When was the last time you were bored? How about the last time you said I have absolutely nothing to do? Let’s get more specific. Can you sit at the DMV or doctor’s office waiting your turn without scrolling through your phone? I recently took the featured photo above at the beach. Evidently, even with a vast blue ocean feet away, these folks found their phones more interesting.

The ability to sit with our thoughts and feelings without trying to avoid or escape them has become increasingly difficult.

I rarely experience the feeling of boredom. My list of interests keeps my life full. Truthfully, I don’t care for the feeling of being bored. Yet, more and more, I realize boredom may add many health and spiritual benefits to my life and perhaps yours too.

I’ll begin by defining boredom. The Italians have a name for it “il dolce far niente” the sweetness of doing nothing. In America, we refer to it as “killing time.” Certainly not the same positive connotation. Instead of welcomed pauses that provide brakes to a brain in need of recharging, we often view the “il dolce far niente” as wasted time.

How can we change that view of boredom? We start by considering the many benefits of boredom.

The Benefits of Boredom

• It helps make us more productive by stimulating our brains. Our brains become less productive when they’re constantly running at high speed. Our busy lives and our electronics are wearing us out! They fill every empty space, and our brains instead of feeling refreshed, are exhausted!

• It creates more creativity-more imagination. Quiet times in our lives allow us to explore fresh creative ideas. It opens our minds to imagine new ideas.

• Boredom is an emotion or signal that lets you know you are doing something that doesn’t give you satisfaction. It tells us when we’re not fully present and engaged in our present task and that task lacks meaning to us.

• Boredom can teach us how to relax, while helping us to distinguish between our need to rest and laziness. Boredom moves our lives towards action (even the action of getting rest), but laziness pulls us away from it. “Better is one handful with some rest than two hands full of toil and chasing the wind” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

• If you’re a goal setter, boredom makes you more goal-oriented, giving you an opportunity to daydream and plan.

• Boredom lets you know when something isn’t right, either in a job or a situation. Sometimes when we stop what we’re doing, we sense something feels off. When I feel bored, my true emotions become more visible to me.

• We learn to enjoy some of the simple pleasures of life God has given us. Helping us become more present before God. For example, eating without sitting in front of the TV. Or taking a walk without earbuds. Or the simple celebration of God’s wondrous creation that surrounds us.

• When bored, we learn to become comfortable in the quiet. Rather than lost in the silence. God loves to speak to us in the silence. When we listen better!

• Boredom can bring clarity to depression. As I mentioned above, I don’t like how I feel when bored. Sometimes boredom can mask as depression. Something you need to explore if feeling bored a lot.

• Boredom may also mask as a lack of direction. I don’t know where to go or what I should do? Therefore, I am bored. Writer’s block creates a sense of boredom for me when words aren’t popping into my brain. I never know, however, what the Holy Spirit might show me during those vacant lapses.

• We too often establish our worth through our busyness. It’s in the gaps and open places we find our self-meaning. When nothing but God confirms who we are in him. “but the inner person of the heart, the lasting beauty of a gentle and tranquil spirit, which is precious in God’s sight” (1 Peter 3:4).

The next time you notice you’re bored, consider all the benefits of boredom and what you can gain from them.  

Maybe an idle mind is not the “devil’s workshop” after all. Instead, it’s the Lord’s renewing, refreshing, and restoring our minds. So that we can become more useful to his kingdom and to others!