Boredom Overdose

How much time do you spend bored each day?

We'll get to the definition of this word later, because the interpretation varies a lot depending on who's reading.

How many times have you been in a stressful situation where you no longer knew what to do and your response was to open Netflix and desperately look for something to fill the time, something to distract yourself? When we get into these patterns, it's not unusual to binge five episodes of that show in a row. How many times have we finished a show with six seasons and twenty episodes each in record time?

Maybe you're not one of those people; some people don't like this at all. But how much time do you spend each day on TikTok or Instagram? When you're in the doctor's waiting room, what's your first reflex? And when you're on public transit? It's probably not to contemplate what's around you.

We live in a world where being bored is a signal to get distracted.

We can console ourselves by saying we like the show, or that we're resting our heads and that's why we're glued to our phones like this. It isn't so. Since when does resting or dealing with that stress mean looking for the fastest way to make it go away? Almost as if we were using heroin and going through withdrawal. But does it really go away? And that stress, where does it come from? If I'm the first person you've heard this reflection from, you live under a cave, but in this article I'm going to break it down until we get to the truth. The thing is that we're getting more and more bored, and not from a lack of stimulation, but from an excess of it. The boredom overdose I talk about in the title is a paradox, and it's where the future is taking us. And the word overdose means you can't take any more doses; it means collapse. And I suspect it has to do with something deeper than the phone.

Tolerance

Let's go back to heroin, because the metaphor wasn't exaggerated at all. Every drug has two faces: withdrawal, which we've already talked about, and tolerance, which is worse. Every dose raises the bar for the next one. A six-second video makes a one-minute video seem slow, and the one-minute video makes a movie feel endless. When was the last time you watched a whole movie without picking up your phone? Personally, I can't remember.

I'd ask you to check your screen time before going on, but knowing it's higher than you'd like is enough.

OK. Now notice what shows up when you open any social network. The Rolex, the steak at the expensive restaurant, the sports car, the same dance, the same joke, the same meme repeated a thousand times in the comments by people who think they're saying it for the first time. You've seen it all a hundred times. Everything is oversaturated, and that's why nothing seems worth anything.

It's no accident. The algorithm doesn't reward depth, it rewards watch time. You skip whatever demands thought with your thumb, so the system pushes toward the superficial because that's how it's designed. What brings together millions of people has to be, by definition, something you don't need to think twice about. Everything comes to you already chewed: instant dopamine and on to the next one.

And the most curious thing is that the people who make that content can't stand it either. They copy what works because that's what the system rewards, they fill up with clones and end up loathing what they themselves make. Many admit that if it weren't their job they'd barely open their phones, because it's become boring. If the person making the drug can't stand it anymore, the problem isn't the person consuming it, it's the drug.

The bill

Now comes the part you're not going to like.

The fact that it's designed to hook you doesn't let you off the hook. We're weak, very weak, and getting weaker. The phone in your pocket has more computing power than all of humanity had a few decades ago, and we've put it to work against our attention. It's a brutal opponent, agreed. But the phone should be your servant and it's become your master, and that didn't happen by itself.

Do the math with me, because nobody likes doing this math. Ask yourself how many hours a day you waste. I'm not telling you what wasting time is: you decide, by your own standards. Studying without taking anything in, videos you didn't even want to watch, scrolling that leaves you worse off than when you started. Most people, if they're honest, say between four and six hours. At six hours a day that's 42 a week, that is, a full working week, every week, thrown in the trash. And the younger you are, the more it costs you, because an hour well invested at twenty pays off for the rest of your life.

Now put a price on it. Let's say your hour is worth 20 euros, which is on the low side. And consider that at your age it's worth more, because what you learn today you'll get paid for the rest of your life. That's 42 hours times 20 euros: 840 euros a week and more than 40,000 a year. Over forty years of adult life, more than a million and a half euros. You're rich and you don't know it. You're giving it away every day in exchange for videos you don't even remember watching.

The most curious thing is that nobody enjoys that wasted time. Whoever spends the afternoon that way doesn't come out rested, they come out worse: anxious, apathetic and with a feeling of rotting inside that they can't name. It's the "almost addict" we were talking about earlier. And then comes the worst part, the little voice saying "look how undisciplined I am," which instead of lifting you up sinks you a little further.

I'm not telling you this to make you feel guilty. Guilt is useless. I'm telling you because, if part of how bad you feel is something you choose, that can be fixed. Accepting that you're not being everything you could be, and that you know it, is one of the hardest things anyone can admit. But it's also the only thing that leaves you something to do about it.

What won't let you get bored won't let you think either.

It's not just you

So far I've been talking about you, and you might think all this is just my impression. I wish. The problem is that it can now be measured, and the numbers belong to everyone.

Every three years, the OECD evaluates 15-year-old students from half the world in reading, math and science. It's the PISA report, and the latest came out a few weeks ago. The OECD average is the lowest in its history in math and reading. One in five kids performs below the basic level in all three areas.

Spain gets its worst scores since the test began, in all three subjects. In reading we've fallen 23 points in three years and 45 since 2015. You can't blame COVID, because the previous edition had already recorded the biggest drop in the test's history and this one falls again.

But there's one data point that seems more important to me than the scores. The report identifies "rushed readers," students who answer very fast and get it wrong. In 2018 they were 6.6%. Today they're 11.4%: almost double in seven years. Conclusion: they can't last the time it takes to read something all the way through. It's exactly what I was telling you in the previous section, only now, with data, it sounds more believable.

Let's be honest about what the data says and what it doesn't. PISA doesn't measure intelligence, it measures competencies. It doesn't prove the phone is to blame either. I can't prove that. What I can tell you is that it coincides in time, and that if your attention can't last through a movie, it's not going to last through a math problem either, and your chances of being replaced by a robot skyrocket. A robot that actually is more intelligent than you, and that comes factory-installed with what we only achieve through our most precious ability, focus: solving more and more complex problems.

A head that can't concentrate doesn't learn. It doesn't create either, and as for that last one, if on top of that we don't find what boredom produces when we don't run from it (calm), the equation becomes impossible, but I'll talk about creativity in another article. But anyway, as we're going to see, it doesn't find meaning either, which is what guides this article.

Enter AI

Did you think I wasn't going to talk about AI in this article? That just means you haven't read my earlier ones; I encourage you to.

Anyway, in the middle of all this, along comes artificial intelligence.

If you read my company's manifesto, you already know what I think. What's coming isn't just that we lose our jobs. That's the shallow part, and it's the only thing anyone talks about. The deep part is that, if everything you can think of doing can be done better by a machine, the question stops being what you're going to live on and becomes what you're going to live for.

Earlier I put your hour at 20 euros. If you're a junior, it'll be waaay less, but let's assume a static world, which isn't the one we live in, where that would be the average. Enjoy that figure while it lasts.

All our lives we've been taught to swim better: study more, adapt, learn the next tool. But this isn't just a bigger wave, and don't take it for granted that "new jobs" are going to be created. If that idea calms you down, think about what you do when you're bored on the subway: you take out your phone so you don't have to think. Clinging to that promise is the same thing, it's the fear of looking head-on at what's coming. It's as if the water started boiling and evaporated. However well you swim, there's no water left to swim in. It's not the difficulty that changes, it's the physics of the medium.

And notice the moment it's catching us at. It's catching us without the ability to concentrate, hooked on stimulation and unable to be alone with our own heads for even five minutes. AI is going to give us exactly what we handle worst: free time and unanswered questions.

And what are we going to do with that time?

Dance, monkey, dance

The answer seems obvious: entertain ourselves more.

Some people are already betting their money on this. The reasoning is simple: if machines do the work, what we'll have plenty of is free time, and we'll fill that time with entertainment, which is cheap to boot. That's why some believe it will be the fastest-growing industry in the coming years.

They may be right.

I think it's going to be the most resilient, and that we'll very probably keep wanting to be entertained by humans. So, if you want to keep having a job, you'll probably have to find a way to entertain others. Dance, monkey, dance.

I know what you're going to say: AI already makes songs, videos and scripts. True, and people already pay for synthetic companionship: there are entire profiles of avatars with automated chats billing money every month.

But paying isn't the same as feeling fulfilled; again, remember what you do when you're waiting at the doctor's office. We don't watch a game to see goals, because there are millions of goals on the internet. We watch it because there's someone of flesh and blood who can make a mistake in front of us. What we're looking for isn't the content, it's the person behind it; human qualities are what make us admire athletes and musicians. Above all, focus and courage. Focus is what lets you do things worth doing. Courage is what lets you live in accordance with who you are, and without that there's no meaningful life. Neither one is free. This is a bet of mine, not a data point, but… it makes sense, doesn't it?

Now notice the trap. If we all make our living entertaining others, the whole of society becomes the stimulus machine I told you about at the beginning. And the entertainer doesn't escape either: he copies what works, consumes to stay up to date and ends up loathing what he does. The one career path left to us is the same drug, only now we produce it ourselves.

I want to be precise here, because in the manifesto I said that meaning, in a solved world, lies in leisure. And I stand by that. But there are two kinds of leisure. One is appreciating: a movie that leaves you thinking for a week, a game, a book, a conversation that changes your day. It asks for your attention and gives you something back. The other is consuming: what takes your attention and leaves you nothing. The first is the way out. The second is the overdose.

But hey, if we keep going like this (and we're going to keep going like this), we'll reach a point where nothing in our lives makes sense and all we do is entertain ourselves. Well, that's if we don't all die first; here's an article that will clear up any doubts about where the world is going.

Two symptoms, one disease

I promised you a definition, so here it is. In psychology, being bored means wanting to get involved in something that fulfills you and not managing to. Read that again, because it changes everything: the problem isn't a lack of things, it's that none of them truly grabs you, with enough force, for you to develop the greatest skill in history: having focus. That's why you can have the TV on, your phone in your hand and your laptop open and still be bored. You have stimulation to spare and none of it matters to you.

With that definition in hand, look at what's coming.

On one side, there will be those who can't stop. People who work twelve hours, who answer emails at dinner and who live with chronic stress. They've been told that either they adapt faster than anyone or they end up on the wrong side of history, and they run so as not to fall. From the outside they look like the opposite of bored. But they get involved in everything and nothing fulfills them. Their productivity is another form of anesthesia, just like scrolling.

They can't stop because, if they stop, the question appears.

On the other side, there will be those left with nothing to do. With time to spare, looking for something to hook them and not finding it, going from one show to another and from one social network to the next. From the outside they look like the opposite of stressed, but they're just as empty and without any kind of self-control.

They look like opposites, but they're running from the same thing. Both have the same disease: an enormous crisis of meaning. One covers it with work and the other with stimulation.

And here's what nobody wants to hear.

Pursuing what makes you happy is a luxury. Pursuing what gives you meaning is an obligation. Most people don't find the meaning of their lives in what they enjoy, but in what they take responsibility for: a person, a craft, a problem that bothers them enough to devote years to it. Responsibility is exactly what grabs you with enough force for focus to appear.

That's why the boredom overdose isn't cured with less stimulation or with more work.

It's cured with meaning.

The silence

Go back for a moment to the doctor's waiting room.

This time you don't take out your phone. You leave it in your pocket and you stay there, sitting, doing nothing. The first few seconds are uncomfortable: you feel the impulse in your hand, like someone looking for their next dose. But if you hold on a little longer, something starts to happen. You notice the woman across from you, the noise of the coffee machine, the fact that you haven't called your mother in three days. And at some point a question appears that you'd been covering up for months.

That's boredom too, but not the overdose kind. It's the silence you needed to hear yourself.

I don't know how many jobs artificial intelligence is going to destroy, or whether PISA is the cause or just the symptom, or whether we'll keep wanting to be entertained by humans. What I do know is that the question will come anyway, whether you're working twelve hours or scrolling twelve hours. The only thing you can choose is whether it finds you with a head full of noise or with the habit of asking yourself questions.

So start with something small. The next time you're bored, don't cover it up. Stay with it for five minutes and ask yourself what it's trying to tell you.

dIAry comes out in November for exactly that: to ask yourself that question in writing.

So, how much time do you spend bored each day?

---

Written in Spanish by Álvaro Molina and first published on Substack (original). English translation with AI. Quotations from English-language sources are translated back from the Spanish unless marked otherwise, so their wording may differ from the original.