Bored and Brilliant

Must read.

First of all, I'd like to thank the publisher for the free audiobook from the Goodreads give away drawing.

Secondly, I am a fan of the Note To Self podcast, from whence the Bored and Brilliant project was birthed. I'd like to think that I have an informed bias in this case.

Having listened to the Bored and Brilliant series in the podcast, there was a fair bit of ground that I had gone over before. That being said, the book brought an opportunity to flesh out the ideas without the time constraints of a podcast.

I think this book is great for addressing tech in one's life and the role it plays.

Initially, I struggled to get into the book. In other parts I would have to pause or return to an earlier segment due to thinking more about the concepts she shares. For me personally, the reading the text personally would allow me to think more deeply about the concepts being presented.

I really appreciated how Zamorodi emphasizes the idea of mastering tech rather than letting it master us. Zamorodi cites different studies, but is clear in that this is a project, not a full blown study with a peer reviewed pair afterward. The point of the project is for each individual to understand their relationship to tech and to decide what that relationship should look like going forward.

The challenge upgrades were a nice touch to continue to engage fans like me who participated in the projet.

What I didn't like? Mainly that there are some stretches where I got a little lost on what the point was. But some of that came from thinking about the ideas rather than inattention.

I would recommend this book to those who want to reevaluate the role of tech in their lives and are interested in how tech may be shaping us.

Manoush talks a lot about our use of tech and social media in relation to making space for more boredom/mindwandering/daydreaming, and mindfulness. To increase our mindfulness of how we use our devices she sets out a series of challenges she guided a group through to bolster their confidence that they can change their use of a device if their habits are not impacting their lives positively. I'm not a Twitter fiend but I definitely waste a lot of time on the faceblarg/gram/whatever on a scroll trance.

Manoush's point about not letting every little thing you need to get done overwhelm felt important to start dealing with in my work life. deep breathes and intentionality? I should allow myself the time to really think about what I'm doing (I'm just not a fast thinker, pushed to react immediately usually means a poor outcome, so I need to build in buffers for my brain)