What do you usually do when you’re bored out of your mind? People used to daydream. Now, they just look at their phones.
We’re immersed in a culture of “busy-ness.” We have no idea what to do when we feel antsy or bored. Therefore, we pick up our phones or turn to the internet in hopes of doing something. But the result is that we experience a type of mind-numbing tediousness that didn’t exist before.
People hate boredom so much that they’ll often do anything to avoid it. Being alone with their thoughts is so aversive that in one study, people were driven to give themselves an electric shock just to give themselves something to do.
Our brains are wired to look for stimulation. Ancient humans had to keep an eye out for danger at all times. Humans are also primed to seek out opportunities.
But if you’re occupying yourself with unproductive endeavors, like scrolling on your phone, you might be limiting your creativity and inspiration, leading you down a rabbit hole that leads to more boredom. Allowing yourself to do nothing is one way to rejuvenate your energy and prevent monotony in the future.
However, if you must do something, consider some of these ideas for productive things to do when you’re bored. Keep this list handy, because it’s easy for your mind to go completely blank when you’re bored.
Declutter
If you constantly find yourself lacking motivation, you might need to create space for productivity. When your physical environment is cluttered, so is your mind.
Decluttering expert Tisha Morris says that clutter is stagnant energy. Does stagnant energy seem motivating to you? No—it is something that can perpetuate boredom. Therefore, one of the first things that you can do when you’re feeling uninterested is to tackle the disorder in your atmosphere.
The trick is to approach the activity in micro-doses. Don’t pull everything out of your closet if you won’t have time to put it all back. You’ll just end up with the same amount of clutter in a different location.
Work on a small area at once, such as:
- The dishes in your sink
- The surface of your nightstand
- Your Tupperware cabinet
- The top of your desk
- Your sock drawer
- Your purse
- Your medicine cabinet
- Your refrigerator
Clearing out even the smallest area will feel so rewarding that you may want to continue. But what happens if the next time that you’re bored, you can’t decide where to start with your decluttering strategy?
Walk through your house with a notepad. As you do, make a list of the most cluttered areas. If the list is long, organize it by room. The next time you’re bored, you won’t have to think about what to do. You can look at your list and start crossing off items.
Delve Into Your Worries
Sometimes, anxiety can disguise itself as boredom. If you’re overwhelmed by worry, you might feel like you can’t get anything done. You feel antsy, but you have plenty to do. You just have to get over the hurdle that is preventing you from doing it.
In these times, it can help to look deeper inside of yourself. We often avoid addressing our concerns because they bring up uncomfortable emotions that feel distressing.
We stuff down our anxieties, distracting ourselves in order to avoid them. The result is that those worries drive our subconscious mind anyway. They rear up at the most inopportune moments if we avoid looking at them. They can prevent us from getting anything done.
If you feel like your boredom stems from nervous energy, consider addressing it. One of the best ways of doing that is to keep a stream-of-consciousness diary. Any time that you feel like ongoing or intrusive thoughts are preventing you from taking action, write them down.
Don’t be concerned with grammar or spelling. Your writing doesn’t have to make sense. Allow your words to flow onto the page.
If you’re feeling paralyzed because you have so much to do that you can’t achieve anything at all, you can do a “brain dump” of your obligations. You don’t necessarily have to use this as a to-do list. If you do, you might just get overwhelmed. However, listing your responsibilities on paper gets them out of your brain.
The simple act of writing them down may motivate you to tackle a few things on the list. If you still feel overwhelmed after doing a brain dump, ask yourself, “What is the easiest thing that I can do on this list?” Then, go ahead and do it.
You’ll get a jolt of rewarding neurotransmitters from accomplishing something on the list. That boost may be all that you need to stay motivated and keep boredom at bay.
Make Lists
Next time you’re bored, consider making lists. You can approach this from a variety of angles. Some of the lists that you could make include:
- Productive things to do when bored
- Movies that you want to watch
- Books that you want to read
- People that you want to keep in touch with
- Things that you want for Christmas or Hanukah
- Things that you can buy other people for Christmas, Hanukah or their birthdays
- A bucket list
- Areas that you want to declutter
- Places in your home that need deep cleaning
- Local cultural activities that you want to participate in
- Concerts that you want to see
- Places that you want to travel
- Podcasts that you want to listen to
Once you’ve made a list, see if there is a way to take action on one of the items. Go to the library and take out a book, or start listening to a podcast. Having these lists available will practically guarantee that you’ll never be bored again.
Another perspective on list-making is to create a to-do list for when you have a lot of energy and another for when you’re feeling exhausted. Doing this can help ensure that you accomplish all of your goals regardless of your mood.
Learn Something New
Most people aren’t bored because they have nothing to do. They could have a long list of chores, but they don’t want to do them. Bringing something new into your life can combat the banality of life.
What are you interested in? Consider looking up more information about it online or reading a book about it.
Taking a structured course may be an even better way to avoid boredom. When you have a plan for your learning, you won’t get sucked into the abyss that can come from searching aimlessly on the internet.
The best part is that you can take a course in almost any subject without leaving the comfort of your home. Enroll in an online course to give yourself a productivity boost any time you’re bored.
Read a Book
Why does reading seem more productive than watching TV? Studies show that when people watch TV, they’re not stimulating certain areas of their brain. For example, their verbal reasoning ability is diminished. But reading a book increases connectivity in the parts of the brain that are linked to language.
Plus, reading can slow age-related cognitive decline. Research shows that elderly people who read regularly are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. On the other hand, watching too much TV is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s.
Reading can also reduce stress levels by almost 70 percent. If your boredom stems from thinking about everything that you have to do, taking some time to read can help you feel balanced. When you’re done, you might be in a better headspace to manage all of your obligations.
Exercise
If you’re feeling bored, move your body. You don’t necessarily have to put on your workout clothes and get into a full fitness routine. A brisk walk, some jumping jacks or even a dance session to your favorite song can invigorate you.
Exercise can improve your energy levels. It also refreshes your mind. Just 20 minutes of exercise can improve your cognitive abilities, including the way that you process and remember information.
Some of the benefits of exercise for the brain include:
- Improving blood flow and oxygen to brain cells
- Increase in brain volume
- Elevated levels of mood-enhancing neurotransmitters
Plus, if boredom is making you feel like you have pent-up energy, what better way is there to release that energy than to get it out with physical movement? For some people, the thought of working out makes them groan. Perhaps you get so wearied by your regular workouts that you’ve associated exercise with boredom.
Shake things up by trying something new. Put on a YouTube video that can teach you new techniques for physical activity. You might try:
- Tai Chi
- Yoga
- Hula hooping
- Zumba
- A surfer’s workout
Learning something new while you’re moving your body provides an added boost to your confidence and motivation.
Work on the Thing That You’re Avoiding
Procrastination can disguise itself as boredom. You have a lot of things that need to get done, but you don’t feel like doing any of them. In other words, you’re not really bored; you’re procrastinating.
You turn to mind-numbing activities, like playing Candy Crush on your phone, to avoid taking care of your responsibilities. This creates a cycle that perpetuates procrastination and boredom.
You can break it by doing one task that you’re avoiding. Tell yourself that you only have to do it for 10 minutes. You’ll get a little bit closer to completing it, and you’ll gain some momentum that may prevent you from getting bored in the future.
If you find yourself avoiding the same task every time it comes around, you can try several methods for tackling it, including:
- Doing it as soon as you can to get it out of the way
- Rewarding yourself for completing it
- Delegating it to someone else
- Writing down a system for accomplishing it so that you don’t have to think about it next time
Clear Your Inbox
Do you have hundreds or even thousands of messages lingering in your inbox? Going through them when you have nothing to do is an easy way to stay productive.
You don’t have to delete all of them. Create folders within your email account to place messages that you want to keep track of. Make a catch-all folder titled “Completed” for any messages that you don’t feel comfortable deleting but don’t need to address further.
If you feel overwhelmed going through all of your emails, try doing a bulk delete. As you’re going through your inbox, let’s say that you come across an email from an online retailer. You realize that this website sends you messages at least once a week.
First, consider unsubscribing from that email list. Next, do a search for that email address in your inbox. When the full list of messages from that website comes up, delete all of them at once. You can clear out your inbox fairly quickly this way.
Go Through Your Photos
Eliminating virtual clutter in your phone or computer can make you feel as free as getting rid of physical clutter in your house does. When you’re bored, go through the photos in your digital storage. Delete any multiples (remember that time that a stranger on the street took 20 pictures of you and your friends?). Remove any other pictures that you don’t want.
Transfer the photos from your phone to your computer or the cloud to free up some storage space on the mobile device.
You might even make a photo book or order prints of your favorite photos. Then, the next time you’re bored, you can redecorate your house by updating your ] frames with updated pictures.
Call a Friend
In this age of social media, we often tend to get our social connections online. Maybe you don’t spend enough time connecting with your loved ones in person. When you’re bored, consider asking a friend to join you for coffee.
If you can’t meet up in person, try having a phone chat. Catching up with someone who inspires you can give you a new sense of motivation.
Make a Decision
Have you been struggling with a big decision in your life? Make a list of pros and cons. Here are some tips for making an effective pros-cons list:
- Ask a yes/no question, and write it at the top of the list.
- Focus on the specific situation, making sure that the pros and cons are relevant.
- Use categories.
- Decide which cons you can work with and which are deal-breakers.
- Play devil’s advocate.
Get Financial
If you aren’t in the habit of establishing a budget, now’s the time. Go through your income and expenses from the past month. Check your receipts, and try to itemize everything. Then, categorize it so that you can see how much you’re spending in areas such as:
- Groceries
- Eating out
- Bills
- Household expenses
- Clothing
- Beauty products
- Entertainment
- Travel
- Work expenses
- Miscellaneous expenses
You can use this as a strategy for cutting extraneous expenses and saving more money.
You might also consider researching investment strategies when you’re bored. This is a great time to meet with a financial advisor who can give you some suggestions on how to best organize your money.
Train Your Brain
Do you have an activity book? You should. Doing activities such as crossword puzzles, Sudoku and word searches can keep your mind sharp.
You can also exercise your brain by:
- Learning something new
- Using your memory
- Changing your perspective
- Doing one thing at a time instead of multi-tasking
- Reading
- Sleeping
- Doing brain-training apps
You can also train your brain by deep-diving into a skill that you already know how to do. For example, if you can play an instrument, challenge yourself to improve your proficiency. Doing this can help you achieve top performance.
To understand this concept, you have to know the difference between deliberate and deep practice. Deliberate practice requires four elements:
- It’s designed to improve performance
- It involves a great deal of repetition
- It involves getting feedback
- It’s mentally demanding
Deliberate practice helps you grow. It often takes you out of your comfort zone. Some researchers say that you need to put in 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to master something.
In “The Talent Code,” Daniel Coyle brings up a different concept. He says that deep practice is necessary for mastering a skill. Although this can look like deliberate practice, it involves different brain mechanisms.
Deep practice involves the following steps:
- Recognizing the goal as a whole
- Segmenting the larger goal into smaller chunks
- Practicing the smaller chunks with repetition and attention to errors
- Linking the smaller chunks together to work back toward the whole
With deep practice, detecting mistakes is vital to your progress. Every time you notice an error, you can go even deeper into the practice, working on the area in which you’re prone to making mistakes. When you can perform that with no errors, you can link it to the other steps in your practice to work back toward the whole.
Be Mindful
Mindless activities can perpetuate boredom if you aren’t consciously choosing them. For example, if you fill your day by playing games on the computer, you can feel even more bored when it’s time to go to bed. Plus, you’ll probably berate yourself for not being productive.
If you’re going to be doing an activity that you (or society) deems unproductive, at least do it mindfully and with awareness. When you feel bored or irritable, ask yourself what you want to do.
Make a list if you’re having trouble coming up with ideas. Then, consciously choose something from the list. Because you made an active choice, you’ll end up feeling productive even if you weren’t working.
Eventually, this practice can get you into the habit of setting aside time for leisure activities. Most people fill their schedules with so much busy work that they have no idea what to do with themselves when they have free time.
Scheduling your free time mindfully can help you avoid falling into this trap. When you’ve planned to read a book, take a bath or just sit around doing nothing, you feel like you’ve been productive. You can even add things to do when you’re bored to your to-do list so that you have something to cross off when you would otherwise feel aimless.
Reflect
When we’re always pushing forward toward success, we may not remember to look back at how far we’ve come. Taking time to reflect is important. It’s a productive thing to do when you’re bored.
Reflecting helps you look at the past without harping on it. You can take what you need from your previous actions and move on.
Some of the reasons to make reflection a daily habit are:
- You learn from your mistakes – Look at what went wrong and what went right so that you can make better choices in the future. You don’t need to judge or shame yourself for making mistakes; they’re important for your growth.
- You get good ideas – When you look at what is going well in your life, you become motivated. That motivation can spur other ideas that help you move down your path.
- You can help others – Reflecting on your mistakes and celebrations gives you great feedback that you can use when you’re helping friends or colleagues with their problems.
- You become happier – Have you ever noticed that your bad days seem much more intense than your most joyful ones? That’s because most people are wired to reflect on negativity more than positivity. When you establish gratitude for what went well, you bring it to the forefront of your mind. You start to celebrate the small wins so that you don’t focus on your failures.
- You gain perspective – When you don’t give yourself time to reflect, you can beat yourself up for every struggle. Looking at the big picture gives you the perspective that you need to stay motivated in life.
How can you make reflection a daily habit? It doesn’t take long, but it does take discipline, mostly because it’s not something that we’re used to doing.
Consider writing down three things that went well at the end of every day, project or milestone. Also, note the things that didn’t go so well. If you keep a blog, you can share your reflections publicly. When you notice that people are interested in what you have to say, you may be more likely to continue doing the work.
Meditate
Meditation seems like the ultimate version of doing nothing. After all, aren’t you supposed to stop thinking altogether when you’re meditating?
Meditating can teach you that boredom isn’t the worst thing in the world. In fact, if you adopt this practice, you may realize how important it is to untangle yourself from the grasp of productivity that keeps you captive.
With meditation, you can learn to focus on your body and stop your never-ending thoughts from taking over. You also learn how to stop judging those thoughts, which is a practice that you can apply to your entire life.
But what if you find the practice of meditation itself boring? Many of us are so conditioned to busy ourselves with tasks that sitting in stillness feels excruciating.
When meditation feels like a chore, there are a few tricks that you can try to make it more enticing:
- Start slow – Try meditating for 5 minutes a day until that feels quick. Then, gradually increase the time that you spend in silence.
- Accept the fact that you feel bored – It’s the struggle against boredom that often makes you feel anxious. When you accept boredom as part of your life, you grow within your practice.
- Set a timer – If you’re looking at the clock the whole time, you’ll stay bored. Set a timer so that you can take your mind off of the time and really sink into the practice.
- Repeat a mantra – Choosing a phrase to repeat can keep your mind something to do.
- Set an intention – Boredom often happens when you don’t have a purpose. Think about why you want to meditate or how you want to feel when you’re done, and set that as an intention for your practice.
- Count your breath – Focusing on your breathing helps you stay mindful. If you’re bored, count your breaths to give your mind something to concentrate on.
- Follow a guided meditation – If you have trouble meditating in silence, try finding a guided meditation on YouTube or an app so that all you have to do is follow someone else’s voice.
Watch a Motivational Video
When all else fails, you can just tune out and watch something. Instead of turning on your favorite show, though, try watching a motivational video. Here are some that you can watch in five minutes or less.
After watching, consider journaling about ways that you can apply the information that you learned to your life. Before you move to a different task or watch another video, write down one action step that you can take right now to apply the information. Then, go do it!