The Boring Part of Communication

I don’t suppose that anybody was wondering, in reading my ecent posts, what bored Geeks have to do with homework. Or with brain-based communication. The common link, of course, is boredom. Not that boredom is a great contributor to brain-based communication. But you could think of it as a side-track in the channels of communication.

A little speculation here. Boredom is your brain’s way of telling that it doesn’t understand the importance of that you were attending to. Notice the circumstances of boredom. You were attending to something as a result of a socially imposed obligation. That’s the voice of the Shudoffs in the Thinkerer. Your verbal system heard that voice and accepted the obligation. But the rest of your brain doesn’t know what it is supposed to do with all this sensory input that is being dump on it.

You will notice that most of this sensory input is running through your verbal system. That serves your verbal system right. The rest of you brain says: “Ok, Talker. You bought into this job. You came here for this dump. Now you figure out how to flush it.”

In the case of the bored Geeks, somebody called a meeting. That person probably had a good reason for holding the meeting. But that person only communicated with the verbal system of the Geek. The rest of the brain didn’t get the memo.

Who’s to blame? I leave that to the Shudoffs. My slogan on that:
“Who’s to blame?” is a childhood game.

Try a different viewpoint. You foot goes to sleep. The main reason is that you were not using it. Something about the position may have reduced the circulation. But your foot does not go to sleep when you are using it. So when your foot goes to sleep, you don’t worry about who is to blame. You start using your foot. You understand that those feet were made for walking. And that’s just what they need to do.

And your brain was made for brainwork. And that’s just what it’s gonna do. It’ll either work on your job or walk out from under you. You get the quiet parts of your brain to work on your job by visualizing or imagining parts of the job and the concrete results.

What if a job doesn’t have any concrete results? Then why do you need to do it? What difference will it make if you don’t do it? Two possibilities here:

1. The job really does call for concrete results. You just haven’t found out what they are. Ask around. Somebody knows. Maybe the person who gave you the job. But don’t take abstractions for an answer. Ask what people will look for to know that the job is done.

2. The job doesn’t call for concrete results. Relax. Daydream. Do something else. The job calls for you to do nothing. You’ve had experience at that.

So what is the boring part of communication? There is no boring part of communication. If it is boring, it is not communication.