Boredom as a Creative Tool
What's up everyone? My name is Mathew Arrellín. I'm a composer and cellist and the founder of the Sound Painters Studio.
I don't think that there are enough composers out there who are taking full advantage of boredom as a creative tool.
Our physical and digital environments are so full of stimulation that composing, by comparison, is maybe just a super boring thing to do. Why would anyone ever compose a piece of music when you can go on the internet? You can find some funny memes, or you can go hang out with your friends, grab a drink, eat some food. All of those things sound way more fun than sitting at the piano, plunking some notes, writing things down—that, by comparison, is not a very stimulating activity to do.
Part of the reason is because our behaviors are motivated by dopamine. A lot of people have different ideas about what dopamine is. I could be wrong about this, so if you're a neuroscientist and you're reading this, let me know how far off the mark I'm getting this.
But basically the way that I understand it is dopamine is a neurochemical that conditions you to behave in a certain way for a desired outcome. So, it's not pleasure. It's not like you get dopamine from doing an activity. The dopamine is what makes you want to do the activity.
For example, there were studies done years ago where scientists wanted to actually figure out what dopamine was, so they were limiting the dopamine receptors in lab rats. What they found was that when they removed or eliminated dopamine, the rats basically lost their will to live. They didn't drink water, they didn't eat, they didn't do anything.
They didn't have any motivation to do anything.
You're probably thinking, “That's horrible. How could I do that to those animals?! Yes, it sounds very cruel, but I don't think that they were expecting that outcome. And so now they probably wouldn't do a study like that just because obviously they know the outcome is going to be death.
So, if we don't have dopamine, we theoretically would just lose the will to live and die. If we know that everything that we do is motivated by dopamine, but the relative amount of dopamine we're going to get to perform a certain activity changes, then what we can do is try to control the relative distances between dopamine peaks, so that certain kinds of activities are actually very enjoyable to do.
If you're going to compare eating a slice of chocolate cake, hanging out with your friends, going on social media to composing, it's going to be like comparing Michael Phelps to, say, a three-year-old who's never swam in his life, right? They can't really compete. What you need to do is remove Michael Phelps from this equation and makes a three-year-old look like an Olympian athlete.
That's where boredom comes in. Let me give you a few examples of the ways that I've used boredom to actually help me access high levels of motivation. Things that you can do would be like looking at the texture of a couch or clothing, or staring at the floor, staring at a wall, staring at the grass, staring at some plants. It can also be very mundane activities like organizing your books by color or doing the dishes.
The goal is to do something that requires very little focus and attention, so that your mind and your brain can relax and rest and recover from high level thinking, so that composing feels like an extremely rewarding thing to do. Relatively speaking, what was previously interpreted as a very small dopamine spike now feels massive. So now the three year old looks like an Olympian athlete!
If you reintroduce Michael Phelps, you're going to think, “That three-year-old just can't swim!”
That's part of the reason why when parents go to see their kids play sports, they get so excited because even though their kids suck at the sport by comparison, they're think, well, Little Timmy's a little bit better than Little Jimmy, so relatively speaking, it's not like you have Tom Brady or Kobe Bryant or professional athletes on the field, because if you did, those kids would get destroyed!
And so anyway, that's what you have to do in order to make yourself feel more motivated to compose: you need to level the playing field. You need to increase the amount of perceived reward from doing that activity by doing other things, which are extremely boring to do.
That's my advice.
And it's not that hard to do! You don't need to spend ten hours meditating. I've done this in as little as 5 to 10 minutes where I just sit down, look at my jade plants, contemplate them, and then once I feel like the levels have come down, my motivation to compose is significantly higher.
You're going to notice that when you do this, you're going to be less distracted as you work. You're going to be less likely to want to check your phone, or your notifications, or your email, or want to get up and get some kind of snack, because you're going to be able to tap into how rewarding it can be to compose compared to doing something super boring, like staring at the floor for ten minutes.
I hope this blog is helpful.
I hope that if you've been suffering from like a lack of inspiration or motivation for composing, I hope that boredom can be the secret key to finally get past that wall.
If you like blogs like this, then feel free to subscribe to my newsletter so you don't miss any content from me.
Last thing, real quick, I want to tell you about the Sound Painters Studio. The Sound Painters Studio is a weekly virtual masterclass where composers are able to get detailed feedback on their work so that they can develop the skills and confidence to bring their music to life. In this studio, I'm going to give composers the strategies to learn how to build their music in layers, like a painting so that they never have to suffer from creative blocks again.
If you're a composer that's serious about taking your music to the next level, then click on the link to book a free call with me today. I look forward to talking with you.
I'll see you in the next blog post!
Check out my FREE on-demand composition masterclass by visiting:
