It's Time to Embrace Boredom

Many people are quick to hail social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram as the solution to boredom. Gone are the days when you twiddle your thumbs while waiting in line for your morning coffee, now that your phone has a whole world of content to look at. But was boredom ever really a problem that needed fixing?

Psychologist James Danckert says that boredom is a call to action and an evolutionary trait that encourages people towards achieving their full potential. The main reason that being bored feels so uncomfortable is because it’s a challenge that we create ourselves to find an activity that actually engages us. It’s the brain’s way of recognising that we are the authors of our own lives and that we must make our own decisions about what we do.

But it’s a lot easier to embrace “pacifiers of boredom” like TikTok and Netflix which merely distract us from this feeling rather than fixing it. It’s like when you were a little kid complaining to your parents about how bored you were, and they’d fix it by getting out the colouring-in books. Going on social media when you're bored is our attempt to get somebody else to tell us how to get over our boredom. Yet it’s so easy to grow tired of these apps because they require such little effort from us.

One way to alleviate your boredom is through the feeling of accomplishment. Baking a cake, reading a book or cleaning your bedroom are all activities with a clear end result. They are activities that make you do or create something that actually makes you have to think rather than just watch. Making a conscious decision to choose an activity is the best way to prevent you from reaching for the easy and dulling entertainment of social media.

But in the small moments when you’re waiting for an appointment or sitting in class, and you’re itching to look at your phone I recommend trying to practice mindfulness. By that I mean, being aware of your surroundings and engaging with your thoughts. This is because studies show that being mindful can reduce how often you feel bored, which will help to make you feel more motivated in the long run. As Andy Warhol once said, “You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.”