Do you remember the last time you were bored?

Do you remember the last time you were bored?

Think about the last time you had nothing to do. Not "relaxing with a show," not "catching up on reels," not "just checking something quickly." Nothing. No task, no screen, no podcast playing in the background while you did something else. Just you, in a quiet room with nowhere to be. Can you remember it? Most of us can't. And that is worth sitting with for a moment.

Boredom Used to Find Us Whether We Liked It or Not

There was a time, not so long ago when boredom was simply part of being alive. You waited for the bus with nothing but your thoughts. Long car rides passed in silence, maybe a window, maybe a song on the radio you didn't choose. Queues moved slowly and there was nothing to do but stand in them. 

We didn't call any of this "mindfulness." We called it Tuesday.

The boredom wasn't enjoyable, exactly. It had a particular restlessness to it, a slight itch in the mind that kept saying do something, want something, go somewhere. But we sat with it anyway, because there wasn't another option. And somehow, while we sat, things happened. Ideas arrived. Songs got written in people's heads. Conversations started just because two people were standing near each other with nothing else to do. Now, we have filled every single one of those gaps. And we did it so smoothly, so gradually, that we barely noticed we were doing it.

But wait, what exactly is boredom? 

Here is what most people get wrong about boredom: it is not the absence of stimulation. It is not emptiness. Psychologists describe boredom as an active, uncomfortable state; specifically, the feeling of wanting meaningful engagement and not finding it. Your mind is not switched off when you're bored. It is restless. It is searching. It is, in a sense, hungry.

This matters because it means boredom is not a problem with the world outside you. It is a signal from the world inside you. It is your mind saying: I need more than this. Give me something that actually engages me. Boredom, in that sense, is less of a mood and more of a message. And here's what we tend to do with that signal: we mute it. Immediately. Reflexively. Before it has even finished speaking.

What That Restless Mind Was Actually Doing

When researchers started studying what the brain does during unstructured, under-stimulated time, they found something unexpected. A particular network of brain regions; called the ‘default mode network’ lights up when the mind is left to wander. This is the same network involved in imagination, creativity, empathy, and self-reflection. It is, in a very real sense, the part of you that makes you you.

Boredom, it turns out, was the door to that room.

Think about where your best ideas have come from. In the shower, probably. On a walk where you forgot to put your earphones in. In that half-awake space just before sleep. These are the last remaining pockets of unstructured mental time most of us have and it is not a coincidence that they are also where insight tends to live.

Daydreaming was never a waste of time. It was, quietly, some of the most important mental work you were doing. And we have nearly eliminated it.

There is something else boredom was doing for us that we talk about even less: it was building our tolerance for discomfort. Every time you sat with the restless itch of having nothing to do and didn't immediately fix it, you were practising something. You were learning, at a low level, that an uncomfortable feeling does not have to be escaped. That you can feel the itch and not scratch it. That you can survive a moment of not knowing what to do next. That is not a small thing.

Researchers define boredom tolerance as a specific form of distress tolerance; our capacity to withstand uncomfortable emotional states without immediately acting to escape them (Simons & Gaher, 2005; Galla et al., 2020). And distress tolerance sits at the root of emotional regulation, patience, and the ability to cope with uncertainty. People with lower distress tolerance are more likely to reach for avoidance, whatever is closest and most immediately stimulating when an unpleasant feeling arises (Leyro et al., 2010). So, every time you sat with the itch of boredom and didn't immediately fix it, you were, without knowing it, building a skill. And every time we outsource that discomfort to a screen, we quietly let that skill erode. 

Can we blame our screen time?

This is not about screen time, and it is not about telling you to delete Instagram. It is about something more specific: that moment. You know the one. The food hasn't arrived yet. Your friend is five minutes late. The elevator is taking slightly too long. And your hand moves to your phone before your brain has even registered that you were about to feel bored. That movement is automatic now. It happens so fast that most of us don't experience boredom at all; we experience the very first flicker of it, and then we're gone.

The phone is not the problem. The problem is what we are practising every time we do this. We are practising intolerance. We are practising the idea that a quiet moment is something to be fixed. We are teaching our nervous systems that any gap, any small silence, is an emergency to be filled.

And then we wonder why sitting alone feels so uncomfortable. Why silence in a conversation feels unbearable. Why we cannot watch a film without also scrolling. Why our minds, when given nothing external to latch onto, immediately spin into anxiety rather than ease.

The Self You Meet in the Quiet

There is one more thing boredom was giving us access to, and it might be the most important one: ourselves.

When we never let the mind sit unoccupied, we also never let it wander to the things it might actually need to wander to. The unresolved feeling from a conversation last week. The question about your life you've been too busy to ask. The thing you actually want, underneath the thing you told everyone you wanted. These don't surface in busy, stimulated minds. They surface in quiet ones. They need space. They need a little boredom to find the gap.

So what will help? 

You don't have to stage a dramatic retreat from your phone. The invitation here is smaller than that.

Next time you find yourself in a waiting room, a queue, a minute of nothing, notice the impulse to reach. You don't have to resist it forever. But try sitting with it for just a little longer than feels comfortable. Let the itch be there. See what comes up underneath it.

Your mind, left to itself, is not as empty as you might fear. It is actually quite an interesting companion. You may have just forgotten, because you haven't given it the chance to speak in a while.

References

Eastwood, J. D., Frischen, A., Fenske, M. J., & Smilek, D. (2012). The unengaged mind: Defining boredom in terms of attention. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(5), 482–495. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612456044

Mann, S., & Cadman, R. (2014). Does being bored make us more creative? Creativity Research Journal, 26(2), 165–173. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2014.901073

Winnicott, D. W. (1958). The capacity to be alone. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 39, 416–420.

Raichle, M. E. (2015). The brain's default mode network. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 38, 433–447. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-neuro-071013-014030

Simons, J. S., & Gaher, R. M. (2005). The Distress Tolerance Scale: Development and validation of a self-report measure. Motivation and Emotion, 29(2), 83–102. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-005-7955-3

Galla, B. M., Tsukayama, E., Park, D., Yu, A., & Duckworth, A. L. (2020). Mindfulness predicts academic diligence in the face of boredom. Learning and Individual Differences, 81, 101864. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2020.101864

Leyro, T. M., Zvolensky, M. J., & Bernstein, A. (2010). Distress tolerance and psychopathological symptoms and disorders: A review of the empirical literature among adults. Psychological Bulletin, 136(4), 576–600. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019712

Disclaimer: This blog post is meant for awareness/entertainment purposes only. It is not medical advice and one must refrain from self-diagnosing. It is in no way a substitute for therapy with a mental health professional and it is not meant to be clinical. To consult with a psychotherapist on our team, you can contact us on fettle.counselling@gmail.com.