I am very interested in the topic of phone use and overuse. I am not anti-technology (and neither is the author of this book), but I do find the overuse of phones by much of American society alarming. Zomorodi was definitely preaching to the choir with me as a reader.

I love the Note to Self podcast, so I think I encountered the same problem here that I often have with books written by podcast hosts or bloggers: I had already heard the content. That said, this book is simplistic but motivational, and the variety of sources that Manoush speaks to provide some interesting research backing.

This book is a sort of Pandora's box for those of us with an unbalanced relationship with our technology - in a good way! I mean, during and after reading it, you will never look at your smart phone the same way again. There are concrete steps you can take and experiment with your relationship with technology. The book has a full range of good research, interesting anecdotes, and challenging concepts. It is a must-read for those navigating the human experience of technology in our modern world (which is to say, pretty much all of us).

I thought Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi was going to be about using our bordem to be more creative. However, I soon learned it was about unplugging from technology and using that ensuing "boredom" to become more creative. We are given small challenges, such as not to take a picture for a day or deleting an app, to see how we can live more creatively and without the dependance on technology that most people today have. Overall, I enjoyed "Bored and Brilliant" and think that everyone could take at least one idea from this book.

I would like to thank the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a review copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

I've been interested in figuring out how to focus and minimize the distractions that block me from my writing. I started out reading another book about deep focus and the ways to work without distraction. Both this book, Bored and Brilliant, and the other had one thing in common, technology. The cause of our problems is the enhanced technology we have access to. I didn't have a problem writing a paper in 1992 before the internet was introduced to me. I didn't have a problem studying for the Bar exam before smartphones. But when it comes to writing my fiction or paying bills, I'd rather scroll through Instagram, post pics, and Twitter-review TV shows. There were some good tips in this book on disconnecting and allowing your mind to be still to not be "on" and working--or worse, addicted to games, etc. For people who like to read non-fiction self help books, I recommend this book. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

Have you ever felt that tinge of guilt when you pick up your phone for a mindless scroll, knowing there are better things you can be doing with your time? Have you ever said, “Just one more game and then I’ll go to bed.” Do you ever worry that you’re setting a bad example for your kids when it comes to smartphone usage, saying one thing and yet doing another? Do you feel like you have 15 apps to make your life more productive, but you can’t focus long enough to use any of them or remember what, exactly, needs the most attention in the first place? Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC’s podcast Note to Self (for those “trying to preserve their humanity in the digital age”), felt all of these things and more. She was concerned that her dependence on tech to fill in the space made by boredom was affecting her creativity and ability to concentrate, and so she proposed a challenge to her podcast listeners. The “Bored and Brilliant Challenge” was a one-week experiment in reassessing phone use, partially unplugging, confronting boredom, and exploring our creative side. The challenge touched a nerve, with thousands of participants chiming in on their experiences.

In the Bored and Brilliant book, Zomorodi leads the reader through the 7-step Challenge. Each chapter addresses a technology issue, discusses the up and downsides, and gives the reader an assignment, such as deleting the one app you think you can’t live without, keeping your phone out of sight while in transit, and going a day without taking a photo. It’s not an anti-technology book, but instead it provides a way for us to take some small steps away from technology and reassess how and where it belongs in our life. I haven’t taken my own Bored and Brilliant Challenge yet, but I fully intend to (and hope to convince the teen to do it with me). With its mix of personal stories, interesting research, and easily implementable ideas, Bored and Brilliant is an excellent resource for anyone who struggles with our increasing dependence on smartphones in this digital age.

Zomorodi proposes what many have said before: we should walk away from our electronic devices. While others have sent us out to commune with nature or get active, this book says that disconnecting--and the boredom that arises from it--will help us get in touch with our creative side. While I was expecting for some big revelation that never materialized, I did enjoy the little challenges the author offered up.

This book is great. It is perfect for all of those people who feel as though they always need to be "busy" and/or "connected".
I found the writing style to be easy to read and easy to follow. The concepts were well explained, as it shows that they were well researched.
I will be purchasing a hard copy so that I can easily reference the material at a later point. I will be looking into the other resources that were mentioned in the book as well.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley and St. Martin's Press!

This book me awhile to get through, reasons not the which of least included the conscious irony of having to read an e-ARC copy on my phone of a book that was encouraging readers to put down their phones and limit their time checking for notifications.

Bored and Brilliant is a compilation of study and anecdotal data, along with brief interviews with experts in various relevant technological fields. At the end of each chapter, it presents readers with a series of challenges that get them thinking about how they use their mobile technology, as well as ways to decrease usage (deleting non-essential apps, taking a pic-snapping oath of celibacy for one day, etc.).

I followed along and completed the challenges as I went. It ultimately led me to deleting Pokemon Go (useless app I could just get lost in), Facebook (an app I'd been avoiding deleting under the reasoning that I handle my work's social media presences, when in reality I can still pop onto FB on a mobile browser if required), and a couple other apps that were just junking up my phone. Nothing really new or novel was presented in this book, although I also don't think that was the point. What it set out to do is make readers aware of their phone usage habits and to go from there, making small changes that benefited individuals in personal ways.

Mission Accomplished. It was an interesting read, and we'll see how long my resolve holds with the changes I've made to my own phone usage.

BORED AND BRILLIANT by Manoush Zomorodi is a fascinating read and one that is so popular I am having difficulty getting a hard copy from the public library. Zomorodi, who hosts the podcast Note to Self, challenges readers to explore "how spacing out can unlock your most productive and creative self." She cites social science and neuroscience research plus comments from over 20,000 listeners about their concerns regarding cell phone use. Their top 3 concerns? "It's messing with my productivity; I feel addicted; and it might be affecting my health."

Ultimately, Zomorodi suggests a seven step plan involving tracking digital habits and modifying them through avoidance or elimination challenges (limit use while walking/driving, have a day without pictures, delete an app, no email replies for a day). Instead, she advocates really observing one's environment and creatively building on newly found free time and any sense of boredom. I found her description of living with increased tech consumption to be apt: "my brain was always occupied, but my mind wasn't doing anything with all the information coming in." Similar changes in habits are discussed in a recent article about increasing creativity from Entrepreneur magazine. BORED AND BRILLIANT seems like a thought-provoking resource for some of our Health classes and has the potential to mesh well with work that our Social Work Department and advisery rooms are exploring with regards to mindfulness. Pause for a moment and imagine the original thinking and problem solving we could encourage!

Link to article: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/294665
Rating: 4.5 stars

As I found the book to be an excellent activity to do with others, I'm recommending for book clubs and other groups.

This book is more about decreasing your use of cell phones, apps , video games and all nonessential technology than it is about how to make boredom work for you. I have already read a lot on the "unplugging" issue. She does start out in making her case that mind wandering and boredom can enable you to seek creative solutions to problem solving, but it was bogged down by the "history" of boredom and unplugging.

Basically I felt that "Bored and Brilliant" was just boring.

Perhaps I read this at just the right moment in my life or maybe Bored and Brilliant is just plain genius.

The author, Manoush Zomorodi, who hosts WNYC's podcast "Note to Self," presented a challenge to her audience in 2015 : get your devices under control. She was stunned by how many people--tens of thousands-- felt their lives were being vacuumed up attending to smartphones and iPads.

It is amazing how many studies are out there to confirm that our devices, which, face it, are incredibly useful, have co-opted us as their caretakers rather than serving us as was their original purpose. One study shows that when a cell phone is on the table, even face down, people engage in less conversation than if the phone is in a bag and out of site.

She cites a study that suggests our devices are making us think differently--more short-term, more multi-task oriented--until many of us, myself included, find it difficult to read long, complicated articles or essays anymore--things that require attention and deep concentration. I immediately thought of a novel I read a year or two ago called The Word Exchange, in which author, Alena Graedon, creates a dystopian world where smartphone users lose their ability to recall certain words and eventually become completely mute. (Excellent book, by the way.) Graedon's world is not one that far in the distance, according to Zomorodi.

As she points out, we attend to our devices as if they were infants. Eventually, those dutiful pickups for squawks, tweets, beeps, and bings becomes tiresome, and we are left with no time to ponder, daydream much less create. We are anxious without them but exhausted. All this by something that was invented to help us. So, how do we get them under control?

The book is quite an entertaining to read. Zomorodi has an engaging voice, and she presents several challenges you can participate in over the course of a week, more or less. If some are too much and create separation anxiety, she suggests abbreviated tasks to minimize smartphone use. I found the exercises very doable and in the end found I was picking up my iPhone and iPad fewer times per day. Better yet, I was aware of how often I did. The hardest challenge for me: deleting Facebook and Twitter from my phone. Addiction comes in many forms, my dears.

I love my devices but if like me, you want them to serve you and not the other way around, Zomorodi will help you get there.

This was an interesting book. It presented information in a variety of areas and made reference to additional research/ studies if the readers wishes to pursue an area in more depth.

When very bored, your brain apparently goes into a "default mode" - that is when creativity and productivity is at it's best. The premise of this statement is that if you are not otherwise distracted, you can think more clearly (obviously) however, according to the study by Manoush Zomorodi, people nowadays are NEVER not distracted, primarily by their cell phones and other devices.
In fact, she states that the only businesses that refer to their customers as "users" are technolgy /software developers and drug dealers!

Zomorodi proves that it is good to be bored once in a while by her research and proposes a 7 Day Challenge to wean people off their electronic devices:

The Bored and Brilliant Seven-Step Program
CHALLENGE ONE: Observe Yourself First you’ll track your digital habits—and most likely be shocked by what you discover.

CHALLENGE TWO: Keep Your Devices Out of Reach While in Motion Keep your phone out of sight while you’re in transit—so no walking and texting!

CHALLENGE THREE: Photo-Free Day No pics of food, kitten, kids—nada.

CHALLENGE FOUR: Delete That App Take the one app you can’t live without and trash it. (Don’t worry, you’ll live.)

CHALLENGE FIVE: Take a Fakecation You’ll be in the office but out of touch.

CHALLENGE SIX: Observe Something Else Reclaim the art of noticing.

CHALLENGE SEVEN: The Bored and Brilliant Challenge In a culmination of all the exercises, you’ll use your new powers of boredom to make sense of your life and set goals.

I found the interviews with software developers to be interesting and informative.
It was also fun to read the responses from her volunteers who went through the 7 step challenge.

I thought I used my phone a lot when not neccessary and was somewhat addicted to social media, so I downloaded the monitoring software and found I did not pick up my phone nearly as much as the people who participated in the survey and it was relatively easy for me to participate in all of the challenges, especially deleting apps - it was a kind of silly relief to delete HBO and Hulu and I found I absolutely did not miss out on anything by not using Facebook for up to 40 days at a time!
(but I did not delete FB after all, argh)
The "fakecation" from work emails is something that some of our departments do at crunch time anyway, so that was not a problem either.

I thought the book was a little too long and have a feeling that my millenial aged son would have a harder time with these challenges than I did, but it would be a good eye-opener for anyone who uses electronic devices to look into this.

PS. I love Manoush Zomorodi's "Note To Self" broadcasts on NPR

Loved the podcast series, love the book! Essential reading for the internet age

Enhance Your Creativity: Detach from Your Smart Phone

Smart phones are useful, but they can become a crutch that keeps us from getting in touch with our creative side and distances us from other people. Zomorodi, host of WNYC Studio’s ‘Not to Self,’ realized that being constantly plugged in to her smart phone was keeping her from doing other things, like thinking. She wondered if other people had the same problem. She got her answer when she offered her listeners a series of experiments to help them get away from their phones and hundreds of people signed up.

The book describes the experiments and encourages the reader to try them. One of my favorites was deleting an app you’re spending too much time on. Zamorodi was addicted to Two Dots. It wasn’t easy to delete the app, but it was remarkable how much time she had to think when when she wasn’t glued to the device.

The book also contains information she gathered from neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists. The research is discussed in the chapter which is most closely related to the experiment being described.

I don’t have a particularly bad phone habit, but I found the exercises helpful. Some of the research is well worth reading. You know that people aren’t really paying attention to you when their eyes keeping straying to their smart phone. Just the presence of the smart phone in viewing range can reduce the empathy between friends. I recommend this book if you want to cut your phone dependence, or if you’re interested in the psychology of phone use.

I received this book from Net Galley for this review.

Despite feeling like I’ve heard about many of the broad conclusions Manoush Zomorodi espouses about digital addiction in “Bored and Brilliant,” reading about how and why our brains become addicted to checking Facebook, reaching automatically to check a buzzing notification and compulsively playing a game well past a reasonable bedtime was fun and interesting. This book is every Slate think piece from the last five years about the problems associated with constant smartphone use without the judgment or shaming and offers concrete steps to evaluate and change your habits.

The concept was born of a voluntary experiment Zomorodi conducted with her “Note to Self” radio show listeners in 2015 in which they were challenged to truly take stock of their device usage and possibly make some changes to free up the mind to wander, when it is more likely to stumble onto something brilliant. After an explanation of the science of boredom and even a little history of the word, each chapter tackles one concern of the digital era – taking photos instead of experiencing something, compulsively playing “Candy Crush” – and explains what these habits are doing to our brains as well as the good and the bad about it. Zomorodi herself is with you, admitting to her own addictions and compulsions, and at no point is the sky falling or communication as we know it doomed. Each chapter introduces a challenge, like the one Zomorodi originally did with her listeners, asking the reader to log their usage, delete their most addictive app, etc.

Is this any ground that hasn’t been covered before? No. But the user-friendliness of summarizing research and anecdotes, combining them with a conversational style, and including a guide toward breaking your more destructive habits makes this book more useful than that New York Times article you read about how people are turning their brains to mush by handing over control to little machines that control them that just left you feeling depressed.

I'd give this 3.5 stars if I could.

I listen to the "Note to Self" podcast regularly, so I was excited to read this. I even participated in the "Bored and Brilliant" challenge on her show. One of the things I really enjoyed about this book is it is 100% her voice. I could practically hear her reading the book to me, but that's also because a lot of this came directly from her show. If you are a regular listener, there really isn't a ton of new info in here. If you aren't, then you certainly will learn a thing or two.

I really like that in the last chapter she says that she hates when people call the challenge a "digital detox", because detoxes don't help people form better habits. I think she's spot on, especially since our society today loves throwing the word "detox" around like it's freaking confetti. This book gives some helpful ideas and prompts/challenges to be more deliberate with your digital media usage, and is a good mix of anecdotes and legit research/expert commentary.

As an educator, I think there are some chapters in here that would be relevant for college/grad students to read, and I have already recommended it to some of my communication professors with whom I work.

The only reason I didn't rate this higher is because it's almost too casual for me -- I personally like books like this to have a little less of a casual tone, but I think that also made this book charming, in a way. Like I mentioned above, she really writes how she speaks. I also felt like it could have expanded on some topics more/reduced some of the casual conversation to get a little more meaty. It almost seems like this is a compilation of all the articles I've read on the internet about neuroscience, creativity, digital media, etc. It certainly saves readers the trouble of finding all those articles on their own, but I would have liked a little bit of a deeper dive.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free pre-published edition.