#12 Bored on purpose

Living your best life, staring at walls…

8 July 2025

Did you know Einstein used to shut himself away, not to cram more formulas into his head, but to sit in silence and let his mind wander? He understood that deep thinking doesn’t happen when you’re constantly reacting to the world, but when you give your brain space to breathe. His breakthroughs came from daydreams and mental drifting as much as from hard study.

In the 21st century, we’re so relentlessly stimulated that we never get that kind of space. We’re bombarded from all directions, every waking minute, until rest becomes impossible. And maybe that means we’re never truly awake either.

Modern life removes the boredom necessary for creativity

There was a time when boredom was unavoidable. Even in my own childhood in the 90s, there were natural pauses in the day – waiting for a TV show to come on, cycling through the same few CDs, replaying the same video game levels. Those quiet gaps gave your brain space to wander.

Nowadays, that gap doesn’t exist. The moment one appears, something rushes in to fill it – Netflix, YouTube, infinite video game libraries, Spotify’s bottomless pit of music, notifications from group chats, podcasts on demand, social media feeds that never end. The little rectangle in your pocket is like a boredom vacuum, sucking up every idle moment long before boredom has a chance to set in.

What we call “boredom” now isn’t really boredom at all. It’s mental fatigue. It’s being so overstimulated that you can’t think clearly. When your dopamine system is constantly being topped up by bite-sized content, you have no incentive to make anything new. You’ve already got more input than you can process.

So here’s my radical idea: bring boredom back

The fix is stupidly simple on paper (although harder in practice). Strip things away on purpose. Create space by taking things away. Sit somewhere with nothing to do.

No phone, no music, no book, no background TV. Stare at a wall if you have to. Allow the seconds to tick away. Try this for 20 minutes and see what happens. At first, it will feel pointless and quite uncomfortable. Give it long enough and the interesting thoughts will start to surface.

The author Raymond Chandler had a rule: Write or nothing.

You don’t need to be a novelist to use this. It’s the same principle whether you’re trying to solve a problem, make something, or just think straighter.

Some more ideas to inject boredom into your life:

😑 When you’re doing the boring everyday stuff – washing the dishes, sweeping the floor, folding laundry – resist the temptation to put a distraction on in the background. No music, no podcast, no YouTube video playing just out of sight. Let it be quiet. Let your mind start wandering in that weird, aimless way it used to when you were a kid staring out of the car window.

😑 Unsubscribe from all the unnecessary newsletters and random subscriptions that are just drip-feeding you little pings of distraction. The fewer times your phone lights up in the day, the less likely you are to get sucked into an entire hour of scrolling before you realise what happened.

😑 Go outside, and leave your phone at home. Or if that feels like leaving the house without shoes, at least turn it off and put it deep in a bag where you won’t check it “just in case.” People managed for thousands of years without being constantly connected to everyone they’ve ever met and every piece of information ever published. You’ll come back in one piece.

😑 Treat social media like sugar. It’s fine occasionally, but you know what happens when you binge. And stop doomscrolling the news. Your brain isn’t built to hold every bad thing happening everywhere, all at once!

Now I’m not suggesting you become a hermit. That would be hypocritical of me. I live in front of screens!

I’m not talking about cutting yourself off from the world, more about paying attention to what’s right in front of you (and what pops into your head).

So, where could you do with a little boredom in your life? How do you think that space would help?

PS. Confused about the medieval theme this week? Me too. I guess I was bored!