“Shut off your devices!” I had reached my boiling point. My 10-year-old son was blithely staring at his phone, while simultaneously playing on his Xbox and listening to the TV running in the background. It was the electronic trifecta. “Read a book. Go outside. Kick a soccer ball. Do something else.” When my fit of parental rage finally passed, I asked “why do you immediately default to turning on a device?” His reply: “It’s the easiest thing to do.”

When we are bored, we tend to choose the path of least resistance. As human beings, we are wired to seek out the easiest route. Smart phones and video game systems are specifically designed to be an easy choice when we are bored. And this past year of COVID 19 has exacerbated the situation. A recent study in a psychological journal found that more people are finding time passing slowly and reporting feelings of deep boredom. For children, the familiar routines of socialization have been replaced with virtual interactions on Google Meet or Zoom. And the truth is that as an adult professional, I also find myself tethered to my technology. Sometimes it is easier to scroll through email messages or scan Facebook than it is to come up with an activity or new idea. What both adults and children are slowly losing is our sense of wonder and curiosity. So, it got me thinking about how we might break this recurring cycle of ennui. And that’s when I remembered the cabinet of curiosities.

Cabinet of Curiosities

Here’s the backstory about the cabinet of curiosities. Nearly 25 years ago, I visited an old acquaintance who introduced me to the strangest room I had ever come across. In his home, he maintained a space dedicated to a vast and eclectic collection of things he picked up along his travels. He called this space his “cabinet of curiosities.” The room idea was unusual but not entirely unique. In fact, “cabinets of curiosities” date back many centuries and served as a social device to signal your adventurousness and station in society. In my acquaintance’s case, his homage to esoterica was an amazing conversation starter. He would invite guests into this room and whatever bric-a-brac would catch his guest’s eyes, he would use it as a conversation starter. It was an instant ice breaker.

I loved his cabinet of curiosities because the sheer randomness of the items fueled unexpected conversation. His room was, in essence, operating as a creativity technique called random object association. This method is used to break the humdrum mental routines that many of us find ourselves trapped in. It assumes that “random objects are like pebbles being dropped in a pond. They stimulate waves of associations and connections, some of which may help you to discover new ideas or unexpected conversations.” What if, instead of curating random objects, you curated activities, challenges, and adventures? This was the start of our pandemic curiosity box. And here is what we did:

Design Your Experience:

Although I admired my friend’s room, I had no desire, nor the space, to assemble a collection of Samurai swords, petrified butterfly wings or Bavarian beer steins. Instead, we decided to turn an old shoe box into our curiosity box. The box would contain slips of paper with dozens of activities and adventures that could be called upon to break us free from our daily orbit. That way, our curiosity box was convenient, accessible, and low maintenance.

Be Expansive:

Just like a brainstorming session, you need to have a focus and allow yourself to diverge without judgment. We started to fill our curiosity box by listing out all the activities we like to do or have always wanted to do. The list of possibilities ranged from mild to wild. The trick is you cannot expect to land the biggest and best ideas right away. Go for quantity and eventually you will realize quality. We began with some mundane activities such as “Take a walk around the block.” Or “Call 3 friends on the phone.” But we also added some extreme adventures as well. “Go on a safari.” “Take an overnight flight to Paris.”

Take it Further:

When we ran out of ideas, we could have easily brought the activity to an end. But in the words of T.S. Eliot, “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” We took it a step farther by inviting friends to share their favorite activities that were deferred during the pandemic. It made for a super interesting conversation piece with friends and families. We added these to the mix of possibilities.

Find the Curiosity inside the Activity:

We took the curiosity box on a test run and pulled out the first slip of paper. “Going on a Safari”. My first instinct was to crumple it up and grab a new one. Clearly going on a safari is not possible if you are marooned in New Jersey during COVID. Or is it? This is where we needed to be curious and improvise. By asking the impossible of people, you force them to stretch their imagination and set aside their assumptions. We assumed that going on a safari meant a physical journey to a place like Krueger National Park in South Africa. But we reinterpreted the meaning of a safari as a voyage where your mission is to spot exotic things. We set-up our first-ever bicycle safari where we biked around the neighborhood searching for local people and animals. We created a 2nd version of our safari by doing a storytelling contest where the storyteller had 5 minutes to create a story about what wild thing happened during our safari adventures. These were but two possibilities. But the reality is that the possibilities are limitless.

The curiosity box is goofy and whimsical. But it works. Any time you, or your child, get stuck, pull out your curiosity box and use it as a way to get yourself out of your cycle of ennui. Afterall, curiosity is a muscle. And when we don’t exercise our curiosity, just like with all other muscles, it can atrophy. And then we are inclined to choose the path of least resistance. Start your own curiosity box and use it any time you are in need of a bit of inspiration.