Whether you are stuck at home, enduring a long car ride, or experiencing a flight, everyone will experience boredom at some point in life. We live in a world of attention, and we are always looking for something to capture our attention and engage our brains. The most important thing is to occupy your time with things that enrich you or make you happier. You should feel more energy after the given activity.
In this article, we talk about the different ways in which you can entertain yourself. We look at activities that will expand your mind and capture your attention. There are things you can do that will educate you, force you to overcome a challenge in a game, or share a life experience with another human being. The main goal for you is to make the most out of your hours in the day.
Read Books
The first way to entertain yourself is to read a great book. Books allow you to invest your time in something other than technology and reduce your screen exposure unless you are reading off a tablet. Books can serve as an inspiration to you and can teach you concepts and ideas that you can apply in real life. A great piece of literature allows you to unplug from the rest of the world and fill your brain with unique ideas.
Fictional books allow you to expand your imagination and unconventionally think about things. Behind each story lies a lesson for you to apply in real life. Each storyline represents a challenge or adversity that the main character or characters must overcome. By diving into an intriguing story, you can broaden your lens of the world and its untapped possibilities.
Nonfictional books are an excellent tool for learning. If you are trying to get ahead in business, there are many pieces of work that the world’s best leaders have written. There are books about leadership, health, relationships, and strategy. You can entertain yourself by not only reading a book, but taking notes, highlighting, and journaling your thoughts and reflections on how you will live out the message.
Listen to New or Old Music
Listening to great music is another excellent way for you to entertain yourself. It makes us feel certain emotions because we relate to it. Whenever an artist writes or sings a song, they are telling a story about their life. When you focus on the lyrics of a song, you can pick out inspirational knowledge and advice that you may not capture when you are listening to it in the background.
Music can also bring back memories of our life. We often associate a song with a specific event because that song was playing during that time. An excellent way for you to capture these moments is to curate a playlist of iconic songs. Platforms like Spotify are a great tool for you to make your playlists and play them on command.
There are even songs that are designed for meditation and reflection. Some genres of music that have no lyrics allow you to focus on the change in beat, which is excellent for your brain. You can get beneficial mental exercise by sitting back, closing your eyes, and focusing on a soothing rhythm, such as those of jazz or classical music.
Listen to Podcasts
Another excellent way for you to pass the time is to listen to podcasts. In the last five years, podcasts have become extremely popular in our technological streaming society. People’s attention has shifted to scheduled programming on television to on-demand audio through podcasts on your phone. It is a competitive industry, which makes it great for consumers because there are podcast shows dedicated to all topics.
Podcasts are an excellent way for you to entertain yourself through not only humor, but also a unique method for self-educating yourself without dedicating mental energy to reading words on a page or screen. Podcasts are a perfect way for you to learn while you are walking, driving in the car, sitting in a waiting room, or riding on a plane.
There are shows dedicated to sports, politics, business, and more. You have free access to people’s most profound thoughts because the host of a podcast can easily record and put it out for the world to hear at the push of a button. The best shows are the ones that get centered around interviews that dive into the minds of some of the world’s greatest leaders.
Journal or Write
Journaling your thoughts is an excellent way for you to entertain yourself. We often have dreams that pop into our heads throughout the day, but you can create compelling ideas when you expand upon them through writing or speaking. Journaling gives you a platform to say what you want without being judged or critiqued by other people around you. Journaling is an excellent addition to a night or morning routine.
The great thing about writing your thoughts is that there are no guidelines or limitations. You can write about whatever pops into your head. You can outline your million-dollar ideas, jot down the things you are thankful for, or analyzing a part of your day or week that you need more clarity. It is not a matter of what you write on the page, but just the accomplishment of you starting the process.
Journaling is an excellent way for you to become more aligned with your feelings and emotions. It takes a particular person to invest time in discovering who they are and where their thoughts are capable of going.
Play a Creative Game
There are many games for you to play that can occupy your time, whether it is an individual or group game. Sudoku is an entertaining option for people who like math and numbers. Crossword puzzles can keep you intrigued by forcing you to obtain previous knowledge and fit it into a complex orientation. Mental games like these are an excellent way for you to expand your mind and compete with yourself.
If you are with a group of people, you can play a game like scrabble, where you are forced to form intriguing words at a better rate than your opponent. If you are with one other person, you can play head to head games like chess, checkers, or battleship. Strategy games keep you engaged because they are always putting you in a position to pivot and re-align your strategy to overcome your opponent.
We as humans love to win and feel accomplished, and games give us that opportunity. Whether it is a solo or group game, you can keep track of your progress on how well you are getting at the given activity. You can also reflect on what these games teach you, so you can become smarter for the time you invest in each challenge.
Watch a Movie
Movies are an excellent way for you to entertain yourself. Like books, a film enables you to expand your mind and think about how the concepts from a movie can transfer to creativity and ideas in your own life. Videos can also teach us lessons not only from a plot standpoint but from a body language standpoint. If you want to study body language, take not of how characters interact with each other in a movie.
The last decade showed us that streaming is king. With the rise of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Disney+, there is access to a lot of unique content for your viewing pleasure. Everything is on-demand, and users have more choices than ever. If you are bored at home, you can get locked into a movie or series that garners your attention.
If it is a weekend night, and you are of legal age, you can play fun drinking games that correspond with a movie or show. You can drink on certain cue words or events that tend to happen frequently within the storyline. It is always fun to make up your games and have a list that you can post on the wall. The opportunities are endless when it comes to movies.
Draw a Picture or Color Something Crafty
If you are looking to channel your creative side, you can always set aside time to draw a picture or do a craft. Some games use the logical and critical thinking side of your brain but implementing art in your free time uses the other side of your mind. You can do many things here, including drawing a picture from scratch, copying, already-existing image, or coloring a picture.
Another exciting craft you can do is to create a collage from magazine and newspaper clippings. This exercise is fun because you can do a lot of research and blend a collection of unrelated items into one central theme. You can do a variety of different topics, including a motivation board that shows gives you words of encouragement. You can also have pictures of things you aspire to have after reaching success.
This activity can be done by yourself or with a friend or shares the same interests as you. You could create a work of art for yourself to put on your wall, or you could make a gift for someone else. It feels good to create something with your hands and turn nothing into something. A fun craft can be anything, and it is an excellent way for you to expand your mind and make the most out of your time.
Organize Your Phone
If you are feeling slightly lazy, you can also talk about the time to organize your phone. Often we spend so much time-consuming information on our phones that we do not take the time to organize or minimize the content that we have on there. Freeing up space or clutter on your phone can impact your mind positively because you do not have to worry about sorting through unnecessary items.
You can start by going through your photos and doing an inventory of the ones you want to keep and get rid of. Photos are one of the top ways in which your phone uses space. It is also entertaining to go back and look at old pictures from a previous event. It can bring up positive, nostalgic memories that give you a moment of reflection. You could even organize your photos into themed albums for you to look at later.
You can also eliminate text threads or notes that are taking up space. You can delete apps that you no longer use. If you want to be extra organized, you could rearrange your apps so that the ones you use the most are accessible and close to the home page. Regardless, lying down and going through your phone to make it more user-friendly can be a great way for you to spend your time.
Declutter Your Email Inbox
This method might be a little less entertaining, but it could be interesting what you find when you declutter your email inbox. We are often too busy during the week to budget time to organize emails in the mailbox. You can use this as an opportunity to create folders and areas to organize emails that you might need later or delete them if they are useless.
You could also go through your subscription lists and unsubscribe from chains that you no longer find value from. If you are bored, you could take the quizzes or surveys that are attached in emails so that you could increase your chances of winning a prize. If you complete enough polls, you can put yourself in a position to win some cool prizes or discounts in the future.
When you go through your inbox, you may find that you have old emails that you never answered. If you are bored, this could be an excellent opportunity to touch base with someone you haven’t talked to in a while or follow up on a conversation in the past that hit a standstill. Going through the email inbox will enable you to feel more in control of your life in a sense.
FaceTime or Call a Friend or Family Member
Nothing passes the time better than a genuine conversation with a friend or loved one. Fortunately, we live in a technological world where you can have a face-to-face conversation with someone at the touch of a button. There are many methods to call someone through video, whether it is FaceTime or Skype. Scheduling time to call someone through video chat is a great way to strengthen relationships.
If you are reaching back out to someone who you do not talk to daily, be mindful of the way you budget the time. It may seem like too much, but you could put time on someone’s calendar to make it a point to call them. Spending time with someone over the phone allows you to invest in their development, catch up on key life events, and share experiences that can motivate and teach you something.
Watch YouTube Videos
Another method of entertainment is to watch YouTube videos. Apart from movies or scheduled programming, YouTube is another beautiful community of unique, compelling content that gets crowdsourced from its collection of users. This concept enabled the program’s success because it is built on capitalism and entrepreneurship, and the content will be fresh.
Whatever you are motivated to watch, YouTube most likely has the program for you. If you are a sports fan, you can watch old highlights. If you are looking to educate yourself on how to be a better communicator, there are channels you can subscribe to for free that teach you how to develop charisma. YouTube is a wealth of information that shows you things visually and is focused on specific topics.
YouTube is also a platform that will send you down a rabbit hole of video watching, which is a great way to entertain yourself if you are trying to pass the time. If you wanted to invest your time in something meaningful, you could even start a YouTube channel yourself! If you make yourself enjoyable by telling unique stories and publishing engaging content, you could build your community.
Meditate
Meditating is an excellent way for you to connect your body and mind. Meditation enables you to truly unplug from the rest of the world and focus on your inner thoughts. This practice can be done anywhere between five minutes to an hour. Mediation’s foundation is one on breathing, focus, and mindfulness, which means getting the most out of the present moment.
If you are not sure how to start meditating, the simplest way is to free yourself from distractions by isolating yourself in a comfortable space. You should close your eyes, focus your attention from your head to your feet, and focus on long, deep breaths. You will find that once you settle in, free thoughts will begin to float into your brain. The goal is not to deny any of these thoughts but to process and reflect on them.
Exercise or Play a Physical Game with Yourself
One of the healthiest things you can do when you are bored is to exercise. When you are feeling lazy or down, enduring physical exercise can release endorphins, which will improve your mood. When you get your body moving, it also allows blood to flow through your body more efficiently. As a result, you will feel more energized to do more things with your time.
This form of entertainment can get done inside or outside. You would preferably like to be out so that you can expose yourself to the sun and get some Vitamin D. You could go for a long run or walk, or you could play a sport by yourself like basketball, soccer, or golf. When you engage in a game, it enables you to become disconnected from your phone or social media.
Write a list of ways that you can get your body moving, both solo and with a group. Make it a point to try something new or something that challenges your coordination. Since you are not a professional athlete, there is no pressure for you to perform well. You need to step outside your comfort zone and move in a way your body is not used to. Pushing your body to healthy limits expands your functionality!
Start an Instagram or Twitter Account for Fun
If you are in love with social media, you could start an Instagram or Twitter account behind a passion of yours. We live in a world where it is easier than ever to create content and provide it to the world. If you have a pet, you could create an account dedicated to posting cute photos and videos of your furry friend doing entertaining things, like playing catch or making faces.
You could also create a page that is dedicated to your thoughts or words. You could design a page that posts inspirational or exciting quotes. You could also create a comedy page that captions funny photos and videos that other people can relate to. Because it is free to create an account, you can provide value and gain influence for free.
The great thing about this form of entertainment is that you can do it all from your house, and you do not have to go out in the world and make physical connections with other people. The sky is the limit if you build the page on your passion and the areas of life that interest you.
Clean and Organize Your House or Apartment
If you are home and not sure what to do, you could always make your environment more organized. By eliminating clutter in your house or apartment, you can reduce stress because you know exactly where things are. You can begin by sorting clothes you need and do not need, getting your papers in order, and arranging your kitchen, so your household items are right where you want them.
You can combine this task with a quality playlist or podcast. You can multitask by learning or listening to great tunes while also being productive with your day. You can be efficient and deliberate with your cleaning if you make an organized list and budget the appropriate time for each item on the list. You will feel much more accomplished with your life if you keep your home environment in order.
Bake Something
Another way in which you could create something with your own hands is to make food. You could create a single dish or prepare a full-fledged meal. Cooking is also an excellent way for you to unwind and focus on a task without the distraction of your phone or social media. You could make cookies, pancakes, spaghetti, or something that will be enjoyable to eat while you watch a movie or television show.
Just like with cleaning, you could also plug in a podcast or music while you cook. When you combine tunes in the kitchen, it can put you in a state of mind that fosters new ideas and concepts. If you have a stressful day and are not sure what to do at home, cooking can be a refreshing activity that allows you to go through a process and arrive at a tasty result that feels gratifying.
Play a Video Game
Video games are an excellent way for you to occupy your time by playing a strategy game. Your goal is to overcome an obstacle and complete a challenge or defeat an opponent. By focusing on achieving your goals through eSports and gaming, you can dedicate your time to something that could be meaningful. There are many games in the realm of sports, combat, and strategy.
Online gaming is also an excellent avenue for you to meet new people and find commonalities with others who share a passion of yours. While it may not be best for you to stare at a screen with blue light for long periods without glasses, video games can give you a sweet stress release from your boredom. It is also interesting to tackle a challenge that forces you to think outside the box with coordination.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many different opportunities for you to entertain yourself or others. You need to engage in healthy activities that will utilize your time effectively. Regardless of what activities you do, it should enable you to expand your mind and challenge your thinking. You should also work on doing different activities to keep your mind fresh. Repetition can enhance your existing boredom.
Creative people can make use of their time when they are by themselves. With the help of this list of activities, you will not be short on ideas. You can write about what is on your mind, engage in physical activity to make you healthier, you can create art, or you could bake a delicious meal. If you can convert boredom into positive energy, you know you are heading in the right direction.