In defense of boredom

The problem isn’t boredom itself, it’s that boredom doesn’t fit inside our current economy. We’ve built an entire infrastructure to make sure no one ever runs out of content, novelty, or reasons to buy things. Streaming, social media, shopping apps: they’re all engineered to guarantee that no moment goes unoccupied.

But emptiness is precisely where choice begins. When children experience boredom, they often – after an uncomfortable interval, if you know, you know – invent games, stories and projects. When adults experience boredom, something more subtle occurs: the mind turns inward. It asks questions not prompted by an algorithm, and it notices desires that were not advertised.

This is inconvenient for markets, but very convenient for sustainability.

Neuroscientists have known for some time that moments of non-engagement activate a network in the brain called the Default Mode Network (DMN), associated with daydreaming, autobiographical reflection, meaning-making and long-term planning. The activation of this network increases during boredom, not despite it.

These are precisely the capacities suppressed by constant stimulation. When we binge, scroll or shop our way out of boredom, we silence the DMN in favor of dopamine loops that require less introspection and more input. In that sense, boredom is not an absence of activity but a different kind of cognitive activity, one that favors reflection over reaction.

Reflection is inconvenient for consumption because it introduces delay. Desire is no longer a trigger for action, but an invitation for inquiry: What do I actually want? Why do I want it? What need would it fulfill? And this temporal delay is exactly the foundation of sustainable decision-making.

And then there is also creativity. In a well-known experiment, participants were asked to complete a mind-numbing task (copying numbers from a phone directory) before engaging in a creative challenge. Those who experienced the boring task produced more imaginative ideas than the control group.

The mechanism is almost elegant: in the absence of external stimulation, the mind generates its own.

We tend to think of creativity as something artistic: paintings, products and big ideas. But sustainability depends on a quieter everyday creativity: fixing a broken zipper instead of buying a new jacket, turning leftovers into dinner, or reorganizing a supply chain so it wastes less. This kind of problem-solving rarely appears when our attention is constantly filled. It needs space. It needs empty time. And yes, a little boredom.

There is another reason boredom matters: it cultivates emotional resilience. Allowing oneself (or one’s child) to be bored builds frustration tolerance: the ability to sit with discomfort without immediately outsourcing it to a device, a purchase, or another adult structured to entertain.

Research on childhood boredom suggests that when parents rush to fix boredom with screens or activities, they unintentionally deprive children of opportunities to develop self-directed play and internal regulation. This skill carries into adulthood, where sustainable living often asks for a form of delayed gratification: fewer instant rewards, more long-term wellbeing.

The sustainability movement rarely names boredom, yet the virtues it requires –  patience, discernment, self-regulation – are strengthened through it.

At the center of this is a conflict between two economic incentives. The attention economy profits when we are constantly stimulated with more content, more novelty and more opportunities to buy something. The sustainability economy, however, relies on what stimulation interrupts: reflection, patience and delayed gratification. Boredom supports the latter and undermines the former.

When boredom is instantly anesthetized with entertainment or purchases, consumption speeds up. When boredom is given time, it tends to slow consumption down. Not because boredom is noble or moral, but because it interrupts the feedback loop that keeps us buying. In that sense, boredom is just bad for business.

Sustainability is often framed as a set of actions: buy less, repair more, avoid waste, et cetera. But it actually includes a lot of non-actions: not buying, not distracting and not optimizing every idle moment. Boredom is one of those non-actions. It disrupts the automatic circuitry of craving and replaces it with the possibility of discernment.

In a world that profits from keeping us stimulated, boredom becomes its own kind of resistance. Not a loud, ideological resistance, but a small, stubborn one. A refusal to be constantly entertained and a willingness to sit with desire long enough to understand it.

Doing nothing will not save the planet. But it might save us from the habits that harm it.