IGMT #059 | What if being bored is actually part of learning how to pay attention?
Hey Reader!
I was sitting in a waiting room recently doing what I assume most people do in waiting rooms now. I was looking at my phone.
I don’t remember what I was looking at, which probably tells you everything you need to know. I wasn’t answering an important email or handling some urgent business. I was probably scrolling Facebook, watching a Reel, checking something I had already checked ten minutes earlier, or bouncing between apps without any real purpose.
At some point, I looked up and noticed almost everyone else in the room was doing exactly the same thing.
There were people of different ages, probably there for completely different reasons, but almost every head was tilted toward a screen. Nobody was talking. Nobody was staring aimlessly around the room. Nobody was flipping through a six-month-old copy of People magazine that had been handled by several thousand people before them.
And yes, I fully appreciate the irony that I only noticed any of this because I happened to look up from my own phone.
It made me think about what waiting rooms used to be like. There was usually a television mounted somewhere near the ceiling showing a program nobody had chosen. There were magazines you would never voluntarily read anywhere else. You studied every poster on the wall and eventually became way more knowledgeable about whatever medical condition happened to be advertised next to you.
Eventually, though, you ran out of things to do.
So you waited.
You were bored.
…and it got me thinking.
We have become incredibly good at eliminating boredom. There are very few moments anymore when we actually have to sit with nothing happening. Standing in line gives us enough time to check our phones. A commercial during a television show becomes an opportunity to scroll. We watch videos while we eat, listen to something while we drive, check notifications between conversations, and carry an endless supply of entertainment everywhere we go.
People jokingly call some of this “brain rot,” especially the endless stream of short videos that somehow turns checking one thing into losing 20 minutes of your life. But I don’t think this is really a social media problem, and it definitely isn’t a “kids these days” problem. Spend five minutes watching a bunch of adults waiting for a flight and that argument falls apart pretty quickly.
What interests me more is what happens when we become accustomed to having something available the instant whatever we are doing stops being interesting. We don’t have to work through that uncomfortable stretch anymore. We can replace it. Another video. Another post. Another notification. Something new is always a swipe away.
And that creates an interesting problem when we walk into a gym, onto a field, or anywhere else people are trying to get really good at something.
Because getting good can be boring.
We like to remember the exciting parts of sports. The competition, big moments, close games, celebrations, and breakthroughs are the things that make the highlight videos. But so much of actually becoming good happens far away from those moments. It happens when you are doing something you have already done hundreds, maybe thousands, of times.
I see it in volleyball all the time. Early in a drill, athletes are trying to figure it out. They are engaged because there is a problem to solve. They are listening to feedback, making adjustments, and paying attention to what is happening. But eventually the novelty wears off. Twenty minutes later, their bodies may still be doing the drill while their attention has quietly gone somewhere else.
The drill didn’t suddenly become less valuable. It just stopped being interesting.
That distinction matters.
As coaches, we spend a lot of time thinking about engagement. I certainly don’t want athletes standing in long lines or spending two hours doing mindless repetitions because that is how practice has always been run. Good practice design matters. Competition matters. Creativity matters. Fun matters.
But I wonder if we sometimes confuse engagement with entertainment.
There are going to be parts of getting better that simply aren’t exciting. There are going to be repetitions where nothing new happens. There will be stretches of competition when the ball doesn’t come your way. There will be time on the bench, time waiting for someone else to get feedback, long rehab sessions, film sessions, travel, warmups, and all kinds of moments where nothing particularly interesting is asking for your attention.
The ability to remain engaged anyway might be one of the more overlooked mental skills in sports.
We tend to notice attention when an athlete loses it during an important moment. Someone gets distracted late in a game, misses an assignment, or isn’t ready when the ball suddenly comes their way. We look at that moment and say they lost focus.
Maybe they did.
But I’m starting to wonder if attention is trained just as much during all the moments when nobody is watching it.
Think about a normal practice on a Tuesday night. The athlete has already done the drill 25 times. They understand it. They are tired. Nothing exciting has happened for a while, and there probably isn’t anything exciting coming. Then the coach says there are ten more reps.
What happens to their attention during those ten?
That might tell us something.
Can they still notice the small adjustment that needs to be made? Can they remain connected while their teammate takes a turn? Can they approach the final repetition with enough attention to actually learn something from it, rather than simply completing it so they can move on?
That isn’t the kind of mental performance we usually celebrate. There is no dramatic pressure moment. Nobody is watching from the stands. There isn’t a championship on the line. It is just an athlete deciding whether something still deserves their attention after it stopped being interesting.
I spend a lot of time talking about what happens when the moment gets loud. The score gets tight, the crowd gets louder, thoughts start racing, and suddenly there are a hundred different things competing for an athlete’s attention. We want athletes to be able to stay stable in those moments and choose where their attention goes instead of letting the moment choose for them.
Maybe part of learning how to do that happens when things are quiet.
Maybe boredom gives us a chance to practice choosing where our attention goes when nothing is demanding it.
That doesn’t mean phones are evil or social media is destroying an entire generation. It doesn’t mean coaches should intentionally create boring practices, and I’m certainly not suggesting we all throw our phones into a drawer and return to reading whatever eight-month-old magazine happens to be sitting nearby.
It just makes me wonder whether every empty moment needs to be filled.
A little while after that first waiting room experience, I found myself sitting in another one. There wasn’t anything particularly interesting happening. Nobody was talking. There was some generic music playing quietly in the background, a few magazines sitting on a table, and absolutely nothing that required my attention.
Almost automatically, my hand went toward my phone.
This time I stopped.
Not because I was starting a digital detox or making some grand statement about technology. I wasn’t trying to become more mindful, unlock my creativity, or prove that I had defeated the algorithm. I just decided to sit there for a few minutes and be bored.
And I was.
Nothing profound happened. I didn’t solve a problem I had been struggling with. I didn’t come up with my next great idea. I didn’t achieve some previously undiscovered level of mental clarity. Eventually, a door opened, someone called my name, and I got up.
Turns out I can still be bored. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
Usually this is where I give you some sort of call to action. Something to think about, try, share, or maybe even click.
Not this week. This week, the call to action is no action.
The next time you have a few minutes where absolutely nothing is happening, maybe let nothing happen. Don’t turn it into a mindfulness exercise. Don’t track it. Don’t optimize it. Don’t congratulate yourself for staying off your phone.
Just sit there and be bored for a little while.
Apparently, we used to be pretty good at it.
