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I believe smartphones have completely destroyed most people’s ability to be bored. Whenever anyone has an opportunity for boredom, they pick up their phone. Of

I believe smartphones have completely destroyed most people’s ability to be bored. Whenever anyone has an opportunity for boredom, they pick up their phone. Oftentimes it has even moved up the priority above the bottom — boredom — and even taken precedence over other leisure activities like reading, TV, or just sitting and talking. For many, it’s even close to the top, trumping work and other responsibilities. So boredom certainly stands no chance. If people actually try and sit with just their thoughts, staring out into nature or the walls of their home, they become anxious, like an addict that can’t get their fix. I appreciate many of the modern conveniences that come with smartphones, but I often miss the days before them.

funous 3y ago
My middle ground for this is walking. It gives me enough input to suppress my habit of entertaining myself using a smartphone, and it also makes staring at a screen quite impractical. But it gives me enough room to just process my thoughts.
- genericacct 3y ago
  Good choice. As Nietzsche said, never trust a thought you had while sitting down.
  - pawelduda 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38047477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38047477 Looks like experts are divided on this
- kees99 3y ago
  There is a commonly-used way to avoid having an open-ended think while walking, too: podcasts.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    And music, too. It’s underrated what a cultural cognitive shift into multitasking and experiencing the world through an artificial auditory filter that the Walkman, and then the iPod, brought to society even before smartphones.
- yodsanklai 3y ago
  Good for podcasts though :)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mantas 3y ago
I think it’s not just addiction but anxiety of being alone with one’s thoughts. I love doing long solo bicycle rides. Just heading out and spending whole day riding by myself. Over the years, I bumped into many people who find such trips scary. Scared of thoughts that could pop up. Some said they could do that with headphones and music, but silence was no go.
- brvsft 3y ago
  Man, that's grim. I just think these people think the moment they go out alone with their thoughts, the first one is something real morbid: Maybe I should kill myself! Slow down buddy, we were just going on a walk alone.
  - mantas 3y ago
    To be fair to those people, I did have plenty of grim thoughts pop up in my head. Dealing with some of them wasn't easy. But IMO it's better to be away what is going on deep inside yourself rather than let it brew till it explodes in very nasty ways. But I do see how unprepared people may be afraid. Especially if they do have vague idea of what is going on inside them.
- eiiot 3y ago
  Same here with the rides. Yesterday I rode 50 miles by myself for the first time in a while, and was impressed with the amount of things going on in my life that I just hadn’t thought about. All of my best ideas come on the bike or in the shower.
twelve40 3y ago
I find any form of exercise extremely boring. I go on these multi-hour bike rides which are borderline untolerably boring to me, especially at night. They do seem to have the side effects of stimulating the thoughts, reducing stress and better sleep, but to me it's just as bad as staring at the wall for a few hours, so a pretty big artificial effort.
- mantas 3y ago
  As an avid long distance cyclist, I talked to multiple people from, let’s say, conventional meditation community. All of them agreed that solo cycling is damn close to meditation if not the same. Especially road cycling, mountain biking is a different beast. On calm backroads, of course. Personally wall-style meditation is damn hard. But cycling makes it doable. My routine is to focus on cycling for the first hour or so. Which is also needed to get away from the city and suburb traffic. By the time I’m far away there’s enough endorphins and whatnot in the system to help and then sliding into my own deep thoughts is pretty easy. For some time till physical exhaustion kicks in. What I find crucial is pre-planned route and having already ridden it. No need for checking the map, no fear of missing a turn without navigation and no new sights to stare at. And pace is important. Slow & steady. Not too slow. Zone 3 is perfect IMO.
  - jddj 3y ago
    I found swimming laps to be the same. Extremely repetitive in terms of scenery, breath, everything. The first few laps get into the rhythm and later ones are just you and your thoughts. Or, if you're lucky, just you.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- tayo42 3y ago
  Do you just mean endurance sports? What about like boxing or skateboarding?
  - hef19898 3y ago
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Completely agree. The other thing I've noticed is that this "lack of boredom" has really killed my creativity. Phone use (especially scrolling, scrolling, scrolling) gets my brain stuck in repeated patterns that is the antithesis of creativity. I really wonder what the endgame of all this is. The "attention addiction" enabled by smartphones, and all the apps that are designed by some of the smartest people on the planet whose sole incentive is to keep you addicted, is IMO one of the most detrimental impacts by tech on human happiness in the past 100 years.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  Road trips are my solution. While driving, no phone! Just miles and hours of staring at the highway. When the wife takes over driving duties (we work in two-hour shifts) I jot down the ideas that came to me. (But in fact, phones are boring to me. It's my laptop that robs me of my boredom when at home.)
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    Smartphones are sort of the ultimate mind-occupier in terms of portability, but it seems like for long drives lots of people have just taken to listening to audiobooks and podcasts. It seems like we’re at a state of FOMO where every moment has to be optimized for stimulation, whether for “unproductive” entertainment or for “productive” learning. If our eyes are too focused on driving then we let our ears instead be our means to become busy away from our present surroundings.
sshine 3y ago
They way I got this ability back is through cats. They will come and sit between your eyes and the screen until you pet them. I can now put the phone away and spend time with my cat and my thoughts.
mentos 3y ago
Here’s a great bit from Louis CK on this https://youtu.be/uuCoyILqut8 https://youtu.be/uuCoyILqut8
- gala8y 3y ago
  I wonder if this "stay in the way of it and let it hit you like a track..." piece is his wording. Three years ago I was really grieving lost relationship, floating (not drowning) in sadness... and I found this piece of electronic music by San and Tac [0] with these words placed in the background. I would listen to this song and one day I realized, walking in a park, that I could really let it in. And I did... at it was beautiful... [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Y2BnKy8Eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Y2BnKy8Eg Love & Stillness
gizajob 3y ago
I think it’s basically a crime against children and humanity for parents to put an iPad (flashing meaningless drivel) in front of their children while pushing them through a supermarket, or a park, or in a restaurant. It baffles me how frequently I see this done nowadays, like children need a constant flashing distraction to keep them from asking questions or being bored. I want to smash every iPad I see used like this. Let children be bored and have their own thoughts. It’s not painful for a child to have to sit in a trolley or a stroller while they’ve nothing to do. In a restaurant they might even learn language and ideas from the adult conversation no matter their age. In my eyes, if you’re a parent who does this, it’s a parenting fail particularly given you managed to get through your own childhood without the same.
- EvanAnderson 3y ago
  My opinion on this topic, while perhaps not as strong as yours, is similar. I think we inadvertantly created a similar dependence in our daughter, albeit with books rather than electronics. She is 10 now and, aside from some exposure at school, she has never been allowed personal use of computers and the various computer-like devices we have today. We did reading curriculum at home between 4 and 5. By 6 she was reading on her own for pleasure. Today the child walks from room to room in the house with a book. Car rides without a book are accompanied with groans and anger. Any situation where boredom could set in is much worse if she doesn't have a book. She has to be specifically prodded not to read in order to get ready for school, etc, in a timely fashion. I don't wish we'd done anything differently, but when she does eventually have access to electronics I fear she is going to transfer her extreme book "dependency" to electronics easily.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    Sounds like how I was as a kid, always with a novel and then the advent of access to desktop internet in middle school hit. But hey, at least it’s a better foundation for literacy.
    - RoyalHenOil 3y ago
brvsft 3y ago
One of my favorite times to practice not looking at my phone is when I'm waiting for something outside of my home. Waiting for a coffee at the cafe? Stare off into space, not at my phone. I find the only time this is difficult is if I'm in a crowded area, and I'm anxiously concerned that I don't appear to be staring at a person like some creep. Then I feel one of my only options is to stare at a phone. But I also don't have a lot of entertaining apps on my phone so maybe I'll check the weather eight or nine times.
sunnybeetroot 3y ago
I agree to an extent. When I was younger I wanted to read anything over being bored. Sitting on the toilet would lead me to read the toilet perfume spray ingredients many times over.

funous 3y ago

My middle ground for this is walking. It gives me enough input to suppress my habit of entertaining myself using a smartphone, and it also makes staring at a screen quite impractical. But it gives me enough room to just process my thoughts.

genericacct 3y ago
Good choice. As Nietzsche said, never trust a thought you had while sitting down.
- pawelduda 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38047477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38047477 Looks like experts are divided on this
kees99 3y ago
There is a commonly-used way to avoid having an open-ended think while walking, too: podcasts.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  And music, too. It’s underrated what a cultural cognitive shift into multitasking and experiencing the world through an artificial auditory filter that the Walkman, and then the iPod, brought to society even before smartphones.
yodsanklai 3y ago
Good for podcasts though :)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mantas 3y ago

I think it’s not just addiction but anxiety of being alone with one’s thoughts. I love doing long solo bicycle rides. Just heading out and spending whole day riding by myself. Over the years, I bumped into many people who find such trips scary. Scared of thoughts that could pop up. Some said they could do that with headphones and music, but silence was no go.

brvsft 3y ago
Man, that's grim. I just think these people think the moment they go out alone with their thoughts, the first one is something real morbid: Maybe I should kill myself! Slow down buddy, we were just going on a walk alone.
- mantas 3y ago
  To be fair to those people, I did have plenty of grim thoughts pop up in my head. Dealing with some of them wasn't easy. But IMO it's better to be away what is going on deep inside yourself rather than let it brew till it explodes in very nasty ways. But I do see how unprepared people may be afraid. Especially if they do have vague idea of what is going on inside them.
eiiot 3y ago
Same here with the rides. Yesterday I rode 50 miles by myself for the first time in a while, and was impressed with the amount of things going on in my life that I just hadn’t thought about. All of my best ideas come on the bike or in the shower.

twelve40 3y ago

I find any form of exercise extremely boring. I go on these multi-hour bike rides which are borderline untolerably boring to me, especially at night. They do seem to have the side effects of stimulating the thoughts, reducing stress and better sleep, but to me it's just as bad as staring at the wall for a few hours, so a pretty big artificial effort.

mantas 3y ago
As an avid long distance cyclist, I talked to multiple people from, let’s say, conventional meditation community. All of them agreed that solo cycling is damn close to meditation if not the same. Especially road cycling, mountain biking is a different beast. On calm backroads, of course. Personally wall-style meditation is damn hard. But cycling makes it doable. My routine is to focus on cycling for the first hour or so. Which is also needed to get away from the city and suburb traffic. By the time I’m far away there’s enough endorphins and whatnot in the system to help and then sliding into my own deep thoughts is pretty easy. For some time till physical exhaustion kicks in. What I find crucial is pre-planned route and having already ridden it. No need for checking the map, no fear of missing a turn without navigation and no new sights to stare at. And pace is important. Slow & steady. Not too slow. Zone 3 is perfect IMO.
- jddj 3y ago
  I found swimming laps to be the same. Extremely repetitive in terms of scenery, breath, everything. The first few laps get into the rhythm and later ones are just you and your thoughts. Or, if you're lucky, just you.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
tayo42 3y ago
Do you just mean endurance sports? What about like boxing or skateboarding?
- hef19898 3y ago

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

Completely agree. The other thing I've noticed is that this "lack of boredom" has really killed my creativity. Phone use (especially scrolling, scrolling, scrolling) gets my brain stuck in repeated patterns that is the antithesis of creativity. I really wonder what the endgame of all this is. The "attention addiction" enabled by smartphones, and all the apps that are designed by some of the smartest people on the planet whose sole incentive is to keep you addicted, is IMO one of the most detrimental impacts by tech on human happiness in the past 100 years.

JKCalhoun 3y ago
Road trips are my solution. While driving, no phone! Just miles and hours of staring at the highway. When the wife takes over driving duties (we work in two-hour shifts) I jot down the ideas that came to me. (But in fact, phones are boring to me. It's my laptop that robs me of my boredom when at home.)
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Smartphones are sort of the ultimate mind-occupier in terms of portability, but it seems like for long drives lots of people have just taken to listening to audiobooks and podcasts. It seems like we’re at a state of FOMO where every moment has to be optimized for stimulation, whether for “unproductive” entertainment or for “productive” learning. If our eyes are too focused on driving then we let our ears instead be our means to become busy away from our present surroundings.

sshine 3y ago

They way I got this ability back is through cats. They will come and sit between your eyes and the screen until you pet them. I can now put the phone away and spend time with my cat and my thoughts.

mentos 3y ago

Here’s a great bit from Louis CK on this https://youtu.be/uuCoyILqut8 https://youtu.be/uuCoyILqut8

gala8y 3y ago
I wonder if this "stay in the way of it and let it hit you like a track..." piece is his wording. Three years ago I was really grieving lost relationship, floating (not drowning) in sadness... and I found this piece of electronic music by San and Tac [0] with these words placed in the background. I would listen to this song and one day I realized, walking in a park, that I could really let it in. And I did... at it was beautiful... [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Y2BnKy8Eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Y2BnKy8Eg Love & Stillness

gizajob 3y ago

I think it’s basically a crime against children and humanity for parents to put an iPad (flashing meaningless drivel) in front of their children while pushing them through a supermarket, or a park, or in a restaurant. It baffles me how frequently I see this done nowadays, like children need a constant flashing distraction to keep them from asking questions or being bored. I want to smash every iPad I see used like this. Let children be bored and have their own thoughts. It’s not painful for a child to have to sit in a trolley or a stroller while they’ve nothing to do. In a restaurant they might even learn language and ideas from the adult conversation no matter their age. In my eyes, if you’re a parent who does this, it’s a parenting fail particularly given you managed to get through your own childhood without the same.

EvanAnderson 3y ago
My opinion on this topic, while perhaps not as strong as yours, is similar. I think we inadvertantly created a similar dependence in our daughter, albeit with books rather than electronics. She is 10 now and, aside from some exposure at school, she has never been allowed personal use of computers and the various computer-like devices we have today. We did reading curriculum at home between 4 and 5. By 6 she was reading on her own for pleasure. Today the child walks from room to room in the house with a book. Car rides without a book are accompanied with groans and anger. Any situation where boredom could set in is much worse if she doesn't have a book. She has to be specifically prodded not to read in order to get ready for school, etc, in a timely fashion. I don't wish we'd done anything differently, but when she does eventually have access to electronics I fear she is going to transfer her extreme book "dependency" to electronics easily.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Sounds like how I was as a kid, always with a novel and then the advent of access to desktop internet in middle school hit. But hey, at least it’s a better foundation for literacy.
  - RoyalHenOil 3y ago

brvsft 3y ago

One of my favorite times to practice not looking at my phone is when I'm waiting for something outside of my home. Waiting for a coffee at the cafe? Stare off into space, not at my phone. I find the only time this is difficult is if I'm in a crowded area, and I'm anxiously concerned that I don't appear to be staring at a person like some creep. Then I feel one of my only options is to stare at a phone. But I also don't have a lot of entertaining apps on my phone so maybe I'll check the weather eight or nine times.

sunnybeetroot 3y ago

I agree to an extent. When I was younger I wanted to read anything over being bored. Sitting on the toilet would lead me to read the toilet perfume spray ingredients many times over.