Note to Self

It's time to get really bored and make something creative. You might just learn something about yourself with this challenge designed by artist Nina Katchadourian.

For today's challenge, we want you to take note of one person, object, or interesting, uninventable detail you would have missed if your nose were glued to your phone.

Your instructions: Craft an away-message like “I’m out, taking an intensive sushi making class! Wasabi fingers so no phone for me today!" Put it up for an hour, an afternoon, or the whole day. It's good for your productivity. 

Your instructions for today: Delete that app. And listen in as our favorite casual cell phone video gamer confronts the designer of her worst addiction. 

We take 10 billion (yes, that's a "b") photos per year, mostly on our phones. Today, we want you to start seeing the world through your eyes, not your screen.

We take 10 billion (yes, that's a "b") photos per year, mostly on our phones. Today, we want you to start seeing the world through your eyes, not your screen.

Your instructions: As you move from place to place, keep your phone in your pocket, out of your direct line of sight. Better yet, keep it in your bag.

Prepare for our week of Bored and Brilliant challenges with a peek at the data we're gathering on how much you use your phone and what you want to change. Plus, a psychologist and neuroscientist put it all in context with tips for behavior change. 

Drumroll, please: It's time to release some baseline Bored and Brilliant data. (If you missed our kickoff episode, listen to The Case for Boredom here).

To contextualize our numbers on this week's podcast, we've got Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, scientific director of the Imagination Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a neuroscientist and human development psychologist at the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. They explain how our findings compare to the broader scientific research landscape. 

Here's a hint at what we hear in the podcast:

Baseline stats

For the Bored and Brilliant participants using our partner Moment and BreakFree apps — and there are now more than 4,600 of you — these are the averages so far:

• Average minutes per day: between 90 to 100

That means you’re checking your phone about 2 to 3 times every waking hour. For comparison, the average non-Bored and Brilliant Moment user spends around 64 minutes on his phone per day. So our baseline is pretty high. 

You already knew this. Almost 84 percent of our participant survey respondents say they spend "too much time" or "way too much time" on their phones:

Demographics

According to Kaufman and Immordino, it's not surprising that the subset of people signed up for our project feels that way. Here's what we know about the 1,117 of you who took our survey:

• 75 percent are female.

Motive

Anecdotally, we've heard from a lot of people with a creative bent, interested in writing books and screenplays and working on other big projects. One of the more striking takeaways from our survey? Respondents really, really want more time to just think:

Phone Behavior Miscellany 

It's those pesky pickups! 

About 40 percent of respondents say the phone is adding stress to their lives.

Of the people who say they spend "way too much time on their phone," 20 percent report the place they keep their phones is "in their hand." As opposed to, say, their pocket.

Loving these numbers, but want some more context? Click play on the audio player at the top of this post for the full podcast audio with more analysis and "intriguing correlations." If you know someone who could use a little boredom and brilliance in their lives, there's still time—get them on board (bored?) before challenges start Monday! 

You can sign up here:

We'll issue all of our challenges via mini-podcasts starting Feb. 2. To hear them, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

"Hello, this is Grace from Westchester. I am 16-year-old girl. I have an iPhone 4 and I am going to record my activities for the next few days."