I’m not bored

If there’s one thing I’ve been learning and experiencing recently it’s this: boredom is beautiful. It’s just stupidly beautiful. It’s almost like awake meditation if you think about it, except instead of your head being clear, your todos are clear. I find that boredom has a sort of funnel to it:

1. Done with immediate tasks (note: you might still have things on the plate but just are done with doing them and tired of them)
2. No other immediate thing to do in front of you (if there is, you’ll reach for it — bandaid time fillers are like candy at this stage of the boredom funnel)
3. You acknowledge that you’re bored
4. You think about ways to cure said boredom (balking happens here, too: this is also where the easiest path of least resistance comes into play)
5. You start doing something because you meaningfully enjoy doing it

I’m sad to say that, when those around me are lucky enough to even enter the boredom funnel, very very very few actually make it to the last leg of the journey. It’s a rare thing, actually: getting to the point of realization that you can turn your boredom into exploration of something that brings pure serotonin-ful meaning to you. What happens instead is balking at earlier stages of the funnel, which I’ve seen most often take place in the following forms:

1. Step 1: You don’t finish tasks due to the nature of your work, and don’t actively set time aside to enter the boredom funnel in the first place.
2. Step 2: No other immediate thing in front of you: I would argue that this stage has the most significant drop off rate, it could even be has high as 90% of people in Gen-Z (and in general) drop off here because of that shiny piece of metal and glass we carry with us that quite literally makes not having a distraction not an actual thing. We are all *users* when it comes to smartphones — they’re our drug, our calling that makes actual acknowledgement of boredom nonexistent because we can’t get past the barrier of heading to our many apps to get the boredom bandaid we need to offshoot from the funnel entirely.

I could write about this note for a very very very long time, but this is essentially the leak in the funnel that takes active human thinking to truly overcome. Yes, you heard that right: we need to think actively about making space for boredom in our lives if rock-bottom boredom is to ever be reached in the 2020s onward. Boredom is no longer a result of being bored: it’s a result of pushing ourselves to get there, and for this reason I often draw similarities to rock-bottom-boredom and meditation. You need to get good at it.

Afterthoughts

With so many distractions notifying us every second from our smart phones, I’ve seen the generational impact of this technology with so few Gen-Zs actually have the capacity to be truly, deeply, beautifully bored.

It’s led to a theory I have: if I could quantities the number of times the words/phrases “I’m bored”, “boredom”, etc were spoken amongst 10–20 year olds from 1900 to now, we would be seeing a graph of steady state followed by a rapid decline right as smart devices launch.

The theory goes on: I also truly believe that if I had a way of quantizing the number of ideas — not even executions, just ideas happening in the brains per capita of this demographic — we would also see a major decline as soon as smart device mass adoption ensues, and likely micro peaks associated with social transformation waves (Instagram, TikTok, etc.).

There’s a much deeper theory to this that all goes back to while Gen-Z founders are more bullish on building things and running straight to investors — a trend Silicon Valley has been seeing more and more with these privileged few — the civilization-level impact of a decline in boredom is ultimately leading to less ideation at this core stage of our life and creating many more human robots. It’s funny to think of how in a world where robot takeover fear has actually been floated around, we aren’t acknowledging that we already are *becoming* the robots in which society runs on. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing: the civilization I’m watching grow around me is one of boxed thinkers and doers who are following the paths in place because they’re loosing that spark of wanting more, specifically at this 10–20 y.o. age group. Growing up is happening at a much slower pace than it had previously and people are just much more comfortable with being comfortable. As objects and motion stay in motion and humans naturally will gravitate toward the path of least resistance, this culture of distraction is causing more disparity between the free thinkers and the boxed ones in which most thinkers will be trapped from thinking any deeper than where surface level distractions infiltrate their perception. What this leads to: a generational drop in deep thinking and deep boredom.

So why the heck do I actually care enough to think on this is the question. The answer do that goes much much deeper than what meets the eye, honestly, but from a daily life perspective it goes back to my investment thesis: when I’m evaluating founders, I evaluate for those people that have great agency potential within them and have mastered the art of boredom. Because it’s only when you set aside life’s distractions to reflect on you, your life purpose, and for those natural makers, what you will leave behind.

There’s many constraints that cause adults to shy away from these deeper levels, as “when life gets in the way” causes people to adhere to the track we’ve engineered human life to take (education → work → retirement), which is why I’m bullish that learning boredom principals is most impactful at that 10–20 y.o. age range, though acknowledge that it takes a very long time to truly seep in. Even for me, for instance: I’ve been taught these things since high school but until traveling the country, meeting swarths of new people, etc. did I realize how it all comes together. So, I’m not sure what the solution is to this, but I also believe that implementing a more sustained lifetime education model could result in free thinking — and ultimately, people’s inner agency — to be unlocked over their adult life if they miss the childhood-bliss window of unlocking it young.

To conclude my thoughts there: boredom is beautiful, creation is when thinking and focus meet purpose, and I’m itching to change the thought patterns of the generation I see growing around me. I have no idea how that’s possible, but as stated throughout, everything that changes anything starts with a thought. If there’s 1 actionable takeaway for you here, it’s this: the next time you have a free window, don’t open your phone. Do totally nothing and let your thought river flow free from dams, see where you end up, reflect on why that’s where you found yourself, and repeat. Instilling a constant seesaw of thought, reflection, thought, reflection, is a great way of digging into mind layers deeper than you’ve ever unlocked before.

🧠