"We are all bored and everything is boring. Occupied 24/7, doing nothing at all. There is no sight more boring than someone staring at their phone. No gesture more boring than the flick, flick, flick of a scroll. No distress more boring than patting pockets. No panic more boring than 1% battery. No sound more boring than no one talking on the bus. No project more boring than self-help. No status more boring than unfinished”
"There is no suggestion more boring than 'be positive.' No belief more boring than work-life balance. No status more boring than overcommitted. No lie more boring then, I'll reply later. No habit more boring than forgetfulness. No list more boring than 'To Do.' No place more boring than a cafe that looks like an office. No office more boring than one trying to look life a cafe. No dilemma more boring than still underpaid. No diagnosis more boring than low-grade burnout. No excuse more boring than 'can't sorry, busy.' No emotion more boring than loneliness, by choice. No night more boring than a sleepless one. No worry more boring than that of tomorrow”
"When I was bored as a kid, I would nag my parents for something to do. That boredom was uncomfortable and unbearable. We wanted out ASAP. We would act in an instant to escape it. This new boredom is void of energy. It doesn't cause us to complain. We're not annoyed. We just take it, accepting it as the contemporary condition. Not interrogating. No caring. A new boredom. With none of the irritation and all of the discomfort. Except, we cannot dare say we are bored-so we pretend to be busy”
"We are as numbed by the busyness performance as we are the boredom. The busyness is as hypnotic as the boring....'Distraction provides the only relief from a perpetually incomplete to-do list. Not working becomes at least as tiring and incessant as working...Life gets linear, flattens out. No peaks or troughs. Just a monotonous hum of uninteresting apprehension. It's a tranquility not composed of stillness but restlessness. A restlessness that drives towards the perpetual hustle of simple distractions. Too tired for action, too wound-up to decompress. I'll float here somewhere in-between, inert but convincing myself something will happen eventually. Exhausted but bored. Exploited but grateful. Determined but distracted. Multi-tasking but burning out. We know the void. We bounce between its two sides. We live in the void. Our lies are the void. These are the contradictions that form its walls, that create the depth we try to fill. A consciously futile activity. This preoccupation provides no reprieve but at least denies any pain. How to break the hypnosis? What could rupture the monotony of bored-but-busy? Everyday surrealism. A prank. A challenge. An unexplainable strangeness. Anything absurd. Anything without reason"
"I'm so busy' could be the status signal of our time. Its products are the ear buds, the power banks, the multiple phones, the organizational apps-all the gadgets necessary for never-not-working. A fully equipped office on the go. Work anytime, anywhere. And when you're not working, status signal by keeping your headphones in. It's a thing. Your busy-tools allow every minute to be utilizable. Don't just stand there while commuting to work, listen to an informative podcast. Maximum productivity is a possibility, priority, and becomes a point of pride”
"Busyness took over from leisure and relaxation as the status to aim for. Remember when an aspirational life was advertised as one of wealth, relaxing by the pool or taking long drives in a convertible, wearing impractically beautiful clothes, and with jewelry and time for days? The visible landscape of an imposed aspirational life has changed to adverts depicting 'successful' working who, rather than having an abundance of leisure to their wealth, are time-deprived and valued for it. Slick, important, and powerful-far from haggard, these admirable individuals are 'making it.' Don't pity them. Busyness is brilliance”
"Under the hypnosis of living correctly, busyness bleeds from performance to reality and back again. It gets used for status and provides the perfect cover for the inner turmoil of precarious work-life. This unique form of turmoil combines could ('I could be working later tonight,' I could be working on a side project, too,' I could do a diving course at night', I could reach out to that person and ask to start a magazine together') with shoulds......into a muddled never-ending despair. Surrounded by busyness propaganda, we find ourselves pressed by that inescapable next question: am I busy enough? The safe answer is irrespective of fact. Either way, just pretend to be. Faking busy gets murky when you can no longer tell if it is automatic, inflicted, or by choice. Thing things one has to, could do, and should do provide an infinite array of possibilities to do, all unfolding under an environment that encourages that always-on mindset”
"A laptop can be a chain to work and tool for out-of-hours exploitation, but it is also a central tool to performative busyness. If you're behind it, you can be considered legitimately working. The exploited becomes the exploiter. If you were to do your "connecting phase" sitting at your desk flicking through magazines, or researching out on the streets, or even with the laptop closed getting lost in deep thought-the body language of that reads as "not working." Obviously, on the laptop one could be doing an infinity of un-work-related tasks, yet it will be perceived as working without question”
"Today, one must be "on it," always. This means side projects, important work, lots of social engagements...actually seeing your friends becomes less regular, since they know you're busy and they will still be there when you're "free." You're a person who has a lot going on and at the end of the day, they know you care. There is still that low-level constant communication: txts, comments, voice messages, emojis, likes. Those things acknowledge each other's existence and become the friendship's maintenance. You're not entirely absent. You're just busy”
"Of all the interesting people you've met in your life, we can speculate with likelihood that the ones who captivated you the most-those that left a lasting impression and remain firm in your memory-are all avid flaneuses and flaneurs. The flaneuse or flaneur was an essential figure to any street scene in 19th century France. Mega-bourgeois, flanerie was an act limited to those you could afford to wander the streets observing society with ambivalence. Stroller, lounger, saunterer, loafer....like today's less accepted "slacker," they were embodiments of the "Right to Do Nothing." A wanderer of city streets, detached from society while taking it all in. No plans. Eyes open. Give it a go. Spend no money. Carry no phone. Take to the streets and see what the day brings”
"Nobody is too far away (besides the dead). Write to the people you admire. Start a dialogue. Express yourself, be generous, ask for nothing. I wrote to Iggy Pop and he wrote back”
"Your self doesn't need to be helped. We are grand as we are, not perpetual works-in-progress”
"Discover. Engineered. Innovation. Purpose. Engaging. Game-changing. Disruptive....Get out of the hollow-vocal zone. Just because everyone else is saying it, doesn't mean you need to. These terms are overused and abused. We're desensitized to these words anyway”
"Pro weirdness, pro privacy, pro offline”
"The joy of hanging out, not doing much, someone cravings joke, killing time. These joys only some can afford, or can they? What would we change to have them?”
"In the same existence we can find, the right to laziness, the right to exhaustion, the right to sensuous slowness, the right to naivety and curiosity, the right to unproductively, the right to complain”
"When considering offline forms of creativity, does your mind begin blooming with ideas, or does it jump straight to the habit of asking somebody else for answers? Trust yourself”
"Solitude is a mind free from the input of other minds”
"Even in the most silent of moments, solitude can be compromised. It doesn't have to be another person that interrupts us. Even supposedly 'solitary' experiences - reading a book, listening to a podcast, or consuming content on a smartphone - can become experience that shatter our quiet contemplation and rob us of sustained attention”
"Perhaps obvious but not having a phone on us removes the risk of temptation. Plan evenings without it. Make it a joint venture with friends. Arrange meeting points and discuss the fact you won't have phones to reassure yourselves it will be okay. Even leaving the house with our phones buried in a bag can be a simple deterrent to prevent its automatic use”
"At first boredom can be scary. So can that voice of guilt that torments our insides with the panic of productivity...you know what's coming next: total radiant creativity. Original thought and effervescent ideas. To go offline provides us with the power to manifest all that lies within and gets little chance to come forth when distracted and drowned by inputs”
"Up for anything. This is the attitude to anti stay-home culture. Go to a concert before listening to the music online. Try a restaurant before reading the menu online or pre-checking photos of the plates. Experiment with life and see where the wind takes you”
"Avoid opinion pieces. Form your own opinion first, then discuss the topic with those around you, then perhaps see what other people are saying. Last step optional. The risk of exposing yourself to others' opinions is that you eradicate the chance for your own to form. Activate your own thoughts, ways, and connections. This is limiting input”
"Wear a watch. Rely on your phone as little as possible”
"Contemplate today's typical leisure time activities: watching tv, ordering in food, online shopping (Overnight delivery! Free returns!), interior decoration, perusing the bookstore...These activities are what present time consumerism looks like. And while we speak of them as leisure time activities, this gives them undue credit. These are not activities, they are more like passivities. We may feel active but in fact, just because we are doing something doesn't mean we are. All the activities above see us operating in the mode of 'having' which is a different mode of experience to that of 'being.' Can you think of an activity where you can actively be?”
"We are being moved away from our desire to get together and towards an increasingly individualized existence. This is the distraction that is diverting our innate, instinctual pull to one another. Our libidos are dampened. Our driving lust for life and for meeting physically is being dulled (this is and isn't about sexual encounters). We can call it loss of erotic want of people over goods. A drive to have elegant possessions over being receptive to the world”