Some concepts:
- Misunderstanding of boredom: Not absence of activity, but lack of novel stimuli.
- Flow state misconception: Deep work doesn’t always lead to flow states.
- Boredom training: Learning to tolerate boredom is key to deep work.
- Exercises to embrace boredom: Strategies like scheduling internet use and productive meditation.
How can you train boredom:
- Scheduling Internet Use:
- Limit internet access to specific time slots.
- Encourages concentration and focus by reducing distractions.
- Helps develop discipline in using technology productively.
- Practicing Productive Meditation:
- Focusing on a single, well-defined professional problem while engaged in a physical activity (like walking).
- Aims to deepen focus and problem-solving skills.
- Trains the mind to stay on a single task without succumbing to distractions.
- Waiting Without Entertainment:
- Intentionally avoiding the use of phones or other distractions during moments of idle time.
- Cultivates comfort with being alone with one’s thoughts.
- Helps build tolerance to boredom, enhancing the ability to focus.
- Working Analog:
- Performing tasks using non-digital methods (like writing on paper).
- Reduces the temptation of digital distractions.
- Encourages deeper, more focused thought processes.
Developmental boredom
Sherry Turkle draws on Winnicott and Erikson to argue that childhood boredom is not a deficit but a developmental driver. For Winnicott, a child’s capacity to be bored — closely linked to the capacity to play contentedly alone while in the quiet presence of a parent — is a critical sign of psychological health. Erik Erikson likewise argued that children thrive when given time and stillness; the “shiny objects” of today’s childhood demand time and interrupt stillness, leaving no space for the child’s own imagination to fill.
Physical materials (clay, blocks, finger paints) impose natural resistance and slow children down. Digital media eliminate that friction — always responsive, always stimulating — substituting stimulus-response loops for the creative void that boredom opens.
To reclaim solitude we have to learn to experience a moment of boredom as a reason to turn inward, to defer going “elsewhere” at least some of the time.
(Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation, p. 62)
In the classroom, Turkle argues boredom is an invitation, not a problem: “a moment of boredom can be an opportunity to go inward to your imagination, an opportunity for new thinking.” This is the pedagogical version of Solitude: the teacher who rescues students from every moment of disengagement is preventing the inward turn that genuine learning requires.
Resources
- 2026-05-19 ◦ The Cost of Safetyism — Steve Magness — argues that children must be allowed to feel bored and navigate discomfort; preventing boredom through constant supervision denies them the raw material for emotional regulation and resilience. See Safetyism, Unstructured Play
- 2026-06-05 ◦ Reclaiming Conversation — Sherry Turkle (2015) — Winnicott on boredom as developmental achievement; Erikson on stillness; digital media as boredom-eliminating frictionlessness; classroom boredom as an invitation to turn inward rather than to the phone
On boredom and Deliberate Practice:
The skill-building aspect of deliberate practice, which is a flavor of deep work, can be boring and tedious. Training to tolerate boredom and mute its impact is crucial to mastering this kind of deep work. If you don’t develop tolerance for boredom, you may struggle with the deep work required in the course and beyond. Tolerating boredom in this context is likened to an athlete tolerating muscle soreness