There used to be long stretches of life where nothing happened.
No notifications. No scrolling. No constant input.
Just waiting, walking, sitting, thinking.
Boredom wasn’t treated as a problem. It was just part of life.
But maybe it did something we’re only starting to lose now.
It gave the mind space to drift.
And in that drifting, ideas sometimes appeared without being forced.
Now that space is almost gone.
Every empty moment gets filled instantly — a phone pull, a scroll, a video, a refresh.
Even a few seconds of silence feels unnecessary, almost uncomfortable.
We’ve become a culture that struggles to tolerate stillness.
And I wonder what that is doing to us.
Because it’s not just about attention spans.
It might be about something deeper — how thoughts actually form in the first place.
If every moment is filled with input, when does reflection happen?
When does the mind connect ideas that aren’t already being fed to it?
It’s strange because we’ve never had more access to information, yet less time being alone with our own thoughts.
So maybe boredom wasn’t wasted time after all.
Maybe it was part of the process.
A kind of mental background state where thinking quietly begins.
Not productive in the modern sense — but essential in a different one.
What's your thoughts:
Do you think we’re actually improving how we think by eliminating boredom…
or are we slowly removing the conditions that made deep thinking possible in the first place?
And if boredom is disappearing from modern life, what replaces it — if anything?
Would love to hear different views on this.
I think boredom is a state humans can’t endure and try to replace it with anything and everything that anyone is doing. In some aspects it is making humans better because we are sharing more experiences and viewpoints but it is lessening the effects of actually experiencing something in real life.
For deep thinking, I start to find myself doing more that when I am doing mundane tasks that require less attention instead of those quiet bored sessions as a kid. Some examples are Showers, dishwashing, vacuuming, pooping, etc.
I don’t think boredom will disappear as we often get bored while doing things if that makes any sense.
We will keep feeding our brains with everything in order to not have to be still which in itself is a super power.
That actually makes a lot of sense — maybe boredom didn’t disappear, it just migrated into mundane tasks.
Showers, dishwashing, walking, even those random “nothing” moments are still giving the brain a kind of idle lane to wander.
What’s more fascinating is your last point: if stillness is now a superpower, are we evolving into better thinkers… or just becoming dependent on accidental boredom to do the deep work for us?
For me, I think I have become more dependent on accidental boredom to get deeper thoughts and ideas. Recently, it feels like the universe wants to answer your deepest questions only after you take the trash out.
maybe it’s a reward for doing the little things that gets us answers for the bigger deeper things.
not sure but this was fun.🤩
Unfortunately, that’s part of humanity’s evolution. The way how people think has already changed, and it will continue to change in the coming years. This is unavoidable. It's part of evolution.
This raises a philosophical/ethical question: Is this change ultimately good or bad for human beings?
I get the “inevitable evolution” point — but I’m not fully convinced it settles the ethical question.
If the way we think is changing, then the real issue is whether we’re gaining depth or just speed.
When was the last time you were actually bored — and did it feel like loss… or space? Would love to hear that
This is such a grounded take.
Maybe it just made silence something we now have to choose on purpose.
Kinda makes me wonder: is the real modern skill not focus, but protecting space for focus?
As a Gen-Xer, I am part of one of the few generations left (besides Millennials and some Boomers) who know what life was like before the internet and constantly-online life became very normal, and we saw how it was becoming common for more and more people to lose focus/have shorter attention spans, etc., all leading to less focused concentration/deep work, as well as less quiet time in our personal lives, like just sitting still and having coffee/tea with our friends/family, reading books, taking walks outside, etc.
So I am not surprised that this is where we are now, with constant notifications and background updates, etc. And with long-form media consumption being popular, I have found myself often playing some podcast or another in the background while doing other things (usually mindless chores/things I do all the time, like cleaning, cooking, packing orders) instead of just having it be quiet.
Years ago I forced myself to disable all sounds on my phone except for calls from certain contacts, and that has helped a lot. Even taking a 2-minute call that leads me to a 15-minute task is an interruption that can throw me off for an hour.
I think boredom is still a thing, but people who find themselves bored will often say it's because they have gotten caught up on their social feed or whatever (lol) and have nothing else to do. They have plenty to do, but have chosen the dopamine-delivery machine of web applications to become their primary activities, in a lot of cases. Productivity is no longer a goal for people whose highway of life to find things to do is the internet.
These kinds get told to go touch grass, and while it's probably a fair jab, I can understand how the normalization of constantly-online or constantly-notified of online activity can really pull people from what can potentially be more meaningful (or more rewarding) activities offline.
However, I also understand and appreciate the value of what the web has brought to technological advances in work (and life) enhancements that lead to satisfaction.
I myself am personally grateful every day for the growth of the web, since my day job revolves around web development and serving up websites, and if it weren't for online shopping (now made ever better with Bitcoin payments), I would be hard-pressed to be employed in other ways, especially in the job market we are in now.
If it weren't for online community, I might never have found folks locally who were all against the nonsense in 2020 which led us to forming our own community that gathers periodically to do freedom stuff...including sharing skills like permaculture/gardening/food preservation, money outside banks, buying and trading things amongst each other, privacy/security-focused tech and communications. etc.
We know that people avoid thinking, so it’s not surprising that thinking would decline as other options emerge.