Boredom Is a Feature, Not a Bug

If you can sit with nothing, you can build something

when people get bored, they do things like graffiti. this is one way to deal with boredom but make sure your artwork looks good and is not on someone else’s property.

It’s okay to be bored.

That’s where creation actually starts. Not when you’re busy. Not when you’re reacting. When it’s quiet… and there’s nothing but your own thoughts.

From that blank space, something begins to form. An idea. A plan. A direction. Most of it won’t be great but that’s not the point. The point is you made something out of nothing.

If you can learn to think, write, and speak clearly, you can create. And once you create, you have a choice: act on it… or ignore it.

Acting on your own ideas, even imperfect ones, is almost always better than blindly executing someone else’s.

I spent years inside big companies like, PepsiCo, Honeywell, and Energizer Holdings. Big companies are where direction often came packaged as “strategy,” but felt disconnected from reality.

Some of it made sense. A lot of it didn’t.

It was polished. Approved. Safe. And often… useless.

We’d sit through annual compliance trainings, check the box, move on. Did it improve behavior? Maybe. But it definitely created the illusion of progress without actually building anything meaningful.

That’s the trap…confusing activity with creation.

Real creation is harder. It’s uncomfortable. It requires you to sit in that quiet, slightly restless place and do something with it.

Most people avoid boredom. They reach for their phone, a meeting, noise, food, or a drink. Almost anything to escape boredom.

But boredom isn’t the enemy. It’s the starting line.

A lot of what we enjoy today - products, companies, ideas - came from someone who had the space to think… and the willingness to follow that thought all the way through.

So instead of trying to eliminate boredom, get better at it.

Sit with it. Think. Write. Build.

Then go do something with what shows up.