Do We Need More Boredom in Our Lives?

In a world where every dull moment is filled with scrolling, swiping, or streaming, the mere idea of boredom feels... obsolete. But what if our constant chase for stimulation is exactly what’s making us feel burnt out, anxious, and creatively constipated?

I used to think that the state of being bored was the worst possible fate. Now I wonder if boredom is the last piece I’ve been missing in my life. Between TikTok videos constantly keeping us busy and Spotify’s soft melodies always humming in the background, I wonder when was the last time I actually sat in silence with my thoughts, and didn’t despise every second of it.

Back When Boredom Was a Daily Occurrence

Before iPads and TikTok and YouTube shorts, there was imagination, dirt, and childhood wonder. And long car rides, where you had no headphones yet, and the only entertainment was staring out the window, imagining that the drops of rain were racing.

The days of climbing a tree for entertainment are long gone, and have been replaced by endless staring at screens, wondering why life feels so dull and dissociated. We’ve traded scraped knees for blue light, and spontaneous adventures with friends for algorithmically curated content designed to keep us scrolling, clicking, and consuming, because boredom, apparently, is the enemy of engagement and the biggest enemy of profits.

But in trying so hard to avoid boredom, we’ve actually created a culture that’s exhausted, distracted, and oddly more bored than ever.

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The Enlightenment

Let’s say your goal is to be the next Steve Jobs, or the next breakout film director. The only way to start is to find an idea and then simply act on it. But is thinking of an idea even possible when our brain is constantly entertained?

No robot, no endless doomscrolling, no Canva templates, and definitely no AI, is going to give you something truly creative, original and authentically you. That comes from staring at a ceiling until you’re almost on the verge of dissociation. It comes from spending time in silence without any external noise.

It comes from going on a walk without a podcast. Because how can you produce a deeply authentic idea when your entire mental bandwidth is spent surfing surface-level content? Depth requires boredom. Insight demands space.

You can never create something meaningful if you never give your brain the room to improvise.

Doomscrolling Power

We all know doomscrolling isn’t good for us. It’s the emotional equivalent of drinking 6 espressos and then wondering why you feel jittery. But we still keep coming back to it, hoping for something that will for even just a second give us something good.

Doomscrolling is designed to keep us in a state of overstimulation. Bad news, hot takes, celebrity gossip, niche drama, and other mountains of content, that are designed to keep your brain and attention stimulated.

With your phone close to you at all times, every chance of you being bored ends in you scrolling or mindlessly looking at pictures of people you don’t know. This isn’t boredom, it is overstimulation disguised as laziness. We’re not zoning out we are rotting our brains with irrelevant data, all while convincing ourselves we’re “relaxing.” Meanwhile, your brain is filling with every headline, every microtrend, every half-read thought piece until you feel mentally constipated and emotionally exhausted. And by now your brain might be just full of meaningless clutter.

And yet, when faced with real boredom, actual silence, unfiltered time, uncurated moments, we panic. We go back to the feed, because it's predictable. It’s often comforting, it numbs.

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How To Be Bored Without Becoming a Caveman

Being bored doesn’t mean you need to throw your phone in a river, buy a cow and start churning butter. You don’t need to become a full-on pilgrim to feel bored and reclaim your brain. Boredom today can look like a walk without a podcast.

Doing your makeup without music. A coffee without checking emails. A lunch without a YouTube video, or sitting on a bench and people-watching like it’s your favorite show. It’s about resisting the urge to fill every second with something more than just silence and stillness, not rejecting technology entirely, but using it with intention instead of addiction. Give your brain the awkward silence it’s craving. Let your mind wander, fantasize, connect dots like you’re solving a mystery, daydream, and even spiral a little. That’s where creativity brews. You are not going backwards, quite the opposite, you’re growing because you’re choosing to live in the pause sometimes instead of drowning in the feed constantly.

Maybe we’ve gotten so tangled in the distractions of the modern world that we’ve forgotten what it actually means to let our minds roam freely. To just sit with a thought and follow it somewhere weird, somewhere real, and somewhere deep. Maybe we feel so disconnected from ourselves because we never give ourselves the chance to meet the real ourselves. The constant input leaves zero room for introspection, and if we never sit in and cherish the silence, how can we ever truly hear what’s going on inside?

Satirical Conclusion

“I’m so bored,” we text, mid-episode three of a Netflix binge, mid-scroll on TikTok, mid-snack. Somehow, this paradox of “boredom” has become a flex, like we’re bored enough to complain, nevertheless never bored enough to experience the actual boredom.

We’ve all already mastered the art of being “bored” while being surrounded by oceans of instant gratification and a buffet of distractions. Boredom these days isn’t the silence of nothingness; it’s the noise of 27 tabs open, 3 apps running, and still somehow whining about having “nothing to do.”

This modern boredom comes with a trigger warning: Do not attempt actual boredom. Side effects may include self-awareness, facing your own thoughts, realization, and heaven forbid, being alone with yourself and your raw unfiltered thoughts.

And yet, ironically, this manufactured boredom is the perfect backdrop for stress, anxiety, and the spiral into doomscrolling. So really, has “I’m so bored” become a code for “I’m overwhelmed but don’t want to admit it?"

So next time you catch yourself “bored,” ask yourself: Are you truly bored… or just too busy pretending to be?

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