Boredom, of all things, has catapulted Manoush Zomorodi to fame. The self-declared “ethical entrepreneur” wants to help people maintain their humanity in the digital age. Embracing boredom, she argues, is vital to overcoming information overload.
Named one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business, Zomorodi first rose to fame with her “Note to Self” podcast on WNYC. A viral TED Talk and the book Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive & Creative Self followed shortly after.
Now Zomorodi has launched her own start-up – Stable Genius Productions. Through her company, she chronicles her entrepreneurial experience with her new podcast, “ZigZag.” Bored, she is not.
Manoush Zomorodi Challenges Audiences to Embrace Boredom
Zomorodi’s original inspiration came from an unnerving realization. “I had not been bored since I got a smartphone seven years ago,” she explains.
She wondered what effect that lack of boredom was having on her brain. When relief from boredom is always just a second away, what happens to our brains?
To explore this, Zomorodi issued a series of challenges to listeners of her “Note to Self” podcast. The goal of these challenges was to help them develop a more balanced relationship with their electronics.
Some of the challenges included asking participants to delete a favorite app (even just for a day); spend a day without using phone cameras; and even craft an away message to spend a few hours away from their mobile devices.
“Listeners really pushed back when we announced the original project,” Zomorodi recalls. “They were like, ‘come on, do you have to use the word boredom? Can’t you use something positive like daydreaming?’ And I say absolutely not, because the key thing here is that boredom doesn’t feel good.”
Manoush Zomorodi as Business Baroness of Boredom
Due to the overwhelmingly positive public response, Zomorodi turned her insights into a business.
As co-founder of Stable Genius Productions, Zomorodi wants to help people navigate a confusing new world of technology. To this end, the company “use[s] podcasts as a lab to test new ways to inspire, educate, and empower listeners.” They’ll tackle anything from raising kids in the technological age, to discussing ways that other entrepreneurs and creatives dry to define a “kinder, sustainable, and collective path forward for work and life.”
Zomorodi and her co-founder continued the “Bored and Brilliant” tradition Both had quit their day jobs to launch Stable Genius Productions, a leap into the unknown that came with excitement and anxiety.
To chronicle the experience, they created “ZigZag,” a podcast that follows the duo as they try to turn entrepreneurial vision into start-up reality. Now in its fourth mini-season, the show explores the co-founders’ “struggles to build an ethical business and remain grounded human beings.”
The Power of Boredom
Daughter of a Persian father and Swiss mother, Zomorodi explores the impact of technology on her own parenting experience with journalist husband Josh Robin. She notes that her first child was born the year the iPhone first came out. As a result, Zomorodi knows firsthand the tricky relationship between kids and technology. And with the hubbub of parenting, making time for boredom is all the more critical.
“Boredom is the trigger to get you up off your butt and make a change in your life or in someone else’s life,” Zomorodi argues. “You plot an escape from boredom, and that’s the key.”
That key can open up incredible potential for creativity and inspiration.
“You don’t get served happiness on a platter,” she adds. “You have to go through a lot of pain and discomfort to get to the good part of your brain, and I think we’ve lost the patience to get through that to the part where we’re coming up with ways to solve problems for ourselves — and ultimately, for society at large.”
