66 days to rediscover boredom: ‘The way I thought about time was wrong’
I I knew I wanted to make a change when I couldn’t go more than five minutes without needing some kind of incentive. Music, podcasts, movies, reels, a combination of them or all at once (maybe) formed the soundtrack of my life. This inability to sit still, to pay attention without seeking distraction, is not unique to me, nor is the feeling of the infinite scroll leaving you exhausted and numb. more bored. But I don’t want to default to this state of being.
I want to stop using screens, music, and podcasts to fill the gaps where I should have downtime. I want to be able to be bored. For me, boredom is a state in which nothing seems to curb the desire to do something. Taking a few months to consciously stop mindlessly using devices and instead use my free time for time with myself, in local spaces, will bring about a sense of calm, I think, that will help me slow down and learning to exist without the digital necessity distractions. It’s shameful not to be able to tolerate boredom. But not only that: it’s scary not being able to decide where to focus your attention.
When I started my challenge, I hoped that this would lead me down the path to becoming more attentive and aware of the world around me, where stopping to smell the roses would not only be worth my time, but I would find that there were roses to start with. I want to rebuild my attention.
Week one
The novelty of starting something new makes me excited and optimistic.
It starts with untethering myself from my phone; deleting my social media apps and not listening to anything during my commute or while performing everyday tasks.
This is definitely awkward and difficult at first (I keep thinking of things to do to avoid being bored, who would have thought!), but it’s not entirely unpleasant when I end up just staring into space. It’s refreshing to have the time and space to hear my thoughts.
Week two
When I walk around without my ears perked up, I start to notice things that I normally wouldn’t look at twice.
But when I receive unexpected news about my living situation, I feel it the urge to purify myself of all negative emotions. The solution? Dissociation from large amounts of multimedia content.
I feel guilty about my relapse before my video call with Prof. James Danckert, an expert in the psychology of boredom at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Could he tell I wasn’t bored enough?
But the cognitive neuroscientist explains that forcing boredom or becoming ‘sensitive to boredom’ is not good for you.
It turns out I was wrong about boredom. Danckert tells me that it is indeed so “a highly motivated state – but at the moment it’s frustrating because you want to do something that’s important to you, but you can’t find an outlet for that motivation.”
Boredom is useful because it prompts us to explore our environment and engage in something meaningful, he says. The hardest part is finding or rediscovering that ‘thing’ that is important to you.
So I decide that this challenge is no longer about wanting to be bored, but about learning how to tolerate the feelings of boredom so that I have the space to focus my attention on where I am and want to be.
Week three
After my conversation with Danckert, I think about how it felt like being bored and how long has it been since I had that feeling. When was the last time I let that anxious restlessness bubble up inside me? When was the last time I walked aimlessly around my living room?
The silence I wanted to avoid isn’t as scary as I thought it would be. It actually helps me identify the things in my life that deserve my attention and care.
I was so used to jumping from stimulus to stimulus that when I start to lean into the silence, I realize I have more time because the world doesn’t run at 10 TikToks a minute. So with the time I’ve regained, I’m making a list of things I’ve wanted to do these weeks and would still do. At the top is the desire to start drawing again.
As I sit down, I instinctively reach for my phone, but instead stop and think about what I actually want to do. Instead of letting idle scrolling exhaust me, maybe this feeling can be turned into something that energizes me. It’s time for me to finally put up my pictures and make my room feel like my own.
Week four
I start walking outside regularly during my free time, even though I still don’t have earplugs.
I see a bottle brush staining the sidewalks and jacaranda trees starting to sprout in places I didn’t expect to be bright purple. Was summer really that close? Seeing these signals from nature reminds me of the way time moves, beyond the numbers on a clock, and in a very physical sense this marks the ground we walk on.
I realize that the way I thought about time was wrong. It became condensed when I binged social media apps. Stopping to pay attention to the things around me stretched out time again.
Week five
During a moment of boredom-induced reflection, I think about my friends’ birthdays I have lined up this week and remember my list of things I want to do. One item on the list stands out: making birthday cards!
As a child I always made cards. I wonder why I didn’t make time for this when I love making gifts for my friends. Maybe I felt like I didn’t have enough time, didn’t care enough, or didn’t have enough concentration to see the process from start to finish.
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When I give them to my friends, the response is so much better than expected. It makes me feel full; this was time well spent.
Week six
There have been times when I’ve felt self-conscious about not having my nose buried in my phone or my ears plugged. I notice that when I’m waiting for something, the people around me take out their phones by default.
By tuning into my boredom and resisting the call for my attention, I am actively choosing to be present, which honestly wasn’t a feeling I was very familiar with. However, as my ability to stay true to myself has grown, I find it deepens my friendships. I now have something more to say, instead of just entertaining my friends with nonsensical memes. I get a feeling of connection that goes beyond seeing the same piece of content.
Week seven
Despite the challenge being so far, the desire to consume some form of content is always present. I think back to my conversation with Danckert, who assured me that there was nothing wrong with “vegetation,” but that we should “be aware of the fact that we want to do that.”
So I decided to try watching slow TV as a substitute for what I usually binge on (my comfort sitcoms) to help cultivate that sense of stillness.
I started the seven-hour train journey Bergen to Oslo and even though it was boring, I had the ability to take the time to choose where to focus my attention and when to stop.
Week eight
Tuning out to boredom is easier when you’re out of town! So I’m heading to Barren Grounds Nature Preserve with some friends to change up the way we usually hang out.
Being immersed in the local wildlife and surrounded by the unyielding vegetation fills me with a deep sense of awe and curiosity. While I appreciated this more on my daily walks, the disconnect from the human world helps me put into perspective what I’ve developed since I started this journey into boredom – I’ve built up more tolerance for being with myself, making each day feels that he is being lived well.
Week nine
I take myself on a dilly-dally around town and find that I can be entertained by the oddities of the world. As I sit in a café, I people watch, and as my mind wanders freely, I find – with joy – that I don’t need any external stimulus to think.
I’m literally starting to get involved in the world around me. On the bus, a couple argues loudly about which stop to get off at. When I noticed other passengers busy on their phones, I responded to them immediately. They seemed grateful that someone was paying attention to their plight.
Their stop is my own home stop, and when I get off the bus I am very grateful that I know where I am without second-guessing myself. I knew where I was all the time. Being able to share that knowledge with other people confirms my feeling of being part of this city.
The end
The simplicity of the changes I’ve made to my routine have made these two and a bit months pretty unremarkable.
I used to be in the habit of looking, but now I’m more than happy to just notice it. I feel like I have a choice in how I spend my time. I’m better off for it. By becoming better at recognizing the signs of boredom and not stressing about doing nothing, I have been able to develop a deeper form of attention and connection with the world.
Most things feel like they’re stuck, but after the days were over, I couldn’t help but binge my social media apps. It seems like my desire for instant gratification is something that will constantly be a work in progress.
Despite this, I keep coming back to what Danckert said when I asked him what role phones play in all of this: “We just turn to them and pick them up without thinking: do I need a charge or do I need to do something that matters ? me? And if you ask that question every time you answer the phone, you might end up putting it down more often than you think.”
It’s too easy to get lost in a world that excels at capturing your attention. But I have rediscovered a place where I want to be bored.