This might sound like a bit of a strange one, but I think it’s an underrated skill, and something I think we, as a society, have mostly lost: the ability to be bored! I think that as a society, we lean into the idea that we have to be productive all of the time. Every moment of our lives has to be filled with something, whether it’s work, chores, a side hustle or something else.

It feels like doing nothing and allowing yourself to become bored is seen as shameful or some sort of personal failure; it’s as if, if you have time to be bored, you have to fill it with something that can earn you money or be part of some sort of self-improvement, or you have to contribute to something or someone else’s project.

I know the idea of being understimulated is not a comfortable one; trust me, as someone with ADHD, I am fully aware of this, and I’m not saying people should be ok with chronic or constant boredom, just that every so often, it’s not the end of the world that everyone makes it out to be. I believe to exist is ok; it is more than just acceptable, and not every moment of one’s life has to be filled with something productive or with having to contribute to something of utmost importance.

I believe some of life’s greatest moments, thoughts, and inventions have come from boredom. Boredom leaves room for curiosity and experimentation, and for thinking and pondering the world around you; it lets the brain make connections more naturally, in a way that isn’t forced and therefore less brittle. Boredom gives the time for ideas to grow and form, and then solidify, and it allows the brain to work on a much deeper level than it would if it wasn’t trying to do multiple things all at once.

I don’t think we need to be actively thinking about one problem or another all the time. Our brains need the downtime and boredom to work through our lives. Having time to be bored also allows us to do a certain level of introspection and reflection, to review how we could have done or said things differently, or to connect with ourselves on a deeper level too, to think about and process our own emotional state and whether we can change anything about it or the cause of what we’re feeling.

Being bored also allows the time and space to get creative. Heck, I’ll even admit to the fact that my sporadic blog posting schedule often comes from me being bored (combined with the refusal to go back to doomscrolling on my phone again), which I’ll also admit is probably not the best approach to producing any form of content and perhaps goes against what I was saying earlier about not filling boredom with being productive, but had I not been bored and taken a moment or two to figure out what I actually wanted to do with my day, perhaps I wouldn’t have been hit with the inspiration to dig this blog out of my list of partially completed drafts, AKA, my blogging pile of shame. But I thoroughly enjoy being creative when I allow myself the time to do so, whether it be blogging, doing the occasional photography or painting Warhammer miniatures; I always come away feeling a good deal happier and a decent level of satisfaction that I made the time to do it, rather than doomscrolling on my phone or mindlessly binge-watching a TV show (or both at the same time).

Anyway, getting back to the point, boredom allows our thoughts to coalesce into something we can either use or act on. Being bored allows the brain to do so many things that I believe we need to let it do of its own accord. It’s ok to be bored occasionally; there is nothing wrong with it. The problems only arise when someone decides what to fill it with, and that is why I believe we need to relearn how to be bored. I believe we can find so many good things in boredom again; we just need to allow it and occasionally be conscious of where it takes us.

Boredom can be the beginning of something brilliant, so go on, be bored occasionally; you never know where you will end up, and you might even enjoy yourself along the way!