Yo, I'm Cyrus North, I'm a French creator.
I talk about many things on my channel, but mostly philosophy
in many ways.
Three months ago, I went to Kathmandu in Nepal.
I went for isolation, ten days.
Ten days of complete silence, ten days of no internet, no TV, no smartphone
no books, no pen, no paper, just you and your mind.
It's pretty difficult, it's a war against yourself.
Against your thoughts, against boredom.
And your mind wants to escape so bad that you start seeing things that don't exist.
Like, I was facing the wall, I was seeing it and I was seeing letters
because of the shape of the paint or when I was closing my eyes
I could see GIFs all of a sudden, like cats.
Or for instance, a human walking shape, abstract
which was really weird.
When I was looking at my body, I was seeing a snake all around it
trying to eat me.
It was so realistic that, as strange as it might sound
it was beautiful.
I did this twice.
And each time, it really gave me a lot of ideas about my channel, my shows
and obviously my life.
Was I the only one who gets creativity out of boredom?
Hell no.
Dr. Sandi Mann led an experiment.
She took 40 people and she asked them a very exciting task
take a phone directory and copy phone numbers.
So this is really boring.
She asked them to play and to come up with different uses
of a pair of polystyrene cups.
She took another 40 people that just had to play with the polystyrene cups.
So this is the creative part.
What she found out is that the people who did a boring task first
were more creative.
So the fact that boredom is part of creativity
is something that we've known for centuries.
Kierkegaard is a Danish philosopher from the 19th Century
and he has this quote I like.
"The gods were bored, therefore they created human beings."
And the fact that creativity is a remix is something that we all know.
It's basically taking two ideas and melding them together
or taking one idea out of another.
It's combination, transplant, subtraction.
To do that, you have to play with the idea and it requires time.
And if you want to play with this, you need to get bored.
And Graham Linehan is the creator of The IT Crowd
you know IT Crowd, TV show? Yeah, he said that in an interview.
"I have to use all these programs that cut off the Internet, force me
"to be bored, because being bored is an essential part of writing.
"and the Internet has made it very hard to be bored.
"The creative process requires a period of boredom, of being stuck."
Turn off the Internet? You shouldn't say that to YouTubers.
Or maybe, should you?
I mean, that's the problem with our jobs.
We have a big challenge because of the rhythm that the algorithm is asking us
to post in order to be visible, to get views and exposure
and also because we are at the core of Internet and entertainment.
So cutting off that seems so counter-intuitive.
And yet, that's what I'm asking you.
I'm asking you, next Monday, don't turn on your smartphone or computer
for the first hour of your day. And you might be surprised.
Don't be afraid of getting bored, but be afraid of getting boring.
Thanks.