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Harvard Business Review
You Need to Be Bored. Here's Why.
You Need to Be Bored. Here's Why.
Harvard Business Review
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5:49 · Aug 26, 2025
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ARTHUR
BROOKS:
You
need
to
be
bored.
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ARTHUR BROOKS: You need to be bored.
0:01
You will have less meaning
0:03
and you will be more depressed
0:04
if you never are bored.
0:06
I mean, it couldn't be clearer.
0:10
Let me give you the good side of boredom in general.
0:14
Boredom is a tendency for us to not be occupied otherwise cognitively,
0:20
which switches over our thinking system to use a part of our brain that's
0:25
called the default mode network.
0:27
That sounds fancy.
0:28
It's really not.
0:28
The default mode network is a bunch of structures in your brain
0:31
that switch on when you don't have anything else to think about.
0:35
So you forgot your phone and you're sitting at a light, for example.
0:39
That's when your default mode network goes on.
0:42
We don't like it.
0:43
My colleague in the psychology department here at Harvard, Dan Gilbert,
0:47
he did experiments where people had to sit in a room for 15 minutes
0:51
with instructions to do absolutely nothing,
0:53
and there was nothing in the room to do,
0:55
except there was a button in front of them that they could push.
0:58
And if they did, they gave themselves a painful electric shock.
1:02
Sit there bored, or get a shock.
1:04
A big majority of the participants gave themselves shocks instead of thinking about nothing.
1:08
We don't like boredom.
1:10
Boredom is boredom is terrible.
1:12
Why is boredom so bad?
1:12
Well, because the default mode network makes us think about things
1:16
that might be kind of uncomfortable.
1:18
When you think about nothing while your mind wanders and thinks about, for example,
1:22
big questions of meaning in your life.
1:24
What does my life mean?
1:25
You go to uncomfortable existential questions when you're bored.
1:29
That turns out to be incredibly important, incredibly good.
1:32
One of the reasons we have such an explosion of depression
1:35
and anxiety in our society today is
1:37
because people actually don't know the meaning of their lives,
1:40
much less so in previous generations.
1:42
Tons of data show this, and furthermore, we're not even looking.
1:46
Why not?
1:48
I'll tell you why not.
1:49
We figured out a way to eliminate boredom.
1:52
We've been able, almost completely,
1:56
to shut off the default mode network in our brains.
1:59
How?
2:00
The answer is that thing in your pocket with the screen,
2:03
which you take out even
2:04
when you're standing on the street corner waiting for the light to change,
2:07
is like, I might have to wait here for 15 seconds.
2:12
What are you doing?
2:12
You're actually trying to not be bored
2:14
because the default mode network is mildly uncomfortable,
2:17
because it sends you to the types of questions
2:19
that you can't get your mind around.
2:20
You can't get your arms around.
2:22
Well, that's a big problem.
2:23
That's a doom loop of meaning.
2:26
If every time you're slightly bored pull out your phone,
2:29
it's going to get harder and harder for you to find meaning,
2:32
and that's the recipe for depression and anxiety and a sense of hollowness, which,
2:38
by the way, are all through the roof.
2:42
I get it.
2:43
You don't want to be bored.
2:44
You need to be bored.
2:46
Be bored more.
2:47
Tomorrow, when you go to the gym in the morning after you wake up,
2:50
don't take your phone.
2:52
Can you handle it?
2:53
Not listening to a podcast while you're working out.
2:56
Just being in your head.
2:57
I promise you, you'll have your most interesting ideas
3:00
while you're working out without devices.
3:02
It's probably been a long time since you've done that.
3:04
Commute with nothing, not even the radio.
3:07
Can you do that?
3:08
Start getting better at periods that are 15 minutes and longer of boredom,
3:13
and watch your life change.
3:16
Number one, you'll be less bored with ordinary things in your life.
3:19
If you get better at the skill of boredom,
3:21
you'll be less bored with your job.
3:22
You'll be less bored with your relationships.
3:24
You'll be less bored with the things that are going on around you.
3:27
But more importantly, you'll start digging into the biggest questions in your life, purpose,
3:32
meaning, coherence, significance.
3:36
And who knows?
3:38
You might just get happier.
3:41
People ask me all the time, is the doctor taking his own prescriptions?
3:44
And the answer is, yes.
3:46
Yes, I am.
3:46
I'm prone to the same pathologies
3:48
as anybody else because I have the same brain chemistry
3:50
as everybody else.
3:51
So what do I do to fight that?
3:52
And the answer is, well, I do a number of things.
3:54
I have a no device policy after 7:00 in the afternoon.
3:59
I don't sleep with my phone.
4:01
We don't have devices when we have meals in my family.
4:06
Because we're there for each other.
4:07
We're not there for people who aren't there.
4:10
Three, I have regular social media
4:12
and screen cleanses where I don't use my device for longer periods of time.
4:18
First, it's like children screaming in my head because that's how dopamine is saying,
4:24
get the phone, get the phone.
4:26
That's addiction.
4:27
But it calms down and I feel better.
4:30
And I feel sort of blessed by the end.
4:33
And I pick the phone up by the end
4:35
because I have to check my emails.
4:36
And I have to be a normal, functioning, connected person in the world.
4:40
But it does remind me
4:41
that my life doesn't have to revolve around these devices.
4:44
These protocols are really, really helpful and I recommend them to anybody and everybody.
4:49
Don't sleep with your phone.
4:50
No phones during meals.
4:52
Regular social media fasts.
4:54
You'll get better.
4:56
People worry that if they do these things, they're going to miss something.
4:59
There are ways that you can remedy that.
5:01
One of the things
5:01
that you can do is you can have your phone on.
5:04
You're just not looking at it,
5:05
and there's only one
5:06
or two numbers that can reach you in case of emergencies.
5:09
Phones can do that by the way.
5:10
If you don't have to do that, ask your kid.
5:13
But don't use emergencies in as an excuse.
5:15
Here's something that's not an emergency.
5:18
What's going on Twitter.
5:19
That's not an emergency answer nothing.
5:23
It doesn't matter.
5:24
The news can wait.
5:25
Seriously your grandparents didn't what was going on every single second in Washington, DC.
5:30
You're killing yourself with this stuff.
5:33
Are you kidding me?
5:34
It's bad for you.
5:35
So let me say it straight to my kids.
5:38
Put down your phones.
5:41
You need more meaning in your life.
5:43
And so do I.
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