We are so scared of being bored these days.

I come from a time when there was no TV, no internet, and no smartphones. We had long summer vacations but nowhere to go. We hardly had any toys, very little reading material, and no video games.

Yet, I don’t remember being bored.

We played outdoors, invented games, and were extremely happy to sit around and do nothing. Being idle was not a taboo and the term ‘bored’ was rarely used.

The trouble is that we live in an age in which we never get the chance to be bored. All the entertainment we could ever dream of is at our fingertips, waiting on the phone in our pocket.

I think the time is ripe for us all to recognize boredom as the delicacy it is. Here’s a quote from Leslie’s piece, How Boredom is becoming anything but boring:

I think boredom is almost a luxurious thing, a decadent thing. To allow yourself to be bored is almost like a pampering thing. I think boredom might make a comeback. I can see a boredom ranch: ‘Come here and be bored!’

Austin Kleon wrote in Steal Like An Artist:

Take time to be bored. One time I heard a coworker say, “When I get busy, I get stupid.” Ain’t that the truth. Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing. I get some of my best ideas when I’m bored, which is why I never take my shirts to the cleaners. I love ironing my shirts — it’s so boring. I almost always get good ideas. If you’re out of ideas, wash the dishes. Take a really long walk. Stare at a spot on the wall for as long as you can. As the artist Maria Kalman says. “Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind.” Take time to mess around. Get lost. Wander. You never know where it’s going to lead you.

He stole ‘stare at a spot on the wall’ from psychologist William James and turned it into an exercise in The Steal Like An Artist Journal:

Jon Kabat-Zinn, an American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness, says, “When you pay attention to boredom, it gets unbelievably interesting.”

Meditation can be considered an extreme form of boredom, yet everyone knows its benefits.

Henry David Thoreau used to go for long walks in the woods, something that could be an extremely boring exercise was his source of daily inspiration.

David Sedaris used to write on the back of the placemats in the IHOP in his hometown of Raleigh while waiting for food. It played such a large role in David Sedaris’s collection of diaries, Theft By Finding, that the publisher used it as promotional postcards. (The New Yorker published an excerpt with the title, “The IHOP Years.”)

Notice the circling of letters in the words WANDER and WONDER.

Wandering (physical or mental) leads to wondering.

Here is what others are saying about boredom.

“The best way to come up with new ideas is to get really bored.” — Neil Gaiman

“I’m a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything.” — Steve Jobs

“Being bored is a precious thing, a state of mind we should pursue. Once boredom sets in, our minds begin to wander, looking for something exciting, something interesting to land on. And that’s where creativity arises.” — Peter Bregman

“I’ve noticed that my best ideas always bubble up when the outside world fails in its primary job of frightening, wounding, or entertaining me.” — Scott Adams

“Boredom is your window… Once this window opens, don’t try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open.” — Joseph Brodsky

“Creativity is the residue of time wasted.” — Albert Einstein:

Boredom is the birthplace of genius. —

I think boredom is the beginning of every authentic act. Boredom opens up the space, for new engagement. Without boredom, no creativity. If you are not bored, you just stupidly enjoy the situation in which you are. — Slavoj Zizek

Boredom is what used to be called idle time.

We all need idle time.

To wake up in the morning and have that feeling that the whole day is yours. No morning rush. No usual cleanup. No tidying up to do. To slow down. To do absolutely nothing.

Being idle is frowned upon in today’s society. We are so much under pressure to keep doing something all the time that we have forgotten the importance of idle time.

Contrary to the common belief that the ‘idle mind is the devil’s workshop,’ the idle mind is the germination ground for ideas.

Creativity thrives on boredom

Rainer Maria Rilke writes in Letters on Life

I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spent in the most profound activity.

Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.

In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, and possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.

But it is Tom Hodgkinson who has tackled the subject head-on in How to Be Idle: A Loafer’s Manifesto. He starts with:

In 1993, I went to interview the late radical philosopher and drugs researcher, Terence McKenna. I asked him why society doesn’t allow us to be more idle.

He replied: I think the reason we don’t organise society in that way can be summed up in the aphorism, “idle hands are the devil’s tool.”

In other words, institutions fear idle populations because an Idler is a thinker and thinkers are not a welcome addition to most social situations. Thinkers become malcontents, that’s almost a substitute word for idle, “malcontent.”

Essentially, we are all kept very busy . . . under no circumstances are you to quietly inspect the contents of your own mind.

Freud called introspection “morbid” — unhealthy, introverted, anti-social, possibly neurotic, and potentially pathological. Introspection could lead to that terrible thing: a vision of the truth, a clear image of the horror of our fractured, dissonant world. He goes on to say:

“Idleness is a waste of time is a damaging notion put about by its spiritually vacant enemies. The fact that idling can be enormously productive is repressed. Musicians are characterized as slackers; writers as selfish ingrates; artists as dangerous.”

Robert Louis Stevenson expressed the paradox as follows in ‘An Apology for Idlers’ (1885)

Idleness . . . does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class.

Long periods of languor, indolence and staring at the ceiling are needed by any creative person in order to develop ideas.

A conclusion I’ve come to at the Idler is that it starts with retreating from work but it’s really about making work into something that isn’t drudgery and slavery, and then work and life can become one thing.

Let the children be bored at times

Victoria Prooday, a world-renowned educator, and motivational speaker, writes about modern-day parenting and the impact of a high-tech lifestyle on a child’s nervous system. According to her we should let children be bored at times and don’t feel guilty about it.

“By constantly entertaining our kids, we are stealing their childhood and creating major obstacles to their future success. We are not allowing them to learn to tolerate quiet times and discover ways to overcome boredom. It is still reversible. Let them be bored at times and don’t feel guilty about it.” — Victoria Prooday

Hope you allow boredom into your life.

Some other related articles:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/what-does-boredom-do-to-us-and-for-us

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-boredom-is-anything-but-boring/