Beating Boredom
Did you know that being bored is good for you? It sounds hard to believe, but it’s actually true. Being bored stimulates new ideas, fosters creativity, makes you more independent, and even helps to build concentration. Here are three ways you can beat boredom while enjoying your own company.
Imagine
Assume your favourite thinking pose. Venkat likes to lie on the sofa with his legs propped against the wall. Use your imagination to travel to new worlds, create new recipes, invent new games or even just have a conversation with yourself. Go deep into a strange idea. What would the world be like if lions became our pets? What would life on Pluto look like?
Challenge Yourself
You could try any kind of challenge - physical, mental, or just silly. One example of a physical challenge is standing on one leg. How long can you balance yourself? Once you feel stable, you can add other challenges like bending down to pick an object while balancing on one leg. You could also try a mental challenge. Can you recite the multiplication for 67 without using paper? How about recalling the names of all your classmates? Spend some time to discover your own superpowers.
Focus
Can you sit quietly in one place without moving? How long can you do that? Or how about repeating a word - any word - without letting your thoughts wander to other things? Monks and yogis use mantras to focus. But you can repeat anything at all. Maybe even a word you just made up. If there's an ant on the floor, you can follow its path. What do you think it's so focused on?
It’s perfectly ok to do nothing for a while. While there are rules in the real world, your imagination has no rules at all. And you might end up liking that more than a world of gadgets.
Nothing beats being prepared. And so, here's a sheet for you to print out and fill with ideas on how you can keep yourself entertained without gadgets. Put it in a place you can see it easily and turn to it when you find yourself short of ideas. Just right click or long press the image.
