The forgotten art of being bored

When did you last do absolutely nothing? Not scrolling, not listening to a podcast, not answering messages – just sitting, perhaps on a train or in a waiting room, with nothing to occupy your mind. For many of us, the honest answer is that we cannot remember. The moment a gap appears in our day, we fill it almost instinctively with a phone.

On the face of it, this seems harmless, even sensible. Why waste time feeling bored when entertainment, news and conversation are always within reach? Boredom has long had a bad reputation: it is associated with laziness, frustration and, in young people, with getting into trouble. Yet psychologists are increasingly arguing that this uncomfortable feeling serves a purpose.

One much-quoted experiment, carried out by researchers in the north of England, asked a group of volunteers to spend fifteen minutes copying numbers out of a telephone directory – a task designed to be as tedious as possible. Afterwards, they were asked to think of as many uses as they could for a pair of plastic cups. Compared with a group who had skipped the boring task, the bored volunteers came up with more ideas, and more original ones. The researchers concluded that boredom may push the mind to wander, and that a wandering mind is fertile ground for creativity.

This fits with what neuroscientists have discovered about the so-called “default mode network”, a set of brain regions that become more active when we are not focused on any particular task. Far from switching off, the brain uses these quiet moments to make connections, revisit memories and imagine the future. Many people report that their best ideas arrive in the shower or on a walk – precisely the situations in which no screen is competing for their attention.

There is a further argument, concerning motivation. Boredom, some researchers suggest, works as a signal, much like hunger or pain: it tells us that what we are currently doing is not fulfilling and nudges us to look for something more meaningful. If that signal is constantly silenced by quick digital distractions, we may never feel the push to change direction, whether that means taking up a new hobby or rethinking a career.

None of this is to romanticise boredom. Chronic boredom, particularly at work or school, has been linked to stress and poor wellbeing, and nobody is suggesting that a dull job is secretly good for the soul. The point is rather that short periods of unstructured time, which previous generations experienced as a matter of course, have quietly disappeared from modern life.

Reclaiming them need not be drastic. It might mean leaving the phone in a pocket during a commute, taking a walk without headphones or letting children be bored during the holidays instead of filling every afternoon with activities. The discomfort tends to pass more quickly than we expect – and what comes after it may well be worth the wait.