of Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom.
Danckert said there have been a few studies that indicate a causal relationship between boredom and creativity, but he called them “poorly designed” with “flawed logic.” It’s more accurate to say that creative people like Steed have fostered creative outlets for their boredom. They practice responding to boredom with agency.
Danckert argues that the idea of agency is important to understanding boredom. It’s why, he says, a child can complain to his parent of boredom, but whenever the parent suggests activities to relieve the boredom (Go ride your bike. Read a book. Do a puzzle.) the child will reject each of them: “I don’t want to do that. That’s boring.”
What’s really happening there, Danckert explains, is that the child is seeking to establish his autonomy. Boredom comes from situations where we don’t have the freedom to act in the world in ways that originate from us. So when your boss gives you a task, you’re bored. But when your boss gives you an area of responsibility, you’re motivated.
In that way, Steed’s book is a terrific tool for kids to discover, but it’s not a great idea for parents to make them read it, Danckert says.
There is a dark side to boredom, too. Danckert says studies have found a correlation between proneness to boredom and higher rates of depression. Boredom proneness is also associated with what Danckert calls maladaptive responses to boredom — things like compulsive gambling, drug and alcohol abuse and, increasingly, addiction to smartphones.
That’s another thing Steed knows by intuition.
“This,” he says, pointing to my phone which is sitting on the table in his studio, recording our talk, “has power because it makes us feel we’re not alone. It gives us this false sense of connection and identity … but we end up getting sucked into this portal, this vortex, this thing. An hour or two or more can just fly by. That’s why I’m so passionate about creating this space.”
A few days after my visit with Steed, I have an aha moment of my own while, of course, walking the dog. I realize that Steed thinks this way because it has always been artists who are the least frightened of the boredom abyss. It takes so much inner work to write a song or a sonnet or a novel.
It was Leo Tolstoy who called boredom “the desire for desires.” And it was Alanis Morissette who asked listeners, “Why are you so petrified of silence?” And then after the silence asked, “Did you think about your bills, your ex, your deadlines, or when you think you’re going to die? Or did you long for the next distraction?”
In our hyperconnected world, the next distraction is never far away. It’s usually in your pocket.
In his book, Steed admits, “It took me a long time to learn to embrace boredom. But when I finally did, I realized that it was kind of like a superpower.”
It’s encouraging to think that maybe we all have that superpower, that we have enough of whatever it is we need to get through a week of deadlines, diapers or doomscrolling. Or maybe we should skip that last bit.
And that’s the final, ironic twist to what I learned from interviewing these brilliant, boring people who care about this issue: You have to leave room for serendipity. If I add boredom as another item on my to-do list, I’m missing the point, and probably the benefit. Creative thinking can be a byproduct of boredom, but not the direct product.
So what’s the upshot? What should we do with this information about boredom? (Other than buying Steed’s book.) How should we live so that boredom can find us when it needs to?
I’m gonna think about that right now. While I walk the dog.
