The Lost Art of Being Bored

WKRP in Cincinnati, Coupe DeVille's, and the Creative Power of Boredom

If you grew up as part of Generation X (as I did), are an older millennial, or even an early Gen Z kid, chances are you experienced something that feels just as extinct as a stegosaurus: good, old-fashioned boredom.

I’m talking about the kind of boredom where you’d build forts out of every pillowy structure in your house because there’s nothing else to do. The type of boredom where you’d stare out the car window watching the world go by as you sat in the expansive back seat of your dad’s yellowish Coupe DeVille. The kind of boredom where you’d lie in your backyard with your best friend mindlessly watching the clouds go by because it’s really too hot to breathe. Let me put this in real perspective: the type of boredom where you wander outside because you couldn’t handle another rerun of WKRP in Cincinnati, no matter how much of a crush you had on Loni Anderson, and there was nothing else on the three channels you got on TV.

When I was young, that felt awful. These days, I’m starting to think it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. 

Looking back, boredom was really doing something very important: it was forcing us to think. We didn’t have the option to doomscroll, play Royal Match, or consume mindless videos on TikTok, so we let our minds simply wander and, frankly, that’s a critically important thing.

One of the challenges of life in 2026 is that we have systematically eliminated almost every opportunity for boredom to happen organically. As a society, we’ve reached a point where silence and stillness feel so unnatural and uncomfortable that we instinctively reach for our phones for that dopamine rush the second they appear.

• We don’t watch TV any longer as a communal experience because we prefer to watch individually while scrolling our phones, whether we are in a group or not.

• We watch YouTube videos while playing Madden 26 on Xbox.

• We listen to podcasts while replying to emails and doing other things that prevent us from giving our full attention.

Every quiet moment is filled; we self-medicate every pause with content. All this stimulation makes us feel engaged, but leaves no room for reflection.

To my way of thinking, that’s a real problem because some of the best ideas happen in the quietest of moments: taking a shower, going for a walk, driving in silence, sitting outside listening only to the majesty of nature, or that delicious moment where you’re not quite asleep but also not fully awake. These are the moments where your brain finally can slow down a bit and find enough breathing room to wander. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that there’s a reason creativity often shows up when we stop actively chasing it.

Lately, I’ve started intentionally and purposefully introducing boredom back into my life. For at least 30 minutes every day, I go without any artificial stimulus: no music, phone, television, scrolling, or podcasts playing in the background. For that time, it’s just me and my thoughts.

To be clear, I’m not sitting “crisscross applesauce” on a mountain chanting while trying to become a bit more spiritually enlightened. Most of the time, I’m just sitting quietly, allowing my mind to wander wherever it chooses to go. The biggest surprise in doing this is that it’s changed the way I think about things.

I’ve started to notice things more; my thoughts feel deeper and far less rushed, complex human problems seem easier to solve, ideas connect in ways they haven’t for years, and I feel more present with my family and friends. It’s almost as if my brain was desperately waiting for a little empty space to finally stretch out.

What’s fascinating is how uncomfortable this can feel at first, because we’ve become so conditioned to constant input that silence almost feels… wrong. Plus, that silence forces you to think about things we push deep down - the things that are difficult, if not downright unpleasant or even scary.  At the beginning, it felt like I should be doing something more productive, for lack of a better word. However, after a few days, I realized that this is productive, boredom isn’t wasted time, and it’s where original thought roams freely.

Look, I’m not anti-technology at all. Hell, I make my living with a laptop, a microphone, an internet connection, and a relationship with Amazon that borders on unhealthy. That being said, I do think it’s critically important to be intentional about creating moments where our brains aren’t constantly under assault from outside stimulation. Creativity requires space to move and flow freely, without constraints. When we eliminate that space, the uniqueness of each of us begins to atrophy and does so at an alarming rate.

So, here’s my challenge: intentionally introduce a little boredom back into your life. That means no screen, no music, no noise, and no distraction. Just you and your thoughts, which, at least at the beginning, will feel uncomfortable.

Good.

That’s likely a sign it’s something you've needed for a long time.