The Lost Art of Boredom: Why Doing Nothing Might Be Everything Your Mind Needs
The Neuroscience of Boredom and Its Role in Emotional Wellbeing
In our hyperconnected world, we reach for our phones at every stoplight, scroll through feeds while waiting for coffee, and fall asleep to screens. But what if our relentless flight from boredom is costing us more than we realize?
The Science Behind Our Discomfort
Harvard professor Arthur C. Brooks recently explored this in a Harvard Business Review video, arguing that boredom isn't a problem to escape but a crucial component of mental health and meaning. The research backing this is striking: In a landmark study by University of Virginia psychologist Timothy Wilson and Harvard's Daniel Gilbert, participants sat alone for 15 minutes with nothing to do but think. Their only option? A button delivering a painful electric shock they'd previously said they would pay to avoid.
The results: 67% of men and 25% of women chose to shock themselves rather than sit with their thoughts. One person shocked himself 190 times. People found being alone with their minds so uncomfortable that they preferred physical pain to mental stillness.
When we're bored, our brain's "default mode network" activates—structures that switch on when we're not focused on external tasks. This is when our minds naturally wander toward bigger questions about meaning, purpose, and values. As Brooks notes, these uncomfortable existential questions are actually beneficial. Yet we've become masters at avoiding this discomfort, outsourcing our inner lives to devices.
Screen Time and Rising Anxiety
The implications are particularly concerning for children and young adults experiencing unprecedented anxiety levels. Children need unstructured time to discover their interests, process emotions, and develop identity. Instead, many spend 7-10 hours daily on screens—constantly stimulated but rarely truly engaged.
This creates several problems: the loss of reflective capacity means young people never learn to sit with difficult emotions, leading to anxiety avoidance and screen dependency. Social media provides endless curated highlights, creating inadequacy without the reflective space to reconnect with personal values. The constant dopamine hits from notifications train brains to crave stimulation and avoid the patient work of self-reflection.
How Psychotherapy Can Help
Therapy provides structured support to develop the skills our hyperconnected culture undermines: the ability to sit with discomfort and engage with difficult questions.
In therapy, clients learn distress tolerance—that uncomfortable feelings won't destroy them. We practice sitting with anxiety or uncertainty without reaching for distractions. We explore those big existential questions about purpose and meaning rather than avoiding them. Therapy helps develop awareness of automatic phone-reaching patterns and creates intentional relationships with technology. Often, the inability to tolerate boredom masks deeper issues like unresolved trauma or attachment wounds that therapy can safely address.
Practical Steps to Reclaim Boredom
The journey back to boredom doesn't require dramatic gestures. Brooks recommends starting with 15-minute intervals without stimulation—put your phone in another room and simply sit. Notice what thoughts arise and the urge to reach for distraction.
Try these evidence-based strategies:
Create boundaries: No phones after 7 p.m., never in the bedroom, banned at meals
Practice mono-tasking: Eat without scrolling, walk without podcasts, drive without checking texts
Build reflection time: 10-20 minutes daily for unstructured thinking
Notice reach patterns: Before grabbing your phone, pause and ask what you're feeling or avoiding
Embrace waiting: At the grocery store or doctor's office, just wait without filling the time
Take screen cleanses: Try a weekend without social media or a monthly screen-free day
Be patient—learning to be bored is difficult at first. Your mind will race and you'll feel restless. That's normal. The discomfort is part of the process, not a sign something's wrong.
The Promise of Boredom
As Brooks notes, "Start getting better at periods that are 15 minutes and longer of boredom and watch your life change. You'll start digging into the biggest questions in your life: purpose, meaning, coherence, significance—and who knows? You might just get happier."
When we stop running from boredom, we start running toward life—the creativity that emerges in unstructured time, the connections that deepen when we're present, the self-awareness from sitting with difficult emotions, the clarity about what truly matters.
If you're recognizing yourself in these patterns, know you're not alone. Start with curiosity rather than judgement. Notice when and why you reach for screens. Experiment with small periods of boredom. And if you find yourself struggling—if anxiety feels overwhelming or screens have become compulsive—reach out for support.
Ready to explore the benefits of boredom?
The electric shock study reminds us: we're willing to endure significant discomfort to avoid being alone with our thoughts. But what if that quiet space is actually the doorway to a more meaningful, connected, and authentic life?
The next time you feel bored, resist the urge to fill it. Sit with it. Notice what emerges. You might be surprised by what you discover when you give yourself permission to do nothing at all.
At The Authentic Life, we specialize in helping clients develop the skills to sit with discomfort, reduce screen dependency, and engage with life's deeper questions about meaning and purpose. Our therapists provide a safe, supportive space to explore what you've been avoiding and discover the authentic life waiting beneath the distractions.
Contact us today to schedule a consultation. Sometimes, the most profound growth happens not when we're doing everything, but when we're brave enough to do nothing at all—and we're here to support you through that journey.