On boredom

Or, in defense of looking out the window.

We have lost the ability to sit still and enjoy what is around us. I include myself. Any spare minute I have, I am on my phone, or watching TV, or reading. We keep ourselves occupied from the moment we wake until we drop into bed at night, and we never give our brains a single break.

It was not always like this. When I was a kid I had a lot of free time, and I complained about it constantly. I would tell my mother it was really boring at home. She would tell me to read a story, or pick up a magazine, or come help her in the kitchen. We did not have a television until I was in tenth grade. That was deliberate. My parents chose it. It annoyed me enormously, because I had to watch my favorite programs at my grandmother’s house or miss them altogether.

We did not have a car either, so we went everywhere by bus and train, and I spent those rides staring out the window. When it rained, my sister and I would sit on the windowsill and watch the water run down our street. We had so much time to be bored.

Looking back, that boredom was a gift. When you are bored, you daydream. You can sit in one place and think about anything at all without feeling guilty, because there is nothing you are missing. Daydreaming costs nothing. I think a great deal of whatever imagination I have now was grown in those empty afternoons.

Now look around. Step onto a train or a plane, wait at a bus stop, stand in line for your coffee, and try to find one person who is not looking at a phone. At home I have to ask my teenager every question three times to get the shortest possible answer. You may tell me that part is universal, and I will grant it. But I wonder what is happening to us.

What the research says

• Attention. Twenty years ago, people stayed on one screen for about two and a half minutes before switching. Today it is about 47 seconds.
• Work. Once we are pulled away from a task, it can take up to 25 minutes to get fully back into it. A few buzzes an hour and the whole day goes.
• Love. Couples who feel their partner picks up the phone instead of paying attention to them argue more and are less happy together. Researchers have a name for it: phubbing, or phone snubbing.
• Sleep. Across dozens of studies, children and teenagers who spend more time on screens go to bed later and sleep less.
• Being alone with our thoughts. In one experiment, people were left alone in a room for fifteen minutes with nothing to do but think. They were also given a button that delivered a mild electric shock. Two thirds of the men and a quarter of the women pressed it rather than sit quietly.
• Boredom and creativity. People who were first given a dull task, copying numbers out of a phone book, came up with more creative ideas afterward than people who weren’t. Boredom gives the mind room to wander, and that is where ideas come from.

Taking the break back

I am not throwing my phone into a lake. But I have found a few small ways to put some distance between us, and some of them I did not even plan.

My phone lives face down. I set it up so that flipping it over turns on Do Not Disturb, so the simple act of putting it down on the table makes it go quiet.

I also lose it constantly, somewhere in the house, in one room or another. It is not on purpose, but it helps. My forgetfulness, it turns out, is good for something. My family complains about it and laughs at me, and at least twice a day I am asking my Google Assistant to ring it so I can find it. By the time I do, I have usually forgotten why I wanted it.

And I go outside. I walk our dog, and I work in the garden. My hands are busy, but my mind is free to wander, and it goes everywhere. Some of my best rough ideas about work and about life have taken their real shape on a walk or with my hands in the soil.

A few more things the research suggests are worth trying:

1. Put the phone away when you eat or talk with someone you love. Not face down beside you. Away.
2. Keep it out of the bedroom. Buy a cheap alarm clock.
3. Pick one daily wait, the coffee line or the bus stop, and leave the phone in your pocket. Just look around.
4. Take a walk with no headphones and no podcast.
5. Let your kids be bored. When they complain, say what my mother said, and then leave them alone with it.
6. Once in a while, sit by a window when it rains.

Nothing will happen. You will be more alive and present.