We’ve Forgotten How to Be Bored — and It’s Robbing Us of Drive and Passion for Life

It’s noon on a Sunday. You turn off your TV show and, still feeling the aftertaste of coffee in your mouth, sit there, wondering if you should go get another cup. You quickly remember you’ve already had two. The silence of your apartment grows hauntingly louder. You look around and the objects of your life that surround you all scream for you to pick them up. You fish your phone out from under the sofa cushion in the hopes of finding something, anything to do to escape this horrible feeling of stillness.

Boredom is horrible. There are so many things you could be doing, things you had planned for all week, fighting the urge to procrastinate through your fifth zoom meeting on a Tuesday, resisting the temptations that always seem to come at you when you’re busy. And now, the weekend is here, and all you feel is the dread of not having something to do.

In the 21st century, we have become masters at simultaneously doing things all day in an attempt to fight off boredom, and finding multiple ways to procrastinate when we finally feel our work is hard and sometimes unexciting.

Our modern lifestyle is killing off vital ingredients for meaning-making and creativity. There is much psychological evidence that points to the importance of boredom in this. The essential process at its heart is called associative thinking.

We have become addicted to distractions

So much of modern life involves being “on” all the time, whether it’s work-related emails that stretch into the night, or people waiting on you for a quick response on social media. The constant preoccupation and avoidance of boredom, emptiness and some of the less glamorous aspects of life, becomes in itself a form of avoidance. Avoidance behavior, which drives engaging in distractions, is a short-sighted way of dealing with unwanted feelings by denying them the right to exist. I wrote about how this relates to covid-related information overload and anxiety before, but the bigger picture is that the world has become one big distracting place, and the psychological impact of that is enormous if we constantly engage in this one mode of being.

We hate being bored, because it makes us feel like we’re underachieving. But a forced “busyness” interspersed with moments of switching off is precisely what we should avoid if we want to live meaningful and creative lives.

‘Keeping busy’ is often another way of ‘keeping distracted’ from the less exciting aspects of our lives — and it’s the perfect recipe for killing creativity and passion.

Why a lack of boredom sucks

On the one hand, there is so much out there to do. You could spend every afternoon on a different corner of the internet and not have to do the same thing twice a day.

On the other hand, relaxation and distress are what inhibits associative thinking — the process that allows you to form new connections in your mind, understand the meaning of your experiences, and reflect on where you’re heading in regards to your inner goals.

Acting on the feeling of distress, for the sake of keeping busy, or acting to undo overwork by “switching off”, are the two modes of modern existence we are taught to bounce between. It’s bound to repeat endlessly unless we accept negative emotions like boredom and let them lead us just as the peak experiences of our lives do.

Associative learning is like opening a door that’s never been opened before in a house you thought you knew well. It is about changing how you see things, and writing a new chapter in your life.

The stream of distractions is constant. And because it’s always there, at the press of a button, being distracted is tempting and easy. It’s a hit of excitement whenever we need it.

The problem is that no matter how much excitement you seek out for yourself, it will never lead to a deeper feeling of fulfilment. Going on these joy rides will give you feelings of happiness and novelty — all great joys of being human. But they will seldom give you purpose, connection, or add meaning to your life if their sole purpose is to avoid negative states of being.

How avoidance inhibits living purposefully

Avoidant behavior is an escape that provides short term excitement, but doesn’t give you anything beyond a few minutes of feeling problem-free — something that’s impossible to sustain in your life forever. On the other hand, approach behavior — associated with feelings of passion and elation, boredom to curiosity, is what enables our minds to develop new ideas and ways of thinking.

To use an example, imagine you dream of becoming an author. Let’s say you want to write a novel. As with any undertaking, you will at different points feel: passion, excitement, uncertainty, doubt and even boredom. Being a writer, as any other activity in life, is not a one dimensional experience of constant joy and excitement. It’s also challenging, triggering, difficult. It’s at that moment, and often when you feel some negative emotion, that you might discover some truth, or that something needs to change — maybe the characters are flat, or you’ve written a story that you simply don’t believe in. It’s that new, novel experience (born from associative thinking) which will make your book a great one.

It is at the moment of negative emotional experience, that we have learned to escape — and at that moment, that we need to choose otherwise

Tune in to yourself to turn your creativity ‘on’ and turn your lack of drive ‘off’

Boredom is a state of mind that we have learned to fear. After all, who hasn’t heard before that “intelligent people are never bored”, or seen one of those annoying self-help posts about how you won’t achieve your goals if you don’t start waking up at 5 am. Besides the fact that it feels like we’ve failed and have low worth, if you ask me, waking that early will cause you mental anguish (ie. risk of dementia) and heartache (ie. possible cardiovascular disease) if you’re not one of the lucky few born with a morning chronotype.

Some of our greatest life realizations come from experiences of openness — a touching conversation, a trek through nature, exploring a foreign country. These are autobiographical experiences, that happen alongside exploration and willingness. It’s when you are a protagonist in your own story, and not a sidekick in somebody else’s.

To undo the damage, you need to forget so-called ‘lessons’ about how to keep busy no-matter-what and relearn how to access elation, boredom and imagination. It’s the stuff of childhood we all have within us.

I challenge you to find a moment, an hour, or a day to decide, intentionally, to put distractions aside. Allow yourself to just live in that moment, and trust that the right thing will manifest, all on its own, when you are open and fully you. When it does, notice how good it feels to want to do something out of passion, belief or inner desire. Let those things carry you to greater heights.

Give yourself permission to be bored — simply alive and open to experience — and let your mind wander.