The Art of Being Bored: The Upside to Downtime

Render Render Render!! Can’t believe it’s already here! Next week I am heading down to the ATL to be one of the official MC’s/hosts of Render 2024. If you plan on being there please come find me!! I have no idea what stage I’m going to be on but just listen for my loud voice :) But for real, let’s get into some conference prep for Render before we dive into a recent live show I did…

1. Do your research on what sessions to go to; Render has a mobile app so pick what events you want to attend on the front end! Trust me, I’ve rolled into conferences not prepping and I panic.

2. Figure out your elevator pitch; you are going to meet a TON of people for about 30 seconds at a time so you need to be able to tell that person EXACTLY what you do and what you want to do quickly.

3. Get as many people into your LinkedIn ecosystem as you can and then follow up after the conference; most people don’t follow up and you lose a TON of momentum. 

I hope you have a blast at Render if you go! If you aren’t going to Render, then I hope you enjoyed that conference prep for the next conference you attend! Anywho, let’s get to the meat and potatoes of the newsletter….

I recently had Reid Evans on to talk about something I think we’re all feeling— getting tired of “the grind.” Whether you’ve lost career momentum, said yes to too many things/people, or are just tired of the corporate life (more about that later), let’s take a sec to stop and think about what we’re actively doing to make that situation better.

You know that whole 'never-ending, pedal to the metal' vibe in our industry? It's coming from all directions. We're stuck in this work culture where jobs disappear, but the workload just keeps piling up on everyone else. Or let's be real, some of us have kind of become low-key addicted to the hustle. Looking at myself here. But that gets me to my point, and a big topic that Reid and I talked about, we’ve really forgotten how to be bored.

Being constantly busy does a couple things we probably don’t think about. It forces us into a schedule AND it also distracts us thinking about life’s what-ifs. Hear me out, would the grind be so bad if you were actually working on something you were passionate about? And when’s the last time you took the time to slow down, be bored, and think about what that passion actually is?

Obviously this conversation comes from a place of privilege of not being super restricted by money or other circumstances. But I think we owe it to ourselves to take some time now and again to be bored. And tbh it’s uncomfortable. From experience. But the clarity and the conversations you have with yourself and others after is worth it. I’m going work on more intentional boredom and y’all let me know if it works for you.

To those of you that are tired of corporate America and on the verge of rage quitting, this part is for you. So many people are over the whole 'circling back' 9-5 routine... Talking about making the move to freelance, Reid said something along the lines of he was tired of working so hard to make money for other people and tired of those people spending that money on him for things he doesn’t need or want. Which is the problem with corporate life in a nutshell. What he did do, though, is have a loose plan and more importantly some savings. So if you’re thinking that you don’t need no “man” to make money, you’re probably right but rage quitting is very rarely successful. What should we call quitting with a plan, premeditated quitting? Do that.

Alright, I hope I’ll see some of y’all at Render and we can talk about this more. I want to hear what you’re thinking.

You’re not alone.

-Taylor

Gun.io