Our attention has been stolen.

The average person taps, swipes, and clicks their phone 2,617 times a day, nearly a million times a year.

The mobile phone is both our connection and disconnection device. We are naked and vulnerable without it near our fingertips.

As a result, the phone has killed boredom. But boredom breeds creativity.

Tunnel visioned in this mindless scroll, chin to chest, belittling creative originality and impulsiveness. Overstimulated, constantly, through this paradox of choice, as brands fight over our attention for profit.

Can brands encourage a proper authentic disconnect? Promote our independence and imagination? Rather than feeding into the bite-sized content that's biting into our ability to focus.

Our imaginations separate us, but the future of free thinkers is in jeopardy. Would Van Gogh have been able to paint the starry night while watching satisfying videos? I think not. Or would Isaac Newton have noticed the apple falling from the tree while watching GRWM's? Unlikely. Patience needs to be harnessed, and boredom celebrated.

Thus, brands may need to address our limited attention through physical experiences and visual inspiration. Clear in the message that boredom can go anywhere... good or bad, it has a greater reward than the phone.

How can a switch-off switch on the mind? By using products that we encompass when bored, to build, design or draw in a way we know is possible but rarely challenged.

So, how can BIC, the maker of the world’s most famous pen, encourage absolute, genuine, authentic boredom? Because when the mind starts to wander, it can take you anywhere. Ideas come from nothing, so how can nothing become everything?

As long as you put pen to paper, what may start as a scribble can turn into the Mona Lisa, a sad family portrait or the pyramids.

Because unlike the mindless scroll… with BIC, ink is always well spent.