I remember one particular morning on my bus ride to school, my usual distractions weren’t an option—I had forgotten to charge my phone the night before, I didn’t have any reading material and the bus felt unusually quiet. Without my usual buffers against boredom, I was left frustrated. My mind felt restless, grasping for anything to occupy it.
As the ride stretched on, my thoughts began to wander. I found myself noticing the life around me. A jogger waiting to cross the street, a woman tugging her puppy on a walk, someone signaling the bus to stop. At this moment, I wondered, is boredom really as bad as we think it is?
Boredom is generally defined as the state of wanting to be engaged but finding nothing satisfying in the moment. Researcher and author of “The Science of Boredom: Why Boredom is Good,” and senior lecturer in occupational psychology at the University of Central Lancashire found a surprising relationship between boredom and creativity. Dr. Sandi Mann’s study reveals that boredom, often viewed as a nuisance, might actually unlock creative potential. Participants in their experiments engaged in monotonous tasks, such as reading or writing something dull, before completing a creative challenge.
Those who completed the “boring” activities outperformed those who did not, especially when the boredom stemmed from reading. Mann and Cadman theorized that boredom creates the mental space for daydreaming, which acts as a bridge between ideas and solutions.
On that bus ride, as my phone layed dead in my backpack and distractions evaporated, my mind began to wander. Mann and Cadman’s findings suggest that this daydreaming has a purpose; it’s a natural process that can spark creativity.
“When we daydream, we’re basically looking for stimulation that isn’t in the outside environment, so we’re finding it within our own brain, and that process of daydreaming can lead to us becoming more creative by looking at things in a different way, our conscious control is inhibited a bit,” Dr. Mann said.
In our hyper-connected, screen-obsessed society, we’re robbing ourselves of an important emotion. If boredom is a precursor to creativity, then we need to rethink the instinct to avoid it at all costs.
Boredom, it seems, has become the great taboo emotion of our era. In a culture obsessed with productivity and constant stimulation, the empty moments that boredom offers are seen not as opportunities, but as failures.
The price paid for rejecting boredom may be higher than we realize. The avoidance of boredom, driven by the constant availability of technology, is reshaping how we engage with the world. Social media platforms in particular, are designed to exploit our cravings for novelty.
Dr. Man suggests a deliberate effort to disconnect and embrace boredom. Where your mind has to wander and has “daydreaming potential.” This could involve small actions such as letting your mind wander during idle moments, like waiting in line or trying low-tech hobbies that may not offer immediate gratification.
Organizations, too, could rethink their approach to productivity. Dr. Mann shared an anecdote about a company reluctant to admit that their employees may be bored, seeing it as a failure of workload management. However, Dr. Mann argues that allowing for moments of downtime—even in the workplace or school—could foster innovation.
“Allow people that downtime to just stare at the clouds or go for a walk and not have any connectivity,” Dr. Mann said.
Reintroducing boredom into our lives may feel counterintuitive in a world that often celebrates busyness, but it’s a simple step toward unlocking creativity that lies within us. By reframing boredom as a tool rather than an obstacle, we can reimagine it as the start of something productive and creative. The question isn’t whether we’ll experience boredom in a hyper-connected world,it’s whether we’ll embrace its potential when it arrives.
