Phil Bowell

Any suggestions as to where I can buy some #coffee beans in #Cheltenham until Whole Foods fix their machine?

Yay autocorrect! Who’s Food is of course meant to be Whole Foods…

Disaster! Who’s Foods coffee roasting machine is out of action and I’m out of beans!

“Are we capable of letting creativity born out of boredom take place?” Bored

I wonder how often the phrase I'm bored… came out of your mouth as a child? I know it crossed my lips a fair few times, during my years at primary school. As I grew older the phrase appeared less and less, in fact I can't remember the last time that phrase crossed my lips and I don't recall it ever crossing them in my years since university.

That's troubling.

Does it mean I'm no longer getting bored? Do I get bored and no longer acknowledge it preferring to let myself while away the hours fiddling around on the internet or vedging out on the sofa?

Am I capable of getting bored or does the constant gratification provided by the various apps on my iPhone prevent it?

We live in a world where constant gratification of boredom is readily available. A world where children are growing up with iPhones and iPads available to them as soon as they are talking, if not before. Will these children be able to get bored?

These are worthy questions to consider, if people can no longer get bored, and I mean really bored. How will creativity flourish? Creativity out of boredom is a different kind of creativity to that which takes place at work. Boredom creativity is far stronger and more expressive than any other. When we are so bored that we decide to do something because it interests us, that's when some of the most exciting creativity happens. A child who picks up a guitar and starts picking/strumming a song simply because they are bored isn't playing that guitar for practise, they're playing it with a desire to create. A desire to occupy their mind and to express themselves in a way they've perhaps never done before. The same goes for an artist who picks up a sketch book, and a writer who picks up a pen.

This is as much a challenge to myself as it is to anyone reading this. Do we allow ourselves to get bored? To get so bored we are compelled to do something productive out if it. Are we capable of letting creativity born out of boredom take place, or do we just occupy our minds with the latest free game on the appstore that's taking Twitter by storm?

Really like the new @baronfig Confidant, haven’t stated my Maker Edition yet though, not sure I can justify another one.

In serious need of this mornings ☕️.

Just another test…

Just trying something out.

I'm great at making statements and promises about things that I want to do. It's easy. I think of something I wish to do, decide there and then a means by which to do it, then post to my blog declaring it in the public domain.

In principle it’s a good tactic. The public declaration should be enough of a motivation to make sure I stick to something, but the reality is that more often than not I fall short. I might stick to it for a couple of weeks, but then life will happen and that’s it, the idea slides out of existence. Why? Because of a lack of discipline.

When it comes to discipline I've generally been quite good when it comes to doing something that really matters, or something that I have to do. The trouble was when it came to doing something I wanted to do, like writing for this site. So as part of getting back into it, I've been taking little steps, to build integrity, trust and discipline.

Integrity

Building integrity with myself is critical. The number of times I've set out with an aim to do something, then not succeeded to do it are countless, and this carries over into starting new things. Whilst the intention and desire can be strong, the belief that I can do it less so. It's been erroded by years of unfulfilled promises to myself about starting to write on a regular basis.

The trick, I've discovered is to start small. It's not a new technique, but I testify that it's starting to work. I started with The Week in Links, my weekly post sharing a few links to good articles or interesting things that I've seen around the internet over the week. As of the time of writing, I've now posted an edition of that post for nineteen weeks running. I've built integrity with myself that I can post to this site on a regular basis, on a schedule I decided and wanted to commit to.

Trust

Now I have built some integrity and belief that I can do something I want to do and not just something I have to do. I'm building trust in myself that I can actually do it. I trust that I can manage the rest of my day well enough, to be able to set aside time to write.

Discipline

The trust in myself that I can do this, builds the discipline that I need to actually do it. Having established a pattern of turning up each week to post The Week in Links, I'm now disciplined enough to carve out that time each week to make sure I keep doing it.

It's a knock on effect, or maybe more of a circular cycle. The more belief that I have in sticking by my stated intentions, builds the trust I need to be able to make those intentions in the first place. In turn, that builds the discipline I need to execute those intentions, thus giving myself more belief. It's why this week I've added another step into my morning routine so that I can be sat here at my desk and do a half hour of writing before my work day begins. Not only am I building trust that I can work on writing for my site with regularity, I'm also building trust that I can get up and go through my morning routine with the time to do all that I both want and need to do.

Of course there is another side to this. If I do miss one of my carved out writing slots, I must not give myself a hard time about it. Life happens and I won't always get to do these things. When that's the case I need to be able to say nevermind, reset and go again the next day remembering that for the past however many days I've been able to do it.