Want more focus and better ideas? Get bored.

A few months ago, I overheard a member at Groundwork explaining what they do when their five-year-old says, “I’m bored.” The answer wasn’t handing over an iPad or planning an activity. In fact, it had nothing to do with intervention at all. Instead, they said something along the lines of “I let him be bored, it’s good for him.”

As the aunt whose go-to responses are “boredom breeds creativity” or “that’s great, I can’t wait to see what you do!” this absolutely thrilled me.

Of course, kids don’t love hearing this at first. When they say they’re bored, they’re asking us to fix what they perceive as a problem. But if we resist the urge to intervene they almost always find a clever way to entertain themselves. In doing so, they practice creativity, independent thinking, resourcefulness, and problem-solving. All because no one rushed in to save them from boredom.

But somewhere along the way to adulthood, we lose this tolerance for navigating our way through boredom.

What we lose when we eliminate boredom

Part of the challenge is that being bored gets a bad reputation. It can feel heavy, uncomfortable, and even unsettling. For some people, boredom is easily confused with depression, but there’s an important distinction. While both are considered unpleasant, low-arousal states, depression tends to be inward-facing and emotionally consuming. Boredom, on the other hand, arises from a lack of external stimulation. It’s the restless feeling that something is missing, not that something is wrong.

And I’d argue that this lack of stimulation is exactly what many of us need.

We live in a world of constant input: smartphones, social media, streaming platforms, endless notifications. There is always something to distract us, entertain us, or fill the quiet. But what are we losing when our default response is to eliminate boredom as quickly as possible? What might boredom be offering us if we let it linger?

Research suggests it’s offering more than we think. A frequently cited 2014 study by researchers Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman found that people who completed a boring task before a creative challenge generated significantly more original ideas than those who weren’t bored first.

The researchers suggested that this is because boredom encourages daydreaming, which in turn enhances creative thinking. In other words, boredom doesn’t stifle creativity, it primes it.

Yet instead of seeing boredom as a tool, we treat it as something to diagnose away. We label ourselves uninspired, unmotivated, or stuck without ever asking whether we’ve given ourselves enough space to simply sit and do nothing.

In our productivity-obsessed hustle culture, doing nothing is often equated with being unproductive. We rush to fill gaps, answer questions immediately, and stay busy at all costs. But there’s value in sitting with uncertainty, in letting questions remain unanswered, in allowing boredom to do its quiet work. It’s uncomfortable because boredom forces us to face ourselves without distractions, without noise. And that’s not something we’re always eager to do.

But boredom is also where ideas begin to stir. Where clarity emerges. Where creativity stretches its legs.

An invitation to do nothing

So here’s the invitation: the next time you feel bored, resist the urge to grab your phone or scroll mindlessly through social media. Instead, give yourself space to do absolutely nothing. If this feels difficult, start small. Just 15-20 minutes. Think of it as being bored on purpose. Notice what comes up—thoughts, emotions, impulses. Don’t act on them. Just observe and avoid judgment.

And the next time you feel stuck on a problem, unfocused, or desperate for inspiration, don’t rush to find an answer or an escape. Sit with the question. Let your mind wander. Trust that something useful is happening beneath the surface.

Remember that boredom isn’t necessarily something to fix. Instead, it could mean you are standing at the edge of possibility..