Inspiration struck this week at Adobe Max, the annual creative conference where Adobe unveils new software features and renowned speakers share their insights. Among the speakers, Karen X Cheng’s talk stood out. Instead of focusing solely on success, she delved into creative struggles, touching on social media addiction, imposter syndrome, and creative block – issues that resonate with many creatives in today’s rapidly changing world.

The ever-accelerating pace of life, exacerbated by the pandemic, has left many creatives on edge, especially with the looming presence of AI in the creative sphere, a focal point of this year’s Adobe Max. While speakers emphasized that AI is a tool for creativity, not a replacement, an underlying tension was palpable.

Karen’s presentation, however, felt like a breath of fresh air. In a world where creatives often feel the pressure to ‘hustle,’ she shared her own journey of self-worth tied to social media validation and the despair of posts that didn’t ‘perform.’ Her talk resonated with me, particularly as she delved into her creative block and how she overcame it.

More importantly for me, she talked about a period of creative block that she experienced when she started to question the very idea that she was an artist and whether she should just give up her dream. It was certainly a timely topic for me, and she had my full attention as she started to describe what got her back on track.

She examined the current social addiction to the internet, our constant scrolling (and more importantly how algorithms take advantage of this) and concluded that the main difference between now and an earlier time when she felt more inspired was that she no longer spends time bored. All of that time has been filled by our phones and social media.

In the waiting room at the doctor? Scroll on your phone. Waiting in line at the grocery store? Scroll on your phone. For every single unscheduled moment in our lives, there’s an app to fill our time. We never get a moment to just let our minds wander.

“Boredom is the secret weapon to creativity,” says Karen in her presentation, recalling how much better her ideas are when she spends some time bored.

For the past several years since I was diagnosed with ADHD, I’ve devoted a lot of time and energy to tricking my brain out of boredom because boredom is ADHD kryptonite. That’s the saying, right?

Well, I forgot to pause and think about who and what specifically suffers when an ADHDer is bored. When Karen mentioned the importance of boredom in her presentation, it made me pause and reflect. I asked myself this and realized that avoiding boredom helps me stay focused, stay on schedule, stay productive.

But productive isn’t the same thing as creative.

I always look back at my time in high school and college as my most creative time. I pull out old notebooks full of random thoughts and doodles (and maybe some actual notes) and I’m amazed at the places my brain would go. I think, “Could I ever really have come up with that?”

My notebooks now don’t have doodles. Hell, I barely even have notebooks. I just write quick notes to myself on the app on my phone. I’ve also fallen back on old habits like having the TV on in the background nearly all the time when I’m not working. And when I am working, I often listen to podcasts to occupy the otherwise unburdened parts of my brain.

And what am I doing while the TV shows or YouTube videos play in the background? Certainly not creating because it’s too distracting. No, I’m scrolling on my phone.

So, what was Karen’s solution to this problem? She does two main things. Firstly, her personal phone is a low-tech, Kindle-like gadget from a tiny company leading the way in less obtrusive tech options. It’s also $300 and, by Karen’s own admission, has some pretty big downfalls that need to be worked out. So that’s not an option for me for several reasons.

But she also does Screenless Saturdays. Exactly what it sounds like. On Saturdays, she takes a break from screens, embraces her boredom and just lets her creative mind go wild.

I don’t know that I’m ready to make a commitment to fully screenless days, but it’s definitely the sort of sentiment I can get behind. I’ve spent too much time trying to reign in my mind and stop it from working the way it naturally works. I need to focus more on embracing my own eccentricities and the benefits that lie therein.

That starts with cutting my “filler” activities. So, no, I don’t need to stay completely up to date on every single video by every single person I follow on YouTube. And I don’t need to fill the silence with TV in the background.

More importantly, I don’t need to spend hours tapping or scrolling on my phone for lack of something better to do. This one might be harder because social media apps are tailor-made to be addicting, and the ADHD brain does love the ole dopamine rush that comes with these addictions. So I’m going to have to be mindful of why I’m on my phone or laptop or whatever. I need to focus on what needs to be done on screens versus the things that could be done another way or things that really don’t need to happen at all.

I know most people wait until the new year or the spring for big new initiatives, but I actually feel like this one is pretty fitting for the fall. Nature is falling into slumber for the winter, so it’s time for me to dial back, too. Get cozy, find a good journal or notebook, and just take time to truly be with myself for a while.

I guess we’ll find out come spring if it worked.