Is being bored bad for you?

Boredom is a strange thing to try to describe, because it is not quite a feeling. Sadness is about something; excitement is about something. Boredom is about nothing — it is the feeling of nothing happening, and the wish for something, anything, to start.

Which makes it tempting to treat boredom as a problem, like hunger, to be fixed as quickly as possible. But some philosophers put the case the other way. Kierkegaard thought boredom was the root of all evil, because people will do almost anything not to feel it. Bertrand Russell thought the opposite: that the ability to sit through a dull stretch without panicking is a skill, and that a person who cannot bear five empty minutes has handed someone else the remote control to their own mind.

Modern psychologists land somewhere surprising in the middle. Boredom, studied in labs, looks less like a wall and more like a nudge — the mind’s way of saying this is not worth my attention, go find something better. Bored people wander, daydream, and stumble into ideas that busy people never meet.

So before you fix the next bored afternoon, try letting it stand for a while and watching what it does. The question is not really whether boredom is bad for you. It is whether you ever get to find out what you do when nothing is chosen for you.

Try it

Sit for five minutes with nothing to do: no screen, no book, no music, no talking. Write down the moment it got interesting. Something always does.

What do you think?

Do you think there is a right answer to this question?

Talk about it

Is boredom a feeling, or the absence of one?
Can you be bored and busy at the same time?
If you are never bored, what are you missing?

Yes, but… — the arguments people actually make

Only boring people get bored.
That blames the bored person instead of answering them — and some of the people most vocal about boredom, like Kierkegaard and Russell, were among the most interesting of their time. The charge also proves too much: by it, nobody stuck in a queue is ever allowed to feel what they feel.
If you're bored, find something to do. Problem solved.
Sometimes correct. But the advice assumes boredom is a problem to be ended as fast as possible, which is exactly what the other side denies. Before reaching for something, it is worth five minutes finding out what the boredom turns into on its own.
Children are never bored now — they have screens.
A screen replaces boredom rather than removing it, which is a different thing. The question survives the screen: what happens in the gap when nothing is chosen for you?

What other philosophers think

Arthur SchopenhauerSaw life swinging like a pendulum between pain and boredom: want something and you suffer; get it and you are bored. The interesting question is what his pendulum leaves out.
Søren KierkegaardCalled boredom “the root of all evil” — and then filled his own so thoroughly with ideas that he wrote more books than almost anyone of his century.
Bertrand RussellArgued that the ability to endure a dull stretch patiently is essential for a good life, and that a generation that cannot bear boredom will be a generation unable to bear much of anything.
Heather LenchStudied boredom in the lab and found it does something useful: bored minds go looking for something new. On this view boredom is a nudge, not a wall.

If you want to go further

The Conquest of Happiness — Bertrand RussellA whole chapter on boredom, defending it as half of a good life; the other half is the capacity for excitement.
Either/Or — Søren KierkegaardContains the famous “rotation of crops” essay: one very restless man's schemes for out-tricking his own boredom.
Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom — James Danckert and John EastwoodTwo psychologists on what boredom is for, written for anyone who has ever stared at a wall.

Most of these were written for adults, which is why it is worth reading them with someone older.