Why being bored is good for you

people without their phone

Can you put away your phone for an entire week? Realistically, can you?

I hear your mind making excuses for why you can’t: I can’t work without it! I can’t keep up with my friends without it! What if I somehow get lost, I’ll need it.

Classic. Your mind can’t handle the lack of stimulation. As soon as the blue light is gone and the sounds of technology are put away, your mind begins to wander.

Eight seconds later, you’re bored.

Did you know the average attention span for an adult is eight seconds? The average attention span of a goldfish is nine seconds.

Yes, you read that right. Humanity has finally passed goldfish in our inability to focus.

So what’s the key to focusing? Boredom.

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Boredom helps you learn.

The brain is amazing. It can find a way to connect two seemingly irrelevant things that breed greater understanding. But you’re distracting it so it can’t do its job.

Every time you put the phone away and just sit there, your brain is working overtime to process and think. The cogs are turning and constructing an enormous creation of connected ideas and feelings.

That’s why a great idea seems to appear out of thin air. You thank your four-leaf clover and cherish your “good fortune” when really your brain had been working like a fast-food employee for weeks connecting ideas.

It’s actually a scientific concept called diffuse learning, and since I’m not a Harvard PHd psychologist I’ll leave it at that.

Don’t be afraid of your thoughts.

People are so afraid of their thoughts that they’d rather shock themselves than sit in a room alone for 15 minutes.

15 minutes of being bored. That’s it. The volunteers would rather get shocked than sit alone with their thoughts.

Literally sitting and doing nothing is more productive than most things on your phone.

So be bored.

Be bored more often. Put down the phone and just sit there. It isn’t as bad as you think.

—Charlie

PS: I was going to write more, but I got bored, which is good I guess…

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