Boredom has become nearly extinct. The moment any hint of understimulation appears—waiting in line, sitting in traffic, the pause between activities—hands reach for phones. Within seconds, the discomfort of boredom is replaced by the comfort of content.
This seems like progress. Why tolerate boredom when entertainment is always available? But eliminating boredom also eliminates something essential: the mental space where creativity, problem-solving, and self-understanding emerge.
Boredom's Evolutionary Purpose
Boredom exists for a reason. It's an evolutionary signal that current activities aren't meaningful or productive, prompting the search for better ways to invest time and energy. When ancestors felt bored with their current location, they explored new territories. When bored with existing tools, they invented better ones.
Boredom creates discomfort precisely because it's meant to motivate change. The feeling signals that the brain is understimulated and ready for something more engaging. The problem is that phones provide stimulation without requiring meaningful engagement, short-circuiting the signal without addressing the underlying need.
The Creativity Connection
Research consistently links boredom to enhanced creativity. When external stimulation stops, the brain doesn't go idle—it shifts into a different mode of processing. Neuroscientists call this the "default mode network," a pattern of brain activity that emerges when attention is directed inward rather than outward.
During default mode activity, the brain makes unexpected connections between ideas, consolidates memories, and works through problems in the background. This is why solutions to difficult problems often appear in the shower, on walks, or while doing mundane tasks—moments when external demands are minimal and the mind is allowed to wander.
Mind Wandering as Mental Maintenance
Mind wandering isn't a bug in human attention; it's a feature. Studies show that people spend nearly half their waking hours thinking about something other than what they're currently doing. This might seem inefficient, but it serves critical functions: planning for the future, learning from the past, understanding other people's perspectives, and reinforcing personal values and goals.
Phones interrupt this process. Every time boredom begins and the phone comes out, mind wandering is prevented. The background processing stops. The creative connections don't form. The mental maintenance doesn't happen.
How Phones Eliminate Boredom Instantly
Smartphones are boredom-killing machines, engineered to provide immediate stimulation whenever needed. Infinite scroll ensures there's always new content. Algorithms learn preferences and serve up increasingly engaging material. Notifications create artificial urgency even when nothing genuinely important requires attention.
This instant elimination of boredom comes with a cost. The brain learns that discomfort doesn't need to be tolerated—it can be escaped within seconds. Over time, tolerance for understimulation decreases. Activities that used to feel engaging—reading, conversation, nature—start to feel slow and boring by comparison.
The Tolerance Problem
Like any form of tolerance, boredom tolerance diminishes with disuse. People who habitually reach for phones at the first hint of boredom find that their threshold for discomfort drops. What used to require genuine boredom to trigger phone use now happens with mild understimulation. Eventually, even moments of calm become uncomfortable.
The Boredom Gap: Where Creativity Happens
There's a specific window of time—the gap between activities—where the most valuable mental processing occurs. The few minutes waiting for coffee to brew. The walk from the parking lot to the office. The pause before falling asleep. These transitions are when the brain naturally shifts into default mode and begins its background work.
These gaps have been eliminated. Coffee brewing? Scroll through social media. Walking to the office? Listen to a podcast. Lying in bed? Watch short-form videos. Every boredom gap gets filled with external content, leaving no space for internal processing.
Tip: Identify Your Boredom Gaps
Spend one day noticing every moment when the urge to reach for the phone appears. These are the boredom gaps—the transitions, the waiting periods, the moments between activities. These are precisely the moments worth protecting.
Training Boredom Tolerance
Boredom tolerance, like physical endurance, can be trained. The training is simple but uncomfortable: allow boredom without immediately escaping it.
Start Small
Begin with low-stakes situations. Wait in line without looking at the phone. Sit in a waiting room without entertainment. Lie in bed for five minutes before sleep without screens. These moments will feel longer than they are—that's normal and expected.
Notice the Discomfort
Boredom creates physical sensations: restlessness, mild anxiety, the urge to do something—anything—other than nothing. Rather than immediately acting on these feelings, simply notice them. The discomfort peaks and then, if not indulged, begins to subside.
Observe What Emerges
After the initial discomfort passes, something else appears. Sometimes it's useful thoughts about work problems or personal decisions. Sometimes it's creative ideas or interesting observations about the environment. Sometimes it's genuine relaxation. The content varies, but the pattern is consistent: valuable mental activity emerges when boredom is tolerated rather than escaped.
Activities That Benefit from Boredom
Certain activities produce the most value when approached with tolerance for understimulation rather than constant entertainment.
Waiting in Line
Standing in line used to be dead time—boring but brief. Now it's an opportunity to observe surroundings, think without agenda, or simply rest attention. The person who can stand in line without reaching for their phone has access to dozens of small mental breaks throughout the day that others miss entirely.
Commuting
Drives and walks create ideal conditions for default mode processing. The body is occupied with a simple task (walking, driving) while the mind is free to wander. This is why commutes often produce unexpected insights—unless the entire commute is filled with podcasts, music, or phone use.
Lying in Bed
The period before sleep and after waking are when the brain is most fluid and creative. Ideas that seemed stuck during the day often resolve themselves during these twilight states. Using phones in bed—checking social media, watching videos, reading news—eliminates this processing window and replaces it with external content that makes falling asleep harder and waking up more jarring.
What Happens When Boredom Is Allowed
When boredom is tolerated rather than escaped, several things happen consistently:
Ideas Surface
The creative ideas that get interrupted by phone use don't disappear—they're simply prevented from forming. When given space, they emerge naturally. Most people who commit to regular boredom periods report an increase in ideas, insights, and solutions to problems they'd stopped actively thinking about.
Problems Get Worked Through
The brain continues processing problems even when conscious attention has moved elsewhere. This background processing produces the "aha!" moments that seem to come from nowhere. They don't come from nowhere—they come from the default mode network working through problems during understimulated moments.
Self-Knowledge Develops
Without constant external input, attention naturally turns inward. This creates space for self-reflection: noticing patterns in behavior, identifying what truly matters, recognizing when current activities align with or contradict values. People who regularly tolerate boredom report better self-understanding and clearer priorities.
Boredom as a Compass
Rather than a problem to be solved, boredom can function as a compass pointing toward what actually matters. When activities genuinely align with values and use skills effectively, they produce engagement rather than boredom. When boredom appears consistently in certain contexts, it's worth asking whether those contexts deserve continued time investment.
But this compass only works if boredom is experienced rather than immediately escaped. Someone who reflexively reaches for their phone the moment understimulation appears never gets the information boredom provides about which activities are worth continuing and which aren't.
Tip: Use Boredom as Data
When boredom appears, instead of immediately escaping it, ask: Is this situation genuinely boring, or is boredom tolerance simply low? If the situation is genuinely boring and happens regularly, is it worth changing? Boredom becomes useful when treated as information rather than discomfort to be avoided.
Rebuilding the Relationship with Boredom
Most people's relationship with boredom has been damaged by years of instant escape. Rebuilding that relationship requires deliberate practice and patience with discomfort.
Start by protecting one boredom gap per day. Choose a specific moment—morning coffee, lunch break, evening walk—and commit to experiencing it without phone use. Notice the urge to escape. Observe what happens when that urge isn't indulged. Track whether anything valuable emerges.
Over time, increase the number of protected gaps. Add a phone-free commute. Stop using the phone in bed. Eliminate background entertainment during routine tasks. Each protected gap becomes an opportunity for the mental processing that constant stimulation prevents.
Ready to Reclaim Boredom?
Free Time helps protect the mental space where creativity happens by reducing automatic phone use and creating intentional gaps in screen time.
Download Free TimeSources
- Mann, S., & Cadman, R. (2014). Does being bored make us more creative? Creativity Research Journal, 26(2), 165-173.
- Raichle, M. E. (2015). The brain's default mode network. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 38, 433-447.
- Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330(6006), 932.
- Microsoft. (2021). The Next Great Disruption Is Hybrid Work—Are We Ready? Work Trend Index.