The Case for Letting Yourself Get Bored

A pattern I see with a lot of my clients: they are always doing something. Their days are go-go-go, and so are the gaps in between. The commute has an audiobook in it. The walk has music in it. Even the shower has a playlist or a podcast going. Every empty moment gets filled with some kind of input, usually without thinking about it, it's just what we do now.

None of those things are bad on their own, but when I ask clients when they last sat with their own thoughts — no screen, no sound, no input, just them — a lot of them can't remember and the idea of it feels really uncomfortable. And I think that's worth paying attention to, because those empty moments were never really empty. They were where the thinking happened, when ideas were formed, when creativity would shine through.

Boredom isn't the problem, it's the space

We treat boredom as something to fix. The second there's a quiet moment, out comes the phone, on goes the podcast. But boredom is really just unstructured time with your own mind and it turns out that's where a lot of the good stuff shows up.

You've probably experienced this without labelling it. The idea that arrives in the shower. The solution to a problem that appears on a walk, when you weren't working on the problem at all. The clarity you get on a long drive. That's not a coincidence. When you stop feeding your brain new input, it starts working through the input it already has and starts connecting things, replaying conversations, and solving problems in the background. Give it nothing to consume, and it starts to produce.

When you fill every gap, you never give it the chance to create.

Sitting with yourself is a skill (and it's uncomfortable at first)

Sitting with your own thoughts can be uncomfortable, especially at first. The itch to reach for your phone is real. The silence feels unproductive. For people whose identity is built around being busy and useful, doing nothing can feel almost wrong.

To be clear, I'm not saying we all need to meditate. It works for some people, and it doesn't work for others, and that's fine. It's just allowing yourself to be with yourself for a little while — no technique, no app, no posture. As a coach, I've really come to recognise the value of that kind of reflection, of just taking a breath. Life is so busy, with so many inputs coming at us all day, that sometimes letting the brain just be is a form of rest. Not sleep, not entertainment — rest.

And like anything uncomfortable, it gets easier. The first ten minutes of a walk with no devices might feel itchy. By the third or fourth walk, it starts feeling like the best part of your day.

What this has to do with leadership

If none of that motivates you, look at the price.

It costs you time — the most obvious one. But it also costs mental bandwidth. Constantly managing other people's reactions, replaying conversations, wording and rewording a two-line email: that's real cognitive load, spent on other people's comfort instead of your own thinking.

And it costs you your development. Every hour that goes to pleasing someone else is an hour not spent on your own growth. For managers, there's a sharper version of this: taking work back from your team because holding someone accountable feels unkind. Do that often enough and you're not just buried in tasks that aren't yours — you're not building the strategic skills that would let you grow into the leader you're meant to become. That trade, doing the work versus leading it, is exactly what I unpack in The Doer to Leader Identity Shift workbook, because people-pleasing is one of the biggest reasons capable managers stay stuck in the weeds.

A caveat, though, because this matters: none of this is about becoming mean. You don't need to lose your empathy, drop your warmth, or stop caring about the people around you. Kindness isn't the problem. The problem is when pleasing others comes at the cost of losing yourself. You can be a genuinely caring colleague and still end the email without the open door, still let someone sit with their own work, still say no.

Because in the end, the people worth pleasing — including you — are rarely the ones asking you to abandon your own priorities. Say your yes on purpose. That's the whole practice.

It doesn't need to be a calendar block

The good news: this doesn't have to be another thing you schedule. It doesn't need to be an hour of "thinking time" blocked in your calendar (although if that works for you, great). It can be as small as:

A walk around the block with no devices. The shower with nothing playing. One commute a week in silence. Standing in a line without pulling out your phone. Washing dishes without a podcast.

That's it. You're not adding anything to your day, you're just leaving a few of its existing moments unfilled and seeing what shows up in them.

A caveat, though. This isn't about cutting out the things you enjoy. If the audiobook on your commute is genuinely one of the highlights of your day, keep it. The problem isn't any single podcast or playlist, it's when every gap is filled by default, and there's no moment left where your mind gets to wander. You don't need to empty your life of input, it's about experiencing what it would be like with a few pockets without it.

Because your best thinking is probably not going to happen in a meeting, or while consuming someone else's thoughts. It's going to happen in the boring moments, if you let yourself have them.

Working with Base Pace Coaching

If your days are go-go-go and the idea of sitting with your own thoughts sounds nice but unrealistic, that's usually a sign there's something worth looking at — about how your time is being spent and what keeps pulling you back into the doing. The Doer to Leader Identity Shift workbook is a good place to start if the weeds are the problem: it covers delegating, accountability and making room for strategic thinking. And if you'd like to work through it together, join the waitlist and be one of the first to book a free consultation in January — sometimes the most useful thing a coach does is give you the space to hear yourself think.