Thoughts on Boredom
April 27, 2026
Boredom is something I rarely experienced for a while. I was quick to take out my phone, which would unlock by just looking at it, almost always one predictably placed click away from algorithmically optimised attention grabbers. The whole process, from feeling remotely uninterested or uncomfortable to saturated by input, was a few seconds at most. This, predictably, disinsentivised many bahaviors, and as a pattern, biased my life's experience quite radically.
I strongly believe that this alteration from what is typical is largely negative, and so I began to change it. It's easy to hawk on the first order "phone bad" perspective that many have begun to satarize. I don't think that the interest grabbing and stimulation are inherintley bad, though: just that in the enviroment we humans find ourselves in, they are. Reflection, thinking, processing, planning, analyzing, understanding: all things the brain wanders to when bored. This process is important and valuable: the flames of curiosity and interest are fanned here, and without this time they will die. We are given a gift of rationality, but squander it.
There's an idea of making a list of foods you know don't disturb you in any way, making it as short as possible: water, eggs, fruit, and eating only that for a week, then adding something new, being mindful if this food is making a positive change in your life. This has been a big inspiration for my changes to my informational diet, however I'm still on step one.
At some point in the last year, I have progressed far enough to be able to go to the library with just a textbook and notepad, and study for more than an hour straight, with little disruption. I'm so un-used to this lack of stimulation, though, that when I emegrge I always feel a strong urge to stimilate myself - my technologic restrictions not budging, this often means jacking off in the middle of the day, or finding some other stimulation drip to sit under. This pattern is always immediatley discouraging - I have sinned, after all - but this is also a strong sign of progress.
It's important to distinguish between chasing boredom for boredoms sake, versus the things that arise from it. The former may have you going 12 hours watching paint dry, only to go back to TikTok the next day, but I think this would just be counterproductive. What is needed is a consistent change in lifestyle which allows creativity and curiousity to flow, and that is a life with more boredom (at least for some initial time).
So there's a kind of leap of faith happening, where you're giving up this safe and stimulating lifestyle for one of sacrifice and chastity, constantly reminded of how much more stimulated you could be at this moment. All for promises of flourishing at the end of the rainbow. I've gone far as far as chastity, and while I still have a ways to go, I'd like to attest to the fact that this pays off. I still have hopes for much more progress, but am glad to had made the jump. With my new, coherent value system, I would be glad to make the jump if my situation didn't progress at all!, and so the rest is straight profit.
Worth noting that because boredom in itself is no end, other externalities are needed to prosper and grow. I may write about this, too. And, despite boredom not being an end, it is a big constraint, so seeking it out if you're trying to fully min-max acclimation to a new, slower sensory enviroment might make sense? Eg. if you really want to focus on reading a textbook for 2 hours, you could try and try again, or you could put yourself in an empty room for 2 hours, then you'll love reading the textbook...