The Importance of Being Bored

(and the creativity it teaches you)

2026/04/23

Recently, I deleted almost all of my messaging applications, deleted all of my social media accounts, and disabled YouTube on my phone. This was part of an attempt to be less attached to my devices.

So far, I've felt much more present and significantly less stressed and overwhelmed. I am focusing much more in my lectures and seminars, returning to neglected hobbies, and the quality of the communication that I am experiencing with others is much improved.

Something that I have noticed so far, however, is that I am now often exceedingly bored. I find myself sitting alone in the kitchen or my bedroom, staring at the wall, trying not to resort to finding some kind of quick fix for my boredom like short-form content or a mindless television show. I am trying to sit with my boredom; I am trying to let myself feel it, rather than instantly shooing it away.

I don't believe that boredom is an inherently negative thing, although it can definitely feel that way. Sometimes it feels reminiscent of depression to me: I feel a lack of purpose or direction, and whenever I realise that I've essentially been covering up that void of meaning in my life for so long with simple distractions, I feel a great sense of concern about what to do next. It is as if I am taking a great step out into the unknown and leaving my comfortable familiarity. (The reason I am making this choice, of course, is because I am conscious that whilst this familiarity is comfortable, it is also, in many ways, inhibiting me.)

However, whilst taking that step is scary, especially at first, I have discovered that it doesn't have to stay that way. The more you allow yourself to sit with that sense of boredom, the more you rediscover your ability to create thoughtful solutions. You relearn how to think critically, how to entertain yourself, and how to experience that sense of curiosity and wonder that so many of us seem to have lost since advancing past childhood.

These are things that I believe most of us tend to experience naturally as children, and yet they are beaten out of us as we grow older. A combination of incredibly advanced technologies we have not yet evolved to handle and subpar education systems end up turning us into people that tend to opt for the easy solutions, even if they aren't actually fulfilling or good for us.

Allowing yourself to be bored in such a world is a little act of defiance, of rebellion, of reclaiming what makes you authentically yourself.

Since I have started experimenting in this way with boredom, I have become increasingly convinced that this is the way we were designed to function and must return to if we wish to improve. We weren't designed and have not evolved to handle constant stimulation, and in spite of this, we have begun to fear boredom. We shy away from it, treating it as if it is almost a shameful or dirty thing, or we simply avoid it.

Before I began living this way, I felt incessantly overwhelmed and stressed. I felt I never had enough time in the day. I felt stuck within my degree, and permanently behind. I was allowing myself to remain paralysed by all of those fears, and I tried to distract myself from my anxieties by covering them up with more distractions. In the end, this only made things worse, and I had caught myself in a vicious cycle.

To allow yourself to be bored is perhaps the very antithesis of this. To be able to learn to sit quietly with yourself is a wonderful thing, and something I think we all ought to relearn if it is something we feel we have lost. It may sound small, simple, or stupid, however it is anything but.

All of a sudden, reading literature, making art, and writing are now natural, everyday parts of my life once again: not things I have to shoehorn in deliberately. I no longer have the same anxious knot in my stomach. I am once again experiencing the kind of joy and fulfilment that I haven't experienced since I was a child, and it is boredom that led me here.