delgadosandovals@lopers.unk.edu

There was a time in my life when boredom was not something I feared. It was just… there. Like the sound of wind rustling through leaves or the ticking of a wall clock in an empty room. It was not pleasant, exactly, but it was not terrifying either. 

Today, boredom is treated like an emergency. The moment it arises, we instinctively reach for our phones. Scroll. Swipe. Refresh. Anything to avoid the stillness. Anything to avoid meeting ourselves in that uncomfortable, open space. The tragedy is not that we’ve become less productive; it’s that we’ve lost a vital, human state of mind – one that once guided artists, thinkers and dreamers toward some of their greatest insights. I think we need to reclaim boredom, not just as a gateway to productivity, but as a beautiful, necessary pause in a world addicted to noise.

Sometimes, when we’re bored, we’re not really bored. We’re just not being stimulated the way we’re used to. We’re craving a hit of news, gossip, drama or adrenaline. That’s where doom scrolling sneaks in, feeding our anxiety while pretending to relieve it. Or, we pick at our insecurities. Comparing ourselves to others. Ruminating on things we cannot control. Boredom isn’t the enemy here. Our fear of it is. 

Boredom, when left alone, often transforms into something else: curiosity. Reflection. Desire. Even creation. It’s the pause that invites us to listen inward. The irony is that the more we avoid boredom, the more we rob ourselves of the chance to be genuinely productive, not just in a toxic sense of productivity, but in the deeper sense of becoming more whole.

There’s an unspoken pressure, especially in our hyper-digital age, to always be doing something. Hustle culture says: “If you’re not working, you’re wasting time.” Social media whispers: “If you’re not online, you’re invisible.” Even our hobbies get turned into side hustles. Our rest must be optimized. Our free time must be curated. But what if we stopped trying to escape the empty moments? What if we sat in the dullness and let it be dull? No judgment. No shame. I think we’d start to notice a shift. That ache to be entertained softens. That fog in our head clears. And in its place, there’s room for ideas to bloom or for unhurried thoughts to stretch out.

Last summer, in the sticky, sultry heat, I felt like my world was ending. I felt like I was not doing anything with myself, and as the weeks dragged by, I was beginning to wonder what it was that was wrong with me. I had been longing to have all this time off, and now that I had it, I was letting all the opportunities I thought I had to have fun simply run away. In that stillness, however, ideas came to me. Not big ones. Little ones. I started to notice the beauty of the simplicity in my surroundings. I realized that moments don’t have to be filled to be worthwhile.

Lately, I’ve been teaching myself not to pathologize boredom – not to see it as laziness or failure. Sometimes boredom is just our body and mind asking for stillness, so I give myself permission to do nothing. Sometimes my mind wanders into strange places. Sometimes I just blink. I don’t scold myself anymore when I’m not being “useful.” And strangely enough, I’ve noticed I end up getting more done. The kind of “more” that matters to me: I feel better. I listen better. I rest better. We don’t just need breaks from tasks. We need breaks from stimulation. From expectations. From constantly being “on.”

So the next time boredom creeps in, don’t run. Let it sit nearby. Ask what it wants. Its wisdom might come as a surprise.