I Hate Being Bored

An addictive relationship with my phone

There’s a habit we’re all too familiar with.

Upon entering a subway cart, standing in line, or simply not doing anything, we immediately pull out our phones and start scrolling.

And for what?

While I’m not sure what others do to numb their boredom, I confess I am intimately familiar with my boredom cures — the digital equivalent of a booty-call roster: text messages, emails, Instagram, and Reddit, in that order. If I still find myself bored, I maniacally refresh the Wall Street Journal, secretly hoping for some world event to occur in the past millisecond and captivate my attention.

My phone attachment extends to any mildly monotonous activity; everyday duties like brushing teeth, washing dishes, folding laundry, and taking showers are all accompanied with Youtube videos of God knows what.

An observing alien from another planet would likely observe me as a productive, knowledge hungry human, seeking the universe’s deepest truths based on the urgency in replying emails and the amount of time rummaging through the world’s information.

Unfortunately, it cannot be more mistaken.

Instead, I am simply another phone addict allergic to boredom. My productivity-dopamine-seeking mind labels all downtime, like waiting and doing chores, as wasteful. Why only do one task when I can also reply to messages, learn more, and stay informed?

This would be an admirable upward aiming mindset if not for 99% of all messages being non-urgent and nearly all consumed information being useless or forgotten.

Most of the time, when I scroll on my phone, I don’t even know what I’m looking for, which is most hilariously captured when I instinctively open my phone while waiting inside an elevator that has no signal.

I am not the first one to raise the absurdity of phone usage nor am I an expert about the damages it may cause. There are mountains of books, research papers, and podcast episodes all professing the harm phones cause towards mental health, anxiety, attention spans, and loneliness.

Knowing that the statistics are not positive (courtesy of my endless scrolling), I set out in 2026 to not instinctually pick up my phone and to have a willingness to be uncomfortably bored.

Operationally, that translates into detaching phone usage from as many activities as possible. Chores will be done phone-less, subway rides will be accompanied with a reliable Kindle, and gym sessions will have social media apps blocked from usage. (Unfortunately, my flights will not be raw-dogged).

And so, for my first action: buying the new iPhone.