The Case for Boredom

Boredom has been almost fully eliminated. There's a screen for every waiting room, a podcast for every commute, a scroll for every spare moment. We've gotten very good at never being bored.

I wonder if that's a mistake.

When I look at where original thoughts come from, they don't tend to arrive during input — during reading, listening, consuming. They arrive in the gaps. In the shower. On a walk without headphones. In the middle of a sleepless night when there's nothing left to distract from your own mind.

Boredom isn't just the absence of stimulation. It's the mind running without external input. And when the mind runs without input, it starts to generate its own — it makes connections, revisits unsolved problems, wanders into territory it didn't plan to visit. This is where ideas actually come from.

There's research on this, but I find the intuition more convincing than the studies: think about the last genuinely interesting idea you had. Where were you? I'd bet it wasn't while you were looking at a screen.

What we've traded boredom for is novelty. Novelty feels good. It scratches the same itch. But novelty is input — it keeps the mind occupied, not free. There's a difference between being entertained and thinking.

The people I find most interesting tend to be comfortable with silence, with empty time, with their own company. Not because they're ascetics — because they've kept the space open.

Boredom is that space. It's not wasted time. It might be the most productive time you're not having.