Boredom is allowing yourself to be still, so that the mind can form connections, memories

Scientists say boredom isn’t an empty state at all. It’s when the brain quietly gets busy. Neuroscientists call it the “default mode network”. (Credit for images: Yaroslav Shuraev and Bruna Vidal via Pexels)

When was the last time you let yourself be ‘bored’? Not the restless kind where you check your phone every two minutes, but the quiet kind where you stare at a distant object, or watch the street below your balcony without reaching for distraction.

Do you remember those endless summer afternoons of childhood, lying on a charpoy with nothing to do, and suddenly becoming busy the next few hours playing with cousins? Or the long train journeys where you gazed out at endless views of fields until the chaiwallah’s call broke the silence?

Think about it: when was the last time you allowed yourself that luxury of doing absolutely nothing? By the way, nobody called it “mindfulness.” It was just … nothingness.

That nothingness has almost disappeared. The moment boredom shows up today, our hand reaches for the phone, thumb ready to scroll through reels or check yet another app. Children no longer complain “I’m bored” without a parent rushing to hand them a screen or giving them an unneeded snack to munch on.

And adults, too, seem to have forgotten how to sit idle. In our rush to stay “engaged,” we’ve turned boredom into a kind of enemy. One global survey found that nearly two out of three adults feel bored at least once a day, and that boredom often pushes us into compulsive scrolling and impulsive behaviour.

Yet boredom, paradoxically, may be exactly what we need.

Scientists say boredom isn’t an empty state at all. It’s when the brain quietly gets busy. Neuroscientists call it the “default mode network”, the part of the mind that comes alive when thoughts wander, linking memory, imagination, and even plans for the future. A 2017 paper in Nature Reviews Neuroscience described it as the engine of “self-generated thought” and creative insight.

And yet, it’s in those moments of nothingness that ideas sneak in. Harry Potter would not have been created if J.K. Rowling had not had such a “bored” moment in her delayed train. Closer home, many entrepreneurs say their best ideas arrived not in meetings but in pauses - while cooking, driving, sitting at a coffee shop, or waiting in line at the airport.

Our own culture has always understood the value of stillness. Our grandparents spoke of ‘chintan manan’ or quiet contemplation. Great saints began their journeys in silence and solitude, not in constant chatter. Boredom, in that sense, isn’t an empty space but a fertile ground where the mind renews itself.

We seem allergic to boredom. Think of the way we eat. Snacks in trains, meals on short flights, popcorn at the movies, samosas and colas at cricket matches. Airports, in particular, have become second dining rooms. People sip on overpriced tea or coffee not because they’re hungry, but because waiting without a cup in hand feels unbearable. Isn’t that just our way of smothering boredom?

It wasn’t always like this. Boredom was yet another facet of our daily living. Now, even the tiniest pause, whether in traffic or at a café, has to be filled with a phone in hand, headphones on, or a game to distract us. We’ve forgotten how to wait without outsourcing our attention.

And this isn’t just about us - it’s about our children too. We keep them busy from morning to night: school, tuition, hobby classes, competitions. We call it “alpha parenting,” convincing ourselves we’re preparing them for the future. But in doing so, we rob them of boredom, the very boredom that teaches children to invent games, turn a stick into a sword, or spin stories from nothing. To deny them boredom is to deny them creativity. If boredom is truly a gift, then perhaps we need to design our lives to allow for it. Schools could create space for “free periods” where children are left to their own imagination instead of being packed into yet another lesson.

Even in our workplaces, we worship busyness. Packed calendars, back-to-back meetings, every slot accounted for. It makes us feel useful, productive, indispensable. But why not leave blank windows in our day? Why do we treat free time as wasteful rather than as breathing space?

The smartphone, of course, has become boredom-killer-in-chief. Where earlier we might have chatted with a stranger on a train or gazed at the monsoon landscape, today we bury ourselves in endless scroll. We don’t even allow “micro-boredom” anymore. Every notification, reel, or WhatsApp ping is a little dopamine hit that saves us from facing a two-minute silence.

When we talk about boredom helping creativity, it helps to picture what the mind is actually doing: think of it as a kind of mental fermentation. When you stop pushing for an answer, the brain keeps working in the background — linking distant memories, replaying snippets of conversation, nudging one image into another — until something clicks. That is why people often get their best ideas while washing dishes, walking down a lane, or staring out of a window: stopping the deliberate chase for novelty allows associative thinking to surface.

Boredom is less an absence of activity than a change of gears — from frantic input-collection to slow, quiet synthesis. The boredom we rush to eliminate may be the seed of curiosity and resilience. What matters is how we respond to it. Because in a country as noisy, busy, and impatient as ours, boredom might just be the rare luxury that makes us more or in effect, human.