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Want to help shape Note to Self's next big project? We need to know what's driving you absolutely nuts right now. Take our short survey here.

We're going to get right to the point: No more sacrificing our precious vacation time to our phones!

Earlier this year, tens of thousands of you took part in our Bored and Brilliant Project, a week of challenges that pushed us to rethink our relationship with our phones and jumpstart our creativity. Now that it's July, we've adapted the idea into a short, condensed bootcamp version with three very do-able, modifiable challenges for those of you on a beach (or stuck at the office wishing you were on a beach).

If you took part, consider this a seasonal tune-up (ahem those of you who deleted Candy Crush Soda but kept Candy Crush). If you missed it the first time around, welcome to the club. If you heard about it in January and, ah, chickened out, take a few deep breaths and consider this our belated gift to you.

This is not a digital detox. This is not an edict to lock your phone away in a drawer. This is not an ode to mindfulness.

It is a way to apply what we know about constant notifications, neuroscience, and productivity to our lives. Right now.

Listen above for the boot camp! And if you want to do the full week's worth of challenges, sign up here for a new one in your inbox every day:

If you're interested in seeing how much time you really spend on your phone, you can download an app that will run in the background of your phone, calculating how much time you spend on it. We recommend Moment, BreakFree, or Checky. We've got more information here.

And for those of you who want all of the challenges at once, here's the full, extended series.

• The Case for Boredom
• What 95 Minutes of Phone Time a Day Does To Us
• Challenge 1: In Your Pocket
• Challenge 2: Photo Free
• Challenge 3: Delete That App
• Challenge 4: Fauxcation
• Challenge 5: Small Observation
• Challenge 6: Dream House
• The Winning Dream Houses
• The Results
• The Personal Stories

As always, subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

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Last week, we gave you some numbers. But numbers don't tell the whole story — or, in fact, anyof your 19,100 stories.

By asking you to put some thought into the ways you use your phones, we stumbled upon a fact that is, perhaps, obvious: No two phones (or phone users) are alike. Turns out, teenagers in Florida get kind of excited when you ask them to turn their cameras off for the day. Slovakians over 35 aren't smartphone crazy, but the younger set? At least one Bratislavan says she's struggling. And so on. We were fascinated, and we were surprised.

To learn more, Manoush made some phone (well, Skype) calls. Listen in the audio player above, or anywhere you like to listen to podcasts (iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or RSS feed).

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We're pretty sure Bored and Brilliant week culminated in... brilliance.

To recap: Because research shows getting bored and daydreaming can boost creative thinking, we gave you an assignment. Artist Nina Katchadourian asked you to stare into a pot of water as it came to a boil. Then, thoroughly bored, she instructed you to create a dream house out of the contents of your wallet.

We know there's no objective way to measure wallet house wonderfulness, but, hey, it's a dream house-eat-dream-house world out there, and Nina has chosen her favorites.

Click the audio player below to listen along to hear her announce the photos in this post.

Listen to Nina Katchadourian pick the winning dream houses Once the audio is playing, scroll through the winners below:

Honorable mentions:

Coolest Currency

"I've never seen money from Kuwait, and it was very beautiful." (Beach Cliff on the Seaside by Ahmed Albahar)

Loveliest Description

"I want to give special mention to Vanessa for her very lovely rumination on watching water boil... even though her dog was very bored watching her find boiling water awesome..." (Dream House in Wisconsin by Vanessa Herald)

Beach Houses (A Crowded Category!)

"I was certainly struck by the conspicuous number of beach houses, which is not surprising if you consider the time of year." (Piano-Shackolada in Maya's Riviara by Elizabeth Lutz)

"I was also amused by the number of people who drafted their houseplants into service here... I know it's sort of cheating because I said 'only use things in your wallet.'" (Scotch on the Rocks by Anya Gurdon-Raskin)

Notable Rule-Breaker

A diorama, not a dream house, called "Admiral Washington readies the Andrew Jackson clone F-14 pilots on the deck of the U.S.S. Clinton before the Battle of Bull Run" (Battlefield Diorama by Pete from Texas)

Points for Photography

"This is what I call getting a lot of bang for your buck." (Columned house with rolling hills, next to Philip Johnson's Glass House by Adrian J. Hopkins)

Best Multi-Purpose House

"The 'Animal Rescue and Development Caverns'... sounds like a new federal bureau of some kind." (Animal Rescue and Development Caverns in Alaska by Andrew Kubat)

Credit for 'Couldn't Stop Thinking About It'

"I appreciated that the house-builder Jane Fine went back and added some features even after she posted the first version... that's good, that meant she couldn't stop thinking about it." (Huge Painting Studio in New Orleans by Jane Fine)

Terrific Tiny Houses

"My favorite category of houses were some of these really beautiful tiny houses..." (Sunnybanks River House on the Allegheny River, NY by Annie Meredith)

"The Simplicity Cottage has a lovely orange roof." (Simplicity Cottage in the Woods by Cristin Jacoby)

Set in Atlanta's sky. (Modern Art Oasis in Atlanta by Cheryl Wilson)

"Very, very elegant." (Japanese House + Tea House, on a hill with a breeze by Elizabeth Ellsworth)

AND THE WINNER

"I stepped away from the computer. I waited to see what picture I just couldn't stop returning to in my mind. And I have to say: The one I couldn't stop thinking about was the...

"I know it's cheating to use plants... But when creative pressure forces you to break the rules and it turns out as good as that... it's a good argument for thinking outside the box." (Unplugged in Playa Santana by Karima Hassan)

You can see all of the Dream Houses here (and if you haven't made one yet? Go boil some water and send it in!)

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Originally published on February 6, 2015

Kevin Holesh, the developer behind the Apple app Moment, and Mrigaen Kapadia, the developer of the Android app BreakFree, have been helping us keep track of our progress during the Bored and Brilliant challenge week. But it's not an exact science. They're working on different operating systems that allow different access to time-tracking apps. This likely explains why the averages for Apple devices have been so different from the Android ones.

Here they answer your questions about the apps:

BreakFree/Moment seems to be counting time when my screen is off.

Mrigaen with BreakFree: It's understandable if this happens once in while, since Android could have killed BreakFree's background service due to low resources. This could lead to a higher count.

Let's say that you open your screen at 9:00 AM and BreakFree is running. The app records the time and starts the counter. But then while you are still working on your phone, your phone memory resources run low and Android needs to kill the BreakFree process. Now you switch off your screen at 9:10 AM. But because the BreakFree process was killed, it will not record the screen being turned off. Android or you restart the BreakFree process again. You open your screen at 9:15 AM and switch it off at 9:20 AM, the BreakFree process will record the 9:20 screen off against the 9:00 screen on since it missed the 9:10 screen off. So, instead of counting phone usage as two sessions of 10 (9:00 - 9:10) and 5 (9:15 - 9:20) minutes, it will be counted as one session of 20 (9:00 - 9:20) minutes. And that's how you could get over counting.

This could also happen if you frequently kill BreakFree from the Task Manager, please avoid doing that.

BreakFree does not count phone usage based on apps running in the background, it uses the screen on and screen off times only.

Kevin with Moment: Sometimes Moment isn't perfect at detecting your phone use. One thing you can do to make sure these weird results don't happen again is to put your phone in your pocket upside down (top facing the ground) with the screen facing your leg when you're not using it. Also, you can place your phone laying flat on a table with the screen down. Moment is designed to specifically ignore those two positions. That should really help eliminate any weird results you're getting with Moment incorrectly detecting your phone use.

If you want Moment to be super accurate (and save a ton of battery), the best thing to do would be to set up a passcode or Touch ID to unlock your device. You can do that from your Settings app > Touch ID & Passcode. That will make Moment 100% accurate in tracking all of the time your phone is unlocked, and skip the entire calibration process Moment goes through at the beginning of using the app.

If you have a passcode or Touch ID set up and Moment still doesn't seem correct, check out your Settings app > Touch ID & Passcode, and see the "Require Passcode" setting. If that's anything other than "Immediately" your iPhone remains unlocked even after you turn the screen off with the power button. Moment counts all of the time your iPhone is unlocked, so it adds 5 (or so) minutes onto every time you unlock your iPhone. That setting needs to be set to "Immediately" in order for Moment to track your iPhone use accurately.

Moment doesn’t seem to be counting all of my time.

Kevin with Moment: Sometimes it takes a few days, and up to two weeks, for Moment to calibrate itself to how you specifically use your phone. It might not be 100% accurate at the beginning. Moment also requires access to the internet to count a person's usage.

BreakFree seems to be keeping my screen on longer. It doesn’t auto-close.

Mrigaen with BreakFree: Turning the screen off is a setting that the user sets in his phone settings. BreakFree does not have the permissions to change that. This could be a device specific issue. Can you write to us at support@breakfree-app.com? Mention the details of your device and a brief description of the problem, we'll surely try to get this resolved as soon as possible.

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Originally published February 2, 2015

Part of the Bored and Brilliant project is to put some hard numbers to what is normally just a vague impression we scrutinize too closely: our phone habits. Gathering the data though is an imperfect science. The usage numbers we're getting for Android devices are significantly different from iPhone numbers. That's our first interesting finding.

Here's how it works: We're partnering with two apps, one for iPhone and one for Android. Thousands of participants have opted in to share their usage numbers with us through those apps. (The data get aggregated before we see it by the way.) During a 7-day period starting January 26th, the daily average of the total group was just about 120 minutes of phone use per day.

Apple users, you might be breathing a sigh of relief. Android users, you’re starting to fret.

But wait.

We’ve noticed that the average minutes for folks using Android versus Apple varied considerably each day last week. Android users consistently averaged around 150 minutes, and Apple users logged in around 100 minutes, according to the apps, Moment for iPhone and BreakFree for Android.

Are Android users just indulging almost an extra hour every day? We doubt it.

BreakFree and Moment both try to accurately keep track of your device use and screen opens. But they do this using different code on different operating systems that allow different permissions to time-tracking apps. We're looking into why exactly they differ so much. And trying to sort out what the correct numbers should be. We can’t say for sure just yet. B&B participants, some of you are app developers, maybe you know? Share your wisdom in the comments section.

In the meantime, here’s a stat to contend with — both Android and Apple users averaged around 45 screen opens per day last week. So that seems to be counted the same in both apps. For the subset of folks who said in our survey that they spend “just the right amount of time” on their phones — and on the whole were less stressed by their phones — they averaged 32 checks a day.

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We've been asking people why they're signing up for New Tech City's "Bored and Brilliant" project. Over 300 people have responded, and we've read every single word.

• So far, 4 of you have told us you don't want to die addicted to your phone.
• 21 say you want to write more.
• 3 people who don't own a smartphone at all have signed up as a volunteer "control group."
• At least 1 person fears cellular device "dystopia."
• The largest team we've heard about clocks in around 30 people (a 9th grade English class).
• There are 5 pastors and 1 rabbi who say they need a break from their tech.
• We've had people describe streets in Shanghai, Boise, Geneva, Tel Aviv, and Honolulu.

To those of you who signed up to embrace the benefits of boredom, thanks! We're gathering your stories, parsing the data, and hoping the collective insights will help us all figure out, together, the best way for tech to fit into our lives.

We're grouping them into some common themes and pulling out some goals that keep coming up.

Don't see your reasons on here? Send it to us!

GOAL: FIGURE OUT HOW MUCH TIME I ACTUALLY SPEND ON THIS THING.Words that came up a lot: actual, real, aware, time, curious.

"I think I use my phone less than my peers — I want to see if I'm right! I look at phone-addicted twenty-somethings with some degree of distaste, so I want to see if my perception is skewed and [if] I actually turn out to BE a phone-addicted twenty-something."

"My phone is my assistant for work and probably my best friend... I use my phone a lot — I just don't know how much, and I'd like to be able to measure that out before I decide to curb my usage."

"What I'm hoping to discover is the winners and losers technology creates in my life. That is, where does it help? Where does it hinder?"

GOAL: HI, I'M ADDICTED. HELP! Words that came up a lot: habit, constant, conscious, break, check, Instagram, Facebook, email.

"I want to unshackle myself from my addiction to the 'dopamine squirt.'"

"I feel like the frog in the pot of water brought to a slow boil... It hit me that I had started picking up my phone compulsively even when I knew for a fact there's nothing to look at."

"I don't get good sleep, yet I love to read or watch my cell phone in bed until I fall asleep. I love it, in that warm welcoming huggy sort of way, that I'm pretty sure is the same part of my brain that likes chocolate and my boyfriend. So, I'd like to get myself to stop looking at it after 7:45 p.m. and not until like 8 a.m.

"My eyes just hurt. Please oh please give them a break."

GOAL: TAKE MY TIME BACK. Words that came up a lot: time, check, productive, work, mindless, instead.

"I want to read more books, make more things, spend more time out in the world... and I want to model all of that for my kid, who is already spending too much time on Minecraft and not enough time drawing."

"I'm tired of mindlessly consuming when I could be producing."

"I'm very Type-A and have never in my life had a problem with procrastinating before now! And I feel the creep of low-level depression sneaking in — help!"

GOAL: FREE UP BRAIN SPACE FOR CREATIVITY. Words that came up a lot: creative/creativity, boredom, write, think, work, ideas, project, thought.

"When I quit my job to pursue writing full-time, I did it because I wanted to have time to sit around and read books and walk around the neighborhood and visit art museums and THINK. I wanted to have long stretches of time to wonder, because without that time, your writing comes from your head or your hip rather than your soul. It becomes kiddie pool rather than ocean."

"I want to have more time to think original thoughts and clear my head so that I may write that book I've been working on, that musical project I keep putting off, and start that podcast I've been dreaming of starting. I want to walk down the street and look at the things and the people around me, not at my phone."

"I am trying to finish a play right now. And the phone (and the tablet) appear to be the chief culprits in two ways: they take me away from my writing (which, BTW, I begin with pen and paper), and when I do get to it, my brain feels...filled with static."

GOAL: CONTRIBUTE FOR THE SAKE OF SCIENCE! Words that came up a lot: Evidence, science, research, habits, data, experiment.

"I am willing to contribute to research about how we use these expensive gadgets, and maybe learning about my own habits."

"I was hoping that I could be something of a control group for the experiment... I don't have much time to spare to spend on my phone and when I have a little time to relax, I often refrain from using it."

"I guess I feel pretty brilliant WHEN I'm using my phone — getting ideas from articles, stories, blogs, and pictures I see and bouncing those ideas off other people in a virtual environment (most of my friends live far away). I want to see the evidence that I'm actually more brilliant without."

Don't see yourself in any of these categories? Let us know — you can take our survey here. and if you haven't signed up to take our week of challenges, we'll be issuing them via podcast starting on Feb 2nd. Subscribe to New Tech City on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. More Bored and Brilliant info here. Originally published January 20, 2015.

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Originally published February 5, 2015.

Your participation in Bored and Brilliant has made it possible to do some really interesting — though admittedly unscientific — research.

Last week, we asked you to tell us about yourself and your phone habits. Over 1,000 of you responded. For those who were also using our partner apps, Moment and BreakFree, about 600 of you, we were able to look at how phone time and unlocks correlated with the survey results.

One tip we can give you from these results: if you want to cut down on overall time or checking, keep your phone in a bag.

The people who generally keep their phones stashed away off their bodies, average 18 fewer minutes and 11 fewer pickups per day compared to the rest of us. Now, this is correlation, not causation. But there is a connection here. The hand-holders, a small group in our bunch, logged in the most time and checks.

We’ve heard from quite a few parents who feel guilty about using their phones instead of playing with their kids or enjoying more meaningful personal time. On the whole, parents had more phone time than non-parents. But parents picked up their phones less often.

The correlation between parents and phone use might also be a reflection of another trend. People seem to change the way they use their phones as they age. Non-parents were generally younger than parents in our survey subgroup, and the older you are, the fewer pick-ups you have. But older people generally stay on longer each time they unlock their phones. And remember this isn’t generally counting phone calls - it’s screen time.

Have some ideas why the numbers came out this way? Tell us what you think in the comments.

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Originally published January 23, 2015.

You've been signing up for Bored and Brilliant because you say your phone follows you... everywhere. Endlessly. Mindlessly. In every single crack and crevice of your day.

Friends, what follows after this colon is a spoiler: The first Bored and Brilliant Week challenge will be to keep your phone out of sight at a moment when you otherwise wouldn't. We'll explain the logic and the details with our the first podcast in the series on Monday, Feb. 2 (all of the challenges will be issued via podcast. Subscribe on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast or RSS to make sure you get them first thing).

Until then, however, some suggestions:

Here are 18 places you could challenge yourself to keep your phone out of sight, and — just maybe — out of mind:

1. In bed. But seriously: 44 percent of cell owners have slept with their phones in their beds and it's bad for you. Really.

2. The train. Half the time there's no signal on an underground subway. It's like the subway gods are sending us a message.

3. At a stoplight. RED LIGHT! RED LIGHT MEANS STOP!

4. In line for coffee. Do you really want to read your email before you're caffeinated, anyway?

5. While walking back to your office with that coffee.

safetytips

1. At your desk. It'll be so comfortable in a drawer.

2. In a meeting. There is always the chance that someone will maybe say something interesting and relevant to your job.

3. Before the lights go down in a movie theater. There's another screen to look at.

4. While the movie is playing in a movie theater. This link contains explicit language.

5. After the lights come back up in a movie theater. Keep it in your bag til you leave the premises. May the force be with you.

6. Bathroom Hey. No judgment, here.

7. On a plane. Sigh.

Can't even unplug when you're in flight. Am I right @NewTechCity #boredandbrilliant pic.twitter.com/NlJ7te3ymJ

— Taylor Sundali (@TaylorSundali) January 23, 2015

1. While watching TV. There's another screen to take the edge off things.

2. Under the table at dinner with real live people. Everyone can tell.

3. When you want to take a picture at a party. The moment will still exist. It will.

4. Navigating home from said party. This one's more of a dare.

More ideas for other places phones flick on more than they have to? Send 'em along. As we said: Subscribe on iTunes, or on Stitcher, Overcast, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed to make sure you get the challenges first thing.

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Originally published January 30, 2015 Hello! One of the most exciting developments in our Bored and Brilliant project so far has been the influx of thoughtful suggested reads from listeners.

We figured we'd share the wealth. We're fine-tuning how to do this (and if you have ideas, please let us know). But in the meantime, here are just some of the oh-so-counterituitively interesting reads about boredom (and beyond) you've been sending our way:

• Author Neil Gaiman says boredom is what made him a writer: "But you also need the dead moments when you exhale and nothing's coming in in order to stay alive. I hope today's wired generation will learn to take its breaks and I especially hope our teenagers do too."

• This child may or may not have survived this trip to the mall.

• There is a conference in London called "The Boring Conference." Is it more or less interesting than other conferences? Unclear.

• April 11, 1954 was the "most boring day in history," says a computer.

• Film critic Mahnola Dahrgis once wrote a heartfelt defense of dullness at the movies: "Thinking is boring, of course (all that silence), which is why so many industrially made movies work so hard to entertain you. If you’re entertained, or so the logic seems to be, you won’t have the time and head space to think about how crummy, inane and familiar the movie looks, and how badly written, shoddily directed and indifferently acted it is."

• This artist in Texas put together a whole installation about what we look like staring at our phones all day.

• Your thumbs hurt for a reason.

• "Told to devise a faux robot that believed it functioned better than a person, [Jim Henson] came up with a cocky, boxy, jittery, bleeping Muppet on wheels."

• And finally: Of course the Exploding Kittens Kickstarter came from boredom.

• Bertrand Russell was worried about over-stimulation back in the 1930s. He wrote an essay entitled "In Praise of Idleness," forwarded along by listener Anthony Quinn. And Maria Popova of Brain Pickings pulled a treasure trove of Russell-on-boredom writing: "We are less bored than our ancestors were, but we are more afraid of boredom. We have come to know, or rather to believe, that broedom is not part of the natural lot of man, but can be avoided by a sufficiently vigorous pursuit of excitement."

• A somewhat different tack: William Deresiewicz's 2009 essay "The End of Solitude" argues that technology is not only taking away our privacy and our concentration, but it is also taking away our ability to be alone."

After listening to @NewTechCity I made this, out of utter boredom: http://t.co/jgqal6gIsr #BoredAndBrilliant @Studio360show

— Chazz Thomson (@charlieinacan) January 27, 2015

Please keep them coming! We're looking for reading suggestions — links, quotes, pertinent passages, videos, .gifs, books, handwritten treatises on recycled 17th century vellum, or whatever you so choose — about how technology is changing your life. Share the link in the comments below, on Facebook, on Twitter, or email (newtechcity[at]wnyc.org) if you're shy. We'll read as fast as we can (don't worry, we're voracious), collect what we think is interesting for the group, and send it back out on our social media accounts, in our newsletter and on this page (for those of you choosing to cut down on social media because #BoredAndBrilliant).

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Originally published January 29, 2015

In our podcast "The Case For Boredom," we introduced researcher Sandi Mann's hypothesis that boredom leads to creativity. She put it to the test with phone books and plastic cups.

We did another — admittedly less scientific — version with Post-It notes, sponges, plastic forks (and maybe a little bit of wine).

This is what happens when you get 130 people really, really bored:

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Originally published February 4, 2015.

As you probably heard this morning, deleting the game Two Dots was an emotional experience for me. To put it mildly.

A report: OK, so I'm still in mourning.

But I'm still here. I'm more productive. I'm not going to reinstall the app tomorrow.

Whew.

I want to answer three questions that have come up in various ways this morning:

Q1: Wait... are you getting me addicted to something else? Are you offering me heroin in place of cocaine?

Oh no! I'm reading through the #ntcdelete tweets for #boredandbrilliant, getting ideas for new games to download post-challenge. : (

— Anne Fernald (@Fernham) February 4, 2015

A1: I'll admit, this is a risk. I mean, look at the list below. Temptation comes in many many forms. We have to be able to live among the candy-soda-trivia-cocktails.

Which brings me to....

Q2: Which app should I delete?

what should I delete? #NTCDelete

— sugar (@honestSFist) February 4, 2015

@emanhaly In a strange way, this is a good metric for app popularity & perception. What do we use and do we think it's a waste? #NTCDelete

— DCS (@criminy_cricket) February 4, 2015

A2: So, by that logic here's the list (the links are to responses from Bored and Brilliant participants, don't worry) as of Wednesday afternoon:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Snapchat
• Candy Crush
• Soda Candy Crush
• Bejeweled
• Solitaire
• Spider Solitaire
• Killer Sudoku
• HayDay
• Trivia Crack
• QuizUp
• 1010
• 2048
• WWF
• The Kardashian game
• Godus
• Plants Vs. Zombies
• Minion Rush
• AE Bubble
• Whirly Word
• YikYak
• Clash of Clans
• Crossy Road
• Pinterest
• Trivia Crack
• "Smarmy tabloid weather news 'gotcha to look' app"
• BitStrips
• Game Twist Slots and Hungry Shark Revolution
• Tumblr
• Spotify
• Instagram
• Google Hangouts
• Email
• Chrome, Safari, Firefox
• EBay
• Banking apps

Q3: So how do you steel yourself against them?

A3: I'm gonna let you all answer this one.

Batch delete

Since deleting one app just makes me use the others more, I got rid of Instagram and Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook. o_O #NTCDelete

— Jen ✏️ (@mellowbeing) February 4, 2015

I deleted Facebook AND twitter from my phone for #NTCDelete because I WILL BE REBORN ANEW. @NewTechCity

— Nate Bennett (@itsnatebennett) February 4, 2015

Don't save your passwords

I wonder how many people deleted Facebook by itself for #NTCDelete? Gonna have to go around myself and clear browser history, never save PWs

— Jen (@wordpainting) February 4, 2015

Put Moment or BreakFree where that app used to sit

"Meghan Powell Deleted FB but I had to come back to tell you that I put the Break Free app in FB's spot on my homescreen. Ok that's all... byeeeeeee!"

Recruit some help

@limlouisa I think so, but we can send gentle reminders. We should keep it up w a forum or /r, as long as we don't get hooked. #NTCDelete

— Eman Hassaballa Aly (@EmanHAly) February 4, 2015

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Originally published February 3, 2015.

[Each day New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi will discuss your questions and concerns about the Bored and Brilliant challenge of the day. Get in touch through Facebook, Twitter, or email]

One question came up a lot today.

You're all very dedicated:

"So, what if I accidentally already messed up? --> Bored and Brilliant Challenge 2: Photo Free Day http://t.co/jqa5nnKvyG via @NewTechCity"

— Natalia Angulo-Rico (@natisangulorico) February 3, 2015

"Uh-oh, I've already lost today's #NTCNoPhoto challenge. I took a pic of my ice covered driveway before I got the instructions. Boo"

— Tara Baumgarten (@Big_Perm) February 3, 2015

"I swear I took these photos before I even saw the email announcing today’s challenge! But they were taken with an SLR and I am a photographer. Maybe in the podcast you give an out to photographers?" — Craig Williston, via email

Is it too pretty? (Craig Williston Photography)

A: Challenges start whenever you read them. Ideally, that's close to the morning EST for our group data calculating purposes. But this isn't a laboratory, and we don't expect all 17,000 of you to start and finish your days at the same time (hi, Australia).

And if you're a photographer? No, you don't have to take the day off work (go ahead and blame us if you want to). This challenge is about reflexive photo-taking and contemplation. And about memories from being in the moment. Start from when you get the challenge, and adapt according to what will work in your life. See what happens when you look, just look.

By the way, this isn't win or lose. Try stuff and see what sticks.

Also, look at this dog. (Craig Williston Photography)

He almost makes it look pleasant outside. (Craig Williston Photography)

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Originally published February 2, 2015.

[Each day New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi will discuss your questions and concerns about the Bored and Brilliant challenge of the day. Get in touch through Facebook, Twitter, or email]

Challenge Day 1: In Your Pocket Q: “Manoush, I’m psyched to start up New Tech City’s “Bored and Brilliant” project with the #NTpocket challenge, but what about listening while en route, say, to podcasts?

—Rachel Ropeik @TheArtRopeik

A: Dear Rachel,

Thanks so much for your question! Here’s my short answer: It’s totally up to you.

We want everyone to choose a goal (minutes, pick ups, progress over time) that allows for the activities you consider important. I feel very strongly that this project should not be prescriptive; the goal is to get you thinking about when and how you use your gadgets and then decide to use them purposefully, rather than reflexively.

Forty percent of our participants (from the sample we surveyed) wanted to cut down on checking their phone so much as their biggest goal. For about 28 percent the top goal was to cut down on overall time spent. So, purposeful pick-ups are a big part this #BAB challenge.

So, Rachel, if you can space out while listening to podcasts, then go for it! I decided not to use my phone at all on the subway this morning. I wanted to experiment with zero smartphone interaction, podcasts or otherwise. Like #BAB participant Ken Cooper, I read the paper instead. He wanted to know whether or not that was kosher. He posted this feedback on our Facebook page:

“When I'm in the subway I typically read the newspaper on my phone. Today, I read via the original paper technology. I'm not sure what I accomplished.”

Ken, I’m curious to know if you felt any of the sensations that I did this morning? First, I felt anxious that I wasn’t scrolling through emails on my phone. Then, I settled into reading an article with far longer prolonged concentration than usual (I read about Tom Brady’s mindset in the New York Times Magazine... damn, I really want to be a quarter as “physically fit, emotionally stable and spiritually sound.”) Finally, I looked up and smelled the wet umbrellas and felt how fast the subway was actually going despite a snowy morning. I also contemplated the perception of bad weather versus real conditions. I mentally expressed gratitude to my husband for buying me new boots and reminded myself to plan better for seasonal changes in the future. I’m tired of being the mom whose kids are still wearing sneakers in January.

When I got to work, I was less frantic and, far more calmly than usual, checked my phone. For exactly three minutes. I didn’t surf around. Got down to work. And it felt good.

Send me your questions, thoughts, feedback on Challenge #2!

Until then,

Manoush

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We made it through a week of Bored and Brilliant challenges. We've struggled through withdrawal and reveled in release. We've learned about ourselves and our reflexes. And here, we crunch some numbers and start to figure out what we learned.

After this project, it's pretty clear: A subset of our society craves better harmony with technology. Unless we rethink how we make tech and how we use it, this subset will grow. We have pressure on tech companies into building apps and devices that fit into our lives, rather than taking them over.

On today's New Tech City, we've called in the experts to talk about why over 18,000 people signed up for a project designed to rediscover quiet, reflective time undisturbed by the constant flash of gadgets. Manoush presented our findings (see below for more) to Malia Mason, a cognitive psychologist and Associate Professor at Columbia University, and Golden Krishna, a user experience designer with Samsung and Zappos on his resume, and author of "The Best Interface is No Interface."

We gave them the data from our partner apps (Moment and BreakFree), your survey responses, and played them some audio testimonials from you. Listen to the podcast for more, of course, but here are some of our most intriguing findings:

A general note that these are all, of course, correlations and not necessarily causation – we don’t know what motivated each individual person’s stats, whether it was the Bored and Brilliant challenges, app reminders or something else.

1. Total stats: The average decrease was 6 fewer minutes of phone use each day down from our baseline of two hours.
2. The average decrease in phone checking was 1 fewer pickup per day. (See chart here).
3. People felt like they made improvements: Over 90% of people who filled out our post-challenge survey felt they had cut down on their phone use, either "somewhat" or "a lot."
4. Confidence went up: People also felt more certain that they could change their phone habits. Nothing to sniff at here! Ninety percent of our post-challenge survey respondents felt "somewhat" or "very" confident that they could change, compared to 80 percent in a survey before the challenge week.
5. Gamers made the biggest strides: People who said gaming was one of the top three activities they did on their phones managed to drop the most minutes. They cut down 20 minutes every day. Possibly because of the "Delete That App" challenge.
6. Parents made big changes: Before the challenge week, parents logged more phone time on average than participants who do not have children. During challenge week, however, parents dropped more minutes compared to non-parents (10 fewer minutes for parents compared to 4 for non-parents).
7. The challenge most people said they plan to continue is keeping their phones in their pocket (88%). People also thought “In Your Pocket” was the most useful challenge (45%).
8. The second most popular challenge respondents plan to continue (50%) was "Delete That App" (or, presumably, keeping that app deleted). Most people said that this was the most difficult challenge (32%).

This isn't over. We're brainstorming lots of Bored and Brilliant next steps, so please do stay tuned. And the beauty of this? Challenge week can happen any time.

Keep talking about your personal dilemmas, your smartphone tips, and your somehow-riveting boredom reads on our newly created Bored and Brilliant-specific Facebook group.

And for now, hit play on the audio above and dive in.

To hear New Tech City every week, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

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Welcome to the sixth and final day of our Bored and Brilliant challenge! If you're here for the first time, you'll want to catch up on The Case for Boredom, Challenge 1, Challenge 2, Challenge 3, Challenge 4, and Challenge 5. You've spent the week picking up your phone purposefully. You've kept it in your pocket, you've abstained from photo-taking, you've considered life beyond the screen. To take our project to its logical — and admittedly weird — conclusion, boredom artist Nina Katchadourian has assigned us a group project. We want you to get really bored, and then make something creative, introspective, and personal.

Your instructions today are multi-part:

• Put away your phone.
• Put a generous pot of water on the stove and watch it come to a boil.
  • If you don't have a stove or a pot, find a small piece of paper and write "1,0,1,0" as small as you can until it’s full.
  • Either way, you should get bored. Keep it up as long as it takes to daydream.
• Next, take out your wallet and empty it of all its contents. Use them to construct your dream house. It could be the place you wish you lived in all the time or a getaway. Take as long as you need to build.
• Give your house a descriptive name.
• When you're finished — and only when you're finished — go get your phone. Take a picture of the house. (Careful with your credit card numbers.)
• Email your picture to bored@wnyc.org, and tell us about your creation (put its name and location in the subject line, and tell us why it's your dream house in the body).
• Then, high five a friend. Check out the submissions here. Share your favorites. They'll be uploaded over the weekend.

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Welcome to day five of our Bored and Brilliant challenge! If you're here for the first time, you'll want to catch up on The Case for Boredom, Challenge 1, Challenge 2, Challenge 3, and Challenge 4.

Social networks help us stay connected. We love social media. But how often do we swipe past strangers'selfies, baby pictures, and career updates in lieu of the actual humans around us?

For our second-to-last challenge (yes, there's a weekend project coming!), we want you to flex the creative muscles we've been freeing up all week. The first step is noticing. Your instructions: Today, go somewhere public. It could be a park, a mall, the gas station, the hallway at work or school. You pick. Once you get there, hang out. Watch people, or objects, or anything that strikes you. Try not to be (too) creepy. Imagine what a single person is thinking, or zoom in on an uninventable detail. Just make one small observation you might have missed if your nose were glued to a screen.

If you feel inclined, and we hope you do, record that detail using a voice memo app on your phone (yes, yes, we know, but we think this is worth a pick-up). Two good ones are the built in voice memo app for iPhone or an Android one called Easy Voice Recorder. Then, email it to us at newtechcity@wnyc.org. We always love to hear from you. We'll add it to our observation playlist below, and we might use it in an upcoming show.

Or you can tell us about your observation in the comments below. What'd ya see? How'd it feel?

Today's hashtag is #NTCNotice.

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Hello! Welcome to day three of our Bored and Brilliant challenge! If you're here for the first time, you'll want to catch up on The Case for Boredom, Challenge 1, Challenge 2, and Challenge 3.

Today, you’re getting a break from email, texting, social media, or whatever means of digital communication interrupts you all day long. It's a fauxcation (or "fake-cation" if you prefer).

Your instructions: Set an email auto-reply just as you would if you were out for a real vacation, send an "I'll be back later" text out on group chat, or put up an away message status on social media.

Come up with your own. Or if you are feeling like a Bored and Brilliant Booster, use one of these badges we made for you. Whatever it'll take to give you peace of mind while you focus.

Click through to download! (New Tech City)

Worried about being away from work? On our podcast today, that's exactly what we take on: the role of boredom, downtime, and unplugging at the office.

Matthew Krentz is a senior partner at the Boston Consulting Group. Krentz and his company let the Harvard Business School take a small team of consultants to use as time management guinea pigs. They discovered that perpetual connectivity was good in the short term — not so much in the long term. Studies say we actually perform better when we have a chance to think.

Click through to download! (New Tech City)

Look, we're in media. We get it. Maybe there’s no way your boss will let you be off the grid for an hour today, and maybe not until the bigger, broader system changes. But perhaps you can make an hour for yourself tonight? That's when more of you told us you want to reclaim time from your phone anyway.

When you check back in, we'd love to hear how it went. Scroll through our gallery of away messages below, and let us know what you decided to go with! Our hashtag for the day is #NTCFauxcation.

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Our colleagues at WNYC's New Tech City are in the midst of "Bored and Brilliant," a week-long challenge to listeners to disconnect from their smart phones. Boredom, the theory goes, may not be such a bad thing in our hyper-connected world. Rather than constantly reaching for our phones when we're in an elevator, on the train, or waiting for a cab, perhaps we should create mental space for creativity and reflection.

Somewhat paradoxically, classical music can invite purposeful daydreaming (just as it can capture many other moods). Here are eight classical pieces that can be adapted to this purpose.

1. Satie's Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes

Long before Muzak, French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925) had the notion to compose "wallpaper music" – music meant to be absolutely ignored by the audience. The three Gymnopédies (1888), feature peculiarly expressive melodies over gently swaying backgrounds. Even more cryptic are the three Gnossiennes of 1890. Some historians consider Satie to be the forerunner of ambient classics like Brian Eno's "Music for Airports."

2. John Cage: In a Landscape

John Cage, the most avant-garde composer of the 20th century, took a gentler approach in this delicate piano piece of 1948. With its undulating figures and use of soft and sustain pedals, the music seems to suspend time.

3. Paul von Westhoff: Imitazione delle Campane (arr. by Christian Badzura)

Paul von Westhoff, a 17th-century German composer and favorite of Louis XIV, wrote odd music with floating, slightly mystical arpeggiations. The violinist Daniel Hope took up a modern arrangement of von Westhoff's brief Imitazione on his album "Spheres," offering a compact, three-minute zone-out.

4. J.S. Bach: Clavierbuchlein fur W F Bach, BWV 855a: Prelude in B Minor

J.S. Bach was probably far too busy for much daydreaming, and much of his vast output was composed either for religious or more workaday purposes. But some of his keyboard works have a lyrical, infinite quality, as with the Prelude in B minor. Listen to a piano transcription by Alexander Siloti.

5. Philip Glass: 'The Hours' soundtrack

Film scores by definition are designed to work at a subliminal level, creating atmosphere or underlining character motivations. The composer Philip Glass understands this all too well in "The Hours" (2002). The score conveys a magical sense of mood as it veers between a restful, ruminative quality and stormier passages.

6. Debussy: Rêverie

Debussy was the master of creating dream-like atmospheres in his piano works, particularly in Rêverie, as he builds a gently repetitive melody over the course of five minutes.

7. Arvo Pärt: Spiegel in Spiegel (Mirror in Mirror)

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) is one of the most important practitioners of a style sometimes referred to as "holy minimalism," named for its austere harmonies and wistful melodic gestures. Try this 10-minute piece for cello (or violin) and piano.

8. Valentin Silvestrov: Der Bote (The Messenger)

Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov appears to summon ghosts from the past in Der Bote. An exercise in gentle nostalgia, the piece is scored for piano, synthesizer and strings, and becomes an evocative meditation using Mozartian themes.

With thanks to Jenny Houser for additional research.

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Hello! Welcome to day three of our Bored and Brilliant challenge! If you're here for the first time, you'll want to catch up on The Case for Boredom, Challenge Number 1: Keep your phone in your pocket, and Challenge Number 2: Photo Free Day.

Flurry Analytics defines a “mobile addict” as someone who launches apps more than 60 times a day. The average consumer launches apps 10 times a day, so to qualify as having an app dependency, you have to be pretty app crazy.

And the people most likely to be addicted? According to Flurry, teens, college students (skewing female) and middle-aged parents.

Even if you aren’t at 60 times a day, just about everyone has that one app — that one damn app — that steals away too much time.

Your instructions for today: delete it. Delete that app. Think about which app you use too much, one that is the bad kind of phone time. You pick what that means. Delete said time-wasting, bad habit app. Uninstall it.

This will be difficult, because app designers are pretty smart. And they are pretty good at building things we want to just keep on using, over and over and over. In this episode, Manoush breaks her cycle. She deletes the seriously addictive game Two Dots. It wasn't easy and it followed a pretty, er, dramatic confrontation with the game designer. It might be cathartic for you.

If you need a little push to take the plunge, Dr. Zach Hambrick, professor of cognitive psychology at Michigan State University, says cell phone games do just about... nothing for your brain. You don't get better at anything but playing the game, he says. And only that game.

"If you play Ms. PacMan a lot, you’ll get better at Mr. PacMan, and video games where you have to move through a maze. But you won’t get better at Space Invaders or some real task like filling out your tax forms," Hambrick said.

Listen for more. And seriously... delete that app.

Today's hashtag is: #NTCDelete.

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Did you notice the large, beautiful snowflakes yesterday afternoon? I did. As I was walking down the street toward the subway, I looked up and saw gigantic, perfectly shaped snowflakes falling from the sky. So without thinking, I became my 7 year-old self and I stuck my tongue out to catch one on the tip of my tongue. A twenty-something woman passing me on the street watched me, and then she stopped and smiled and with a twinkle in her eye, she cautiously put her tongue out too.

Usually, as I make my way to the subway station, I have my iPhone in my hand, and I am looking at email or I’m absorbed in updating The New York Times app or my WNYC Discover app. But not today, like 16,000 others I signed up for New Tech City’s “Bored and Brilliant” experiment. (Check out http://www.wnyc.org/series/bored-and-brilliant/.) All week long participants are being given specific challenges in an effort to limit their device use and see what creativity and brilliance comes from embracing boredom. The first challenge: don't look at the phone while in transit. I had barely walked a block and I had discovered snowflakes! I had my phone in my bag and this challenge in the bag!

As I made way down the subway stairs, my euphoria dissipated slightly as I thought about the 40 minute ride before me. While it was easy enough to put my phone away, it was proving more challenging to power down my mind. My thoughts drifted to unanswered emails and materials I should be reading in advance of my meeting. I wasn’t exactly embracing the boredom part of this experiment. I was too busy thinking of a creative work around to scratch that “productivity itch” without using a device on the train. I started composing emails in my head, and instead of poring over research about the future of news (the topic of my meeting), I used the time to think critically about it. I thought about the implications of news consumption habits, new technology and new ways of engaging the audience in news collection and analysis. This very experiment in partnership with the New Tech City audience was a living, breathing example of how news is changing and what the future looks like. If only I had a device to capture all these thoughts!

Towards the end of my journey, I got a little better at doing nothing. I stopped composing in my head and I re-engaged in the moment. It was just in time too. I found myself on the 4 train listening to a conversation between two teachers. “Come with open hearts and minds, and I am willing to teach,” said one of them. How beautiful the words sounded and how glad I was open enough to hear them. On a typical day I see the snow, but yesterday I saw the snowflakes. I hope it snows again tomorrow.

Through a series of essays, Laura Walker, President and CEO of New York Public Radio, explores the role of media, stories that make you think and content that just deserves a shout out.

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Hello! Welcome to day two of our Bored and Brilliant challenge! If you're here for the first time, you'll want to catch up on The Case for Boredom and then challenge number one: Keep your phone in your pocket.

Your instructions: See the world through your eyes, not your screen. Take absolutely no pictures today. Not of your lunch, not of your children, not of your cubicle mate, not of the beautiful sunset. No picture messages. No cat pics.

We want you to start actually seeing that phone-free world around you.

A recent study found Americans take more than 10 billion photos every month, and mostly on our phones. The thing is, each time we snap a quick pic of something, it could be harming our memory of it. This podcast is about psychology, creativity, and perception.

Meet the man who inspired it here:

"They’re not even looking at the painting sometimes, they’re scrolling; they’re just scrolling away, looking at their phones... They’ll say I was checking and you can tell when they’re taking photos."

— Greg Colon, security guard at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City

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Your instructions: As you move from place to place, keep your phone in your pocket, out of your direct line of sight. Better yet, keep it in your bag.

While you're boarding the train, walking down the sidewalk, or sitting in the passenger seat of a car, we're asking you to look at your phone only when you have reached your destination. You can do it.

And when you do pick up your phone today: Here are five basic phone hygiene tips to make that screen time really count.

They come from the mind of Dr. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of "The Distraction Addiction." To hear more, listen to our challenge one podcast above.

Phone Freedom 101 1. Remember to breathe "When we check our email, wait for messages to load, we unconsciously hold our breath. And this matters because... holding your breath is something you do in moments of anxiety."

2. Turn off non-vital notifications "I often think smartphones behave like children. When you first get them, you open them up with all their defaults, they’re set to alert you to absolutely everything. New message, pop up window. Text message, it comes up immediately... In this respect, smartphones behave like children. When they want your attention, they want it right now."

3. Make sure you do get the notifications that matter to you Knowing that you'll hear about a sick kid or cancelled flight lets you rest easy about everything else.

"In an emergency, in the zombie apocalypse, who do you want to be able to reach?" Pang says. "Those people, I’ve given one ring tone. In my case it’s Derek and the Dominos’ "Layla." The whole rest of the world gets Brian Eno’s "Ambient Music for Airports."

4. Fight "phantom phone syndrome:" Practice not answering messages right away "We become so accustomed to extending our senses for the next call or next tweet, we begin to misinterpret other things. If [you're] a medical resident you tend to have this an awful lot — if you’re on call and you miss your pager going off or you miss your phone, that’s a really, really bad thing, because that means someone’s in the ER and not getting your attention... It is a small but subtle way in which your relationship between you and your phone has tipped in the phone’s favor."

For everyone else, you can get to that text later.

5. Carry your phone in a bag, rather than in your pocket or in your hand (this one's extra credit!) "Not carrying your phone right against your body but carrying it in your bag can help ease some of that sense that you always need... to have a little of your attention turned toward your phone."

Got more? Use the hashtags #BAB and #NTCPocket (yes, it's kosher) to tell us about it, or add a comment below.

To make sure you hear every challenge, subscribe to the New Tech City podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

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Drumroll, please: It's time to release some baseline Bored and Brilliant data. (If you missed our kickoff episode, listen to The Case for Boredom here).

To contextualize our numbers on this week's podcast, we've got Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, scientific director of the Imagination Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a neuroscientist and human development psychologist at the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. They explain how our findings compare to the broader scientific research landscape.

Here's a hint at what we hear in the podcast:

Baseline stats

For the Bored and Brilliant participants using our partner Moment and BreakFree apps — and there are now more than 4,600 of you — these are the averages so far:

• Average minutes per day: between 90 to 100
• Average screen unlocks per day: between 40 to 50 times

That means you’re checking your phone about 2 to 3 times every waking hour. For comparison, the average non-Bored and Brilliant Moment user spends around 64 minutes on his phone per day. So our baseline is pretty high.

You already knew this. Almost 84 percent of our participant survey respondents say they spend "too much time" or "way too much time" on their phones:

(Survey Monkey/New Tech City)

Demographics

According to Kaufman and Immordino, it's not surprising that the subset of people signed up for our project feels that way. Here's what we know about the 1,117 of you who took our survey:

• 75 percent are female.
• The average age is 36 years old.
• Half are married.
• About 40 percent have kids.
• 57 percent live what they would describe as an urban environment; 34 percent live in the suburbs.
• Our participants tend to live in the biggest U.S. cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco), but we have people in almost every state and a number of countries around the world (Australia, the U.K. Germany, Israel, China, Japan, Switzerland, and more).

Motive

Anecdotally, we've heard from a lot of people with a creative bent, interested in writing books and screenplays and working on other big projects. One of the more striking takeaways from our survey? Respondents really, really want more time to just think:

(Survey Monkey/New Tech City)

Phone Behavior Miscellany

It's those pesky pickups!

(Survey Monkey/New Tech City)

• About 40 percent of respondents say the phone is adding stress to their lives.
• Of the people who say they spend "way too much time on their phone," 20 percent report the place they keep their phones is "in their hand." As opposed to, say, their pocket.
• Among the minority of respondents in our group who say they spend "just the right amount of time" on their phones, less than 1 percent say they keep their phone in their hand. Significantly more of these happy phone users are keeping their phones in their bags—out of sight, out of mind.
• The most popular place for women to keep their phones was on their desks (47 percent). They're doing this more than men, who are keeping their phones in their pocket (68 percent).

Loving these numbers, but want some more context? Click play on the audio player at the top of this post for the full podcast audio with more analysis and "intriguing correlations." If you know someone who could use a little boredom and brilliance in their lives, there's still time—get them on board (bored?) before challenges start Monday!

You can sign up here:

We'll issue all of our challenges via mini-podcasts starting Feb. 2. To hear them, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

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This episode kicks off the biggest project New Tech City has ever done: Bored and Brilliant. Our goal is to get you rethinking your relationship with technology. Sign-up for the NTC newsletter to get the challenges.

YES! I want to get Bored and Brilliant!

Here's the issue: It goes back to when Apple introduced the first iPhone in 2007 — that's less than a decade ago. Fifty-eight percent of American adults have a smartphone today. Sixty-seven percent of the time, people are looking at their phones without any sort of ring or vibration. Forty-four percent of Americans have slept with their phone next to their beds.

Statistics aside, all you really have to do is go outside and see how many people can't even walk without staring at a screen. We counted them!

When we asked for your stories, many of you told us smartphones make you feel like you have the power to be connected all the time, organized beyond measure, and never, ever without entertainment while you're waiting for coffee. But you've also told us they make you feel dependent, exhausted, and addicted — some of you say you're actually relieved when you lose or break your phones for a day.

There's a paradox here. But one thing is clear: Paying attention to our smartphones through so many of our waking moments means our minds don't spend as much time idling.

And that matters! We talked to boredom researcher Sandi Mann of the University of Lancashire of the U.K.

"You come up with really great stuff when you don’t have that easy lazy junk food diet of the phone to scroll all the time," says Sandi Mann.

Mann's research finds that idle minds lead to reflective, often creative thoughts (we discuss her projects in depth in this week's show). Minds need to wander to reach their full potential.

During bouts of boredom our brains can't help but jump around in time, analyzing and re-analyzing the pieces of our lives, says Jonny Smallwood, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of York in the UK. He says inspiration strikes in the shower because it's a moment when we're not really looking at or focusing on anything else.

Researchers have only really started to understand the phenomena of "mind-wandering" — the activity our brains engage in when we're doing nothing at all — over the past decade or so.

"There’s a close link between originality, novelty, and creativity... and these sort of spontaneous thoughts that we generate when our minds are idle," Smallwood said.

But when mental stimulation is a touch of the phone away?

"That’s where daydreaming and boredom intersect," Smallwood says. "What smartphones allow us to do is get rid of boredom in a very direct way because we can play games, phone people, we can check the Internet. It takes away the boredom, but it also denies us the chance to see and learn about where we truly are in terms of our goals."

And that's where Bored and Brilliant comes in.

Let's do it together. Sign up here:

YES! I want to get Bored and Brilliant!

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