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Do People Even Get Bored Anymore?

dev.to staff on April 17, 2024

What are your go-to activities when you find yourself with idle time and nothing specific to do? Share your favorite boredom-busting strategies. F...
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Ingo Steinke, web developer

I replaced gaming and social media with Duolingo, but I also need to occasionally get "bored" in a positive, inspiring way. If that doesn't happen by chance, it helps to turn off my phone and walk outdoors.

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Lev N.

I try to stay away from mindlessly scrolling as much as possible, although I still find myself doing it occasionally. Being bored is an important part of creative development, unfortunately, most (myself included) rarely are these days.

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Paulo Henrique

Before the pandemic, I had a rule that every week I had to find a new place to eat via Google Maps and go there. This allowed me to discover new flavors, ideas, and cool places along the way.

Since 2023 things have changed and I'm more paranoic selective with the places I go, but I try to at least stay motivated walking around the neighborhood, getting new books/comics/mangas to read, or finding new musics to stay hyper-focused on

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Kerry Owston

I build a house in Sims 4 that no one will ever live in.

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Rachel Fazio

Agreed with some folks below— I think boredom is important!!!!

When I am bored I like to pick something new to do (see a new park, new place to walk around, etc. etc.) or take my dog for a little hike. I find for myself boredom = need to go touch grass.

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a.infosecflavour • Edited

Related to @lnahrf 's comment, I was thinking mindless scrolling in relation to boredom-busting, isn't also boredom-boosting? For example, you take a break or you need to increase the dopamine activity, then you go to social media platforms which are the nest of media like photos, (short) videos and so on could result in not discovering something that you genuinely LIKE and continuing scroll instills boredom, imo. And 💥 this is boredom-boosting, the "evil" cousin of boredom-busting

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GrimKillingbeck

I find myself scrolling way too much on my phone. I think what I'll start doing is reading more because I've noticed over the years that my attention span has dropped significantly. To mitigate that, I have turned my phone settings to gray scale to make it less appealing, but I still find myself listening to youtube videos instead of finding something productive to do lol

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Nabil Alamin

When there's time to kill I usually read manhwa(Korean comics) or watch a show

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Medea

I usually just study or code when i'm bored

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GrimKillingbeck

This is where I want to be. I automatically grab my phone, but I'm doing my best to change that to picking up a book or code.

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Bala Madhusoodhanan

Sudoku and podcast are my go to option when I am bored...

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Anita Olsen

I used to get so incredible bored in my childhood growing up isolated from other people apart from family, neighbours (with no children my age to play with) and staff. I decided at the age of 5 to never get bored ever again so I keep myself busy with something and therefore, I rarely get bored. Boredom is a luxury, and I only allow myself to get bored once a year. I always find something to do and nowadays with the internet which gives us access to so much information, so much to learn and different things to do, how can anybody ever get bored?

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Michael Stamps

When I'm bored, I either code, think about coding, or learn more coding. Code is life, life is code.

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Renan Ferro

Yeah, good question. In my moments of boredom I like to do some basic things, such as:

  • Play games, Duolingo, watch videos and also look for new and interesting beers (I like trying beers from different places and have a collection of beer caps 😅).
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Jim Tryon

I have been playing Monopoly Go and watching cooking shows and exploring the Backrooms.

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Calin Baenen

Maaaaaan, what kind ov question is this?
Ov course they do.

YouTube, Bluesky, DeviantArt, Reddit, and doing programming, can only keep me distracted for so long.

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Josef Nobach

Sometimes its important to be bored, let the mind wander and find new ideas.