Why I Prioritize Boredom

It started with an experiment last year. A friend of my mine quit Instagram some time ago and she had seen a lot of benefits I was interested in. It was also something I had been thinking about for a while as Instagram was no longer as important to our business, so I didn’t feel I had to be on it in the same way I had needed to before. Since it wasn’t necessary for my job I was evaluating if it was something I still wanted to spend time on.

In January 2025, I took the plunge. I deleted Instagram from my phone. I’m not logged in on my desktop either. I haven’t looked at the app since deleting it. I don’t use other social media  as I never really got on Facebook, Twitter (X) or TikTok. So effectively I deleted all social media from my phone. And can you guess what happened next?

I got bored. 

All of a sudden, my screen time went from an average of around 4 hours a day to 1.5 hours a day. 

Whoa.

What did I do with this extra 2.5 hours in my day? To be honest, not a whole lot. Much of this time I am sitting watching PBS with my older kid, or watching our youngest learn to walk, or sitting in a waiting room or grocery line, etc. A lot of this extra time is simply me sitting, watching whatever was happening around me and, if I got a little bored, I started thinking about stuff. 

Pretty quickly I started to feel a lot, and I mean a LOT more inspired. All of a sudden, I had ideas for art projects I wanted make and a short story I wanted to write. And it reminded me a lot of being a kid again. My childhood was awesome. And it was also filled with a lot of space and boredom. Growing up, being bored was a problem you constantly had to solve for yourself. My parents didn’t solve it for us. And my phone didn’t have an endless scroll of content to entertain me, because I didn’t have a phone back then. I had to think of things to do when I was bored as a kid and teenager. And I did. I made a lot of random art projects. I started small businesses. I read tons of books. Looking back, it was a magical time. 

I’m not a kid anymore. I’m an adult who works part time and spends the rest of my time parenting (my sons are 4 and 1 as of writing this). My time is spoken for much more than when I was growing up. But, deleting social media from my phone (and what I really mean is any app with an endless scroll of content and an algorithm designed to keep you there) gave me a little bit of this gift back. 

And the gift is boredom. 

I am coming up on my one year anniversary of deleting IG from my phone. This past year I finished writing a novel I had on my mind for almost two years before that. I have ideas for two more novels, and I am aiming to write both this coming year. And I also have been forced to enjoy things like watching what my kid connect with Wild Kratts and witnessing my youngest begin to walk, then run, and now talk. I’ve reclaimed my attention. I’ve reclaimed my boredom. And as it turns out this also reclaimed a lot of my own personal creativity. 

If you value creativity in your life, I recommend finding a way to add boredom. Maybe this looks similar to what I did (removing social media from your phone). Maybe it looks different. You do you. And side note to my fellow parents, if you want to encourage your kids towards creativity and curiosity let them get bored sometimes. They will find things to do. It’s a gift. I now appreciate that my parents gave this to me and I hope I can give it to my sons as well.