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I have a chair on my back porch.

It's part of a set, but it’s the best of the set because it sits there facing the pond, doing absolutely nothing.

A few times a week, even when it’s colder outside, I try to make time to go out and sit in it for 10 or 15 minutes. No phone. No podcast. No agenda. Just me, the sunshine, whatever birds happen to be passing through, and the hope that my alligator is going to drag himself up out of the water to say hello. He does, sometimes. But I haven’t seen him for a few weeks now and wonder if he’s moved on to someone else’s pond.

When you just sit, your brain can go to some genuinely weird places sometimes. I've wondered things like how the distribution of plundered treasure worked amongst the crew on a pirate ship, if I could support my family running a dog treat company out of my kitchen, and whether anyone has ever finished a tube of Chapstick without losing it first.

But that's it. It’s a bit boring, which is the point, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that this was one of the most valuable things I do all week.

Because we've done something wild as a society. We've engineered boredom completely out of existence.

Then we act surprised when we feel hollow. Waiting in line? Phone. Walking the dog? Podcast. Lying in bed at 11pm when we should be sleeping? Scroll until our eyes cross and our brains give up.

We've stuffed every crack of silence with noise. Every gap with content. Every idle moment with something to consume.

And somehow, despite being more connected and more entertained than any humans in history, we're more restless, more anxious, and less satisfied than ever.

And I think the problem is that we’re not bored enough and it makes me feel smart because a professor from Harvard agrees. Arthur Brooks, who wrote “The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life,” encourages people to lean into boredom. In an article for the Harvard Business Review, he said that boredom is good, especially in this age, when it’s all too easy to fill time with a mindless doomscroll.

So, this week we're talking about boredom. What it actually is, what happens to your brain when you finally stop filling every second, and why the cure to feeling hollow might be the exact thing you keep running from.

Let's look at why boredom isn't the enemy and what we're actually losing every time we grab our phones to escape it.

Your brain has a second job, and you keep interrupting it.

When you're not actively focused on a task, your brain doesn't clock out. It switches over to what neuroscientists call the default mode network, a system of brain regions that kicks on specifically when you're not engaged with the outside world. This is where your brain processes experiences, works through emotions, and wrestles with the big questions. Who am I? What do I actually want? Does my life mean what I think it means? Harvard professor Arthur Brooks, who I mentioned earlier, describes it as the space where your mind goes to sit with uncomfortable existential questions. He argues that by rarely letting our brains get there, we're robbing ourselves of one of the most important mental processes we have. We scroll to feel better, but we're actually making things worse.

Boredom is a signal, not a malfunction.

We treat boredom like a bug to be fixed immediately with the nearest screen. But research suggests boredom is actually a functional emotional state, one that's designed to redirect your attention toward something more meaningful. It's your brain saying hey, what you're doing isn't cutting it, go find something that matters. When we reflexively numb that signal with stimulation, we don't solve the underlying restlessness. We just push it down, and it stacks up. That hollow, vaguely unsatisfied feeling a lot of us carry around? It's not a mystery. It's unanswered boredom with nowhere to go.

Constant stimulation quietly wrecks your creativity and focus.

Your brain needs downtime the same way your muscles need rest after a hard workout. Research shows that unstructured mental rest, the kind that comes from actual boredom, is when creative insight happens, when problem solving unlocks, and when your attention span actually recovers. The people who seem to have endless creative energy aren't always consuming. They're the ones who build in intentional emptiness. Boredom is to creativity what sleep is to performance. Not optional, and not something you can skip forever without paying for it.

The more you avoid boredom, the more boring everything gets.

This one stings a little. Brooks argues that getting better at tolerating boredom actually makes you less bored with ordinary life, your job, your relationships, the people sitting across from you at dinner. The more we train ourselves to need constant novelty, the duller real life starts to feel by comparison. We condition ourselves to find everything inadequate. Sitting in silence for five minutes feels unbearable, so we reach for the phone. And now our relationships have to compete with infinite scroll for our attention. They can't win that competition. Nobody can. The solution is about learning to need less stimulation.

This week, practice being bored on purpose. It doesn’t have to be for a long time. Just enough to let your brain remember what it feels like to wander.

1. Don't touch your phone for the first 5 minutes after you wake up.

Just lie there.

Let your brain come online without immediately filling it with news, notifications, and other people's problems. Notice what thoughts show up when you're not curating your inputs. It'll feel weird, but do it anyway.

2. Take one walk this week with no audio.

No podcast. No music. No audiobook. Just you and whatever's actually around you. If that sounds uncomfortable, that discomfort will be good for your soul.

3. Sit with five minutes of actual nothing.

Set a timer. Find a chair. Stare out a window or at your backyard or at a pond. Don't check your phone. Just sit. Notice what your brain does when you stop directing it. You might be surprised.

4. Identify one filler habit and drop it for a day.

The reflexive phone grab when you're waiting for coffee to brew. Background TV that's always on but nobody's watching. The podcast that fills every commute. Pick one. Drop it for 24 hours.

5. Ask what the boredom is actually pointing at.

When you feel restless this week, before you reach for the nearest distraction, pause and ask what this feeling is trying to tell you. Boredom is often a signal that something in your life needs attention. A relationship, a goal, a question you've been avoiding. It's worth hearing out before you drown it in content.

Permission slip for the week:

You are allowed to do nothing. You are allowed to sit in a chair, stare at a pond, and call it time well spent. We'll call this wisdom.

Reflection question:

How often do you actually let yourself be bored? And what might you be missing by never letting it stay?

Where do you go, or where could you go, to just be bored? And what happens when you actually let yourself get there?

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If this made you realize you've been sprinting from silence for years, try sitting still for five minutes and seeing what shows up. Then send this to someone who hasn't put their phone down since 2019.

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That's Volume 052. Officially a year's worth of newsletters and, when I started, I wasn't even sure I had 10 weeks worth of things to say. Thanks for showing up every week and I hope this continues to make a difference.

Here's to flying with your feet on the ground, dreaming with your eyes open, and finding your alligator in the quiet moments.

Until next time: breathe deep, let yourself be bored, and chill the duck out.

Jason

Neuroscientists have identified the default mode network as a system of brain regions that activates during rest and unstructured thinking. Harvard professor Arthur Brooks has written about boredom's role in meaning-making and its connection to the default mode network. Research shows that the default mode network is associated with self-reflection, memory consolidation, and creative thinking. Studies on boredom suggest it functions as a functional emotional state designed to redirect attention toward more meaningful activity. Research consistently links chronic overstimulation to reduced attention span, diminished creativity, and increased anxiety. Studies show that unstructured mental rest is associated with improved problem solving and creative insight. Research on stimulation tolerance suggests that habitual avoidance of boredom increases sensitivity to it over time, making ordinary experiences feel less satisfying.