This Winter, Be Bored

Parenting literature these days is full of encouragement to let kids be bored. In an over-scheduled world, kids need downtime. Their brains benefit from white space, which ultimately results in greater creativity and motivation.

As a mom of three young children, I can attest to the benefits of boredom (although I can also attest to the messiness of its ensuing blanket forts and slime recipes). My own best memories of childhood are from a season when my siblings and I learned to entertain each other without a home television.

Adults aren't given the same permission to be bored. Instead, we are encouraged to be productive. We evaluate our worth and usefulness in terms of busyness and efficiency. In our achievement-driven society, any kind of lull is perceived as evidence of poor planning or low ambition. The quiet rage I feel when I am held up in the grocery checkout line—without any more emails to respond to on my smartphone—exposes my pathological aversion to white space.