The Lost Art of Being Bored

I was standing in a queue at my local post office the other day, one of those proper British queues that snakes around the corner and tests your will to live, when I realised something unsettling. My hand was already reaching for my phone before my brain had even registered the decision. Muscle memory. Pavlovian response. Whatever you want to call it, it was automatic, and that's what bothered me.

When did I become someone who can't just...stand there?

I'm old enough to remember being bored. Properly bored. The kind of boredom where you'd sit on the floor of your bedroom, staring at the ceiling, genuinely wondering if time had stopped. We didn't have unlimited entertainment in our pockets. We had a handful of TV channels, and if nothing was on, well, tough luck mate. You either went outside, read a book, or sat there contemplating the universe.

And here's the thing I've been thinking about: those boring moments? They were actually quite important.

Some of my best ideas have come from staring out of train windows. Not scrolling through Twitter while on a train, actually looking out the bloody window at fields and pylons and the backs of industrial estates. There's something about letting your mind wander without direction, without purpose, without the dopamine hit of notifications every thirty seconds.

But now? Now I've trained myself out of it. Queue at the coffee shop? Phone. Waiting for the kettle to boil? Phone. That weird fifteen-second gap between finishing one task and starting another? You guessed it.

I caught myself the other day checking my phone while another tab was loading on my laptop. I was trying to fill a boredom gap that lasted approximately three seconds. Three seconds! That's not a healthy relationship with discomfort, is it?

The irony is that I'll happily run for hours in the middle of nowhere with nothing but my thoughts for company. I've spent entire Saturday mornings plodding along muddy trails, just me and my brain having a chat. But put me in a waiting room for five minutes and I'm suddenly incapable of sitting still without a glowing rectangle in my hand.

I think we've forgotten that boredom isn't actually an emergency. It's not a problem that needs solving immediately. Sometimes it's just...a space. A gap. A moment where nothing much happens and that's completely fine.

So I've been trying something recently. Revolutionary, really. When I'm in a queue, or waiting for a friend, or standing on a train platform, I'm trying to just...be there. No phone. No podcast. Just standing like an absolute psychopath, looking around, thinking thoughts, being a human person who exists in physical space.

It's harder than it sounds. The urge to reach for the phone is strong. My brain tries to convince me that I'm wasting time, that I should be "productive," that there's probably something important I'm missing.

But you know what? There isn't. And even if there is, it can wait.

Maybe that's the real art of being bored: learning to be comfortable with the uncomfortable feeling of not being entertained. Of just existing for a bit without input or stimulation or distraction.

Give it a try. Stand in a queue. Look at the ceiling. Be bored.

It's weirdly liberating.