Revisited: The Beautiful Brilliance of Boredom with Creative Polymath Elle Cordova

A Bit of Optimism

The Optimism Company from Simon Sinek

Business, Education, Careers, Self-improvement

4.8 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Team Simon is revisiting some of the episodes you helped make our favorites of the year until A Bit of Optimism returns on January 27, 2026, with brand-new episodes. We’re rewinding back to August, when talented polymath Elle Cordova joined the show and unpacked how we’re all wired to chase the next spark. We scroll, swipe, refresh, and repeat—but some of our brightest ideas sneak in when we stop chasing, let boredom settle in, and give our minds room to wander. Elle knows the power of that pause. When the pandemic hit pause on her life as a touring musician, she stumbled into new creative territory—making offbeat comedy videos about delightfully nerdy topics like particle physics, grammar, and fonts. Those sketches went viral, and suddenly she was thriving as a social media creator with a devoted following. In this episode, Simon and Elle talk about finding what truly lights you up, pushing through writer’s block, working with anxiety—and yes, Star Wars makes an appearance (because of course it does). Plus, Elle treats us to a live, in-studio performance of her song “Roswell.” This… is A Bit of Optimism. --------------------------- For more on Elle, check out: https://www.ellecordova.com/

Transcript

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0:00.0	I've been backed off and banned from probably close to like six, seven casinos now in Vegas. And unfortunately they're all my mom's favorite casinos, so we can't go there anymore. She's told me to stop. So I love this. All you wanted to do was be a good daughter, celebrate your mom's birthday, and now you're banned from half a dozen casinos in Las Vegas. I know. It's a funny turn of events, but yeah, I blame my mom.
0:22.6	She brought me there.
0:23.6	I mean, it's always childhood trauma.
0:25.6	Exactly.
0:26.6	I just wanted to sit with her longer and have more drinks.
0:29.6	Two introverts walk into a bar.
0:32.6	Let's be honest, that's not happening.
0:34.6	But here's what did happen.
0:36.6	Two introverts sat down for a conversation
0:39.0	about creativity and the importance of boredom. Yes, boredom. It turns out boredom is underrated.
0:48.8	It can actually be a remarkable source of calm and creativity, which a lot of introverts may already know.
0:56.7	That was definitely the case for El Cordova.
0:59.5	She's a singer-songwriter, a poet, and a certified nerd who in the isolation of lockdown
1:05.1	discovered a creativity she didn't know she had.
1:09.0	The result?
1:10.4	Well, I'm sure a lot of you have seen her sketch about
1:14.0	fonts at a party or her poem about the Big Bang, both of which went very viral. Before the Big Bang,
1:22.2	there was no up, there was no down, there was no side to side. There was no up, there was no down,
1:26.8	there was no side to side, there was no light, there was no dark, nor shape of any kind. There was no down. There was no side to side. There was no up. There was no down. There was no side to side. There was no light. There was no dark, nor shape of any kind. There were no stars or planet Mars or protons to collide. There was no up. There was no down. There was no side to side. And furthermore, to underscore this total lacking state, there was no here, there was no there because there was no space. In this endless void, which can't be thought of as a place, there was no time, and so no passing minutes, hours, days.
1:49.7	I first learned about Elle when I stumbled on her song, Roswell, which, if you stick around, she plays live for us at the end of the episode.
1:58.0	And if you're a nerd, you'll appreciate our chat about Star Wars archetypes and how we need
2:03.2	to give boredom a rebrand, which turns out isn't boring at all.
	...

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