Identity is sculpted by boredom
With entry-level employment conditions at a critical point of complexity, with the most university-educated competition in history, an AI shock to the workforce, and substantial cost-of-living crises in major cities across the globe, it feels almost impossible as a young person entering the workforce to let yourself breathe. Take a beat. Maybe even go on a holiday (if one is feeling lavish). Or even crazier, having a workday that is solely dedicated to advancing your skillset in only one craft, instead of feeling like you must be skilled in a few, because the probability of landing a great job or more opportunities increases when you keep skilling yourself. And the conditions, quite frankly, require it. What makes it even more stressful is that employers largely don’t know what they need despite all this effort from their prospective job pool. The workforce is changing rapidly, and what they need from their employees adjusts monthly. For a graduate or entry-level job seeker, selling yourself successfully to an employer is like trying to hit a moving target. The only way to know you will eventually hit a bullseye is to gather as many darts as possible and have enough faith in yourself that you have the strategic skillset to throw more than a few in the right direction.
Couple the stress of what feels like the fool’s errand of trying to enter the workforce with our restless and on-demand media landscape, the idea of being bored – or more accurately, letting yourself be bored – has begun to feel more like counterproductive labour than a luxurious experience. Indulging in 10 minutes of ‘TikTok time’ before plunging back into the grind of working is a much more common behavioural phenomenon than the now archaic concept of boredom.
Boredom is dreaded, and consequently, it has undergone a mass exodus. It encourages our mind to wander, to land on the uncomfortable topics of our existential meaning inevitably, difficult conversations to have with the people we love, and career realities. Instead, we protect ourselves, avoiding the heart-wrenching realities and instead live in this sort of comfortable stasis. This sounds great, right? Except, without considering the most defining concepts surrounding our own meaning and identity, we lose a concrete idea of who we are. The concept of the “Anxious Generation” (expertly outlined in the best-selling book of the same name by Jonathan Haidt) refers to Gen Zs experiencing unprecedented rates of anxiety, primarily due to unregulated screen time. This phenomenon is driven by the widespread avoidance of individual identity formation among youths. Without boredom, we collectively avoid deep intro- and extrospection. The endless pressure of continuous upskilling and training and thus the seemingly hopeless cause of self-definition to come from a career, coupled with an avoidant media consumption lifestyle, are causing us to lose a sense of who we are, separate from what we truly need/want, and instead attach to trends propelled by the global collective online.
According to academic Arthur Brooks, once you improve your capacity to tolerate controlled boredom, your ability to accept it in other critical facets of life (work, study, relationships, exercise, and hobbies) is strengthened. With a stronger mental elasticity to bounce back from the mundane, happiness and meaning making can be found in much more of life that sits above it in excitement. A study by Georgia Tech found that the act of regular daydreaming correlated with having a more efficient brain system. Indeed, the University of Lancashire found that the individuals who undertook the most boring tasks during their study could find more creative uses for what they considered everyday objects.
Creativity above simply processing what’s is in front of us is paramount to achieving real satisfaction and enjoyment from our reality. If you create long enough, you might just feel more anchored in your identity after accepting your reality. In the online sphere, trend culture and it's ‘groupthink’ mentality can, over time, lull us into identity correlation with trend iconography - particularly young people with a malleable sense of self: beauty aesthetics, fashion trends, consumption items, influencers, and celebrity videos. Young people with little reference to other media or job landscapes are increasingly valuing online hype. The National Literacy Trust in the U.K. found that over half of youths look up to a YouTuber, compared to just over a third looking up to a teacher. Social media is feeding a new social upper class from the perspective of our young, a ‘bourgeoisie’– the gorgeous and the followed. When we don’t allot time to reflect on their individuality, we find ourselves bathing in the false security of trends. Our current youth are a testament to this.
As we eject them into the real challenges of adulthood, alienating their struggles or their mental inelasticity to the social adjustments of maturing to the world around them, we forget that most of us, too, are on some level, experiencing a disconnect from foundational identity formation. Looking at generations past of grandparents, their sense of self is magnetic. Likeable or not, the energetic presence of their identity in any room they walk into is infectious, forcibly unravelling our protective shyness. That sort of calcified perseverance of self-reflection they took on sculpted their identity, all the gentle stone carvings of patience revealing something that otherwise would’ve stood untouched. The perseverance through the boredom, the introspection, the routine acceptance of a moment of the in-between, become the tools for creation.
If the concept of self-induced boredom makes you want to (figuratively) rip your hair out, try reframing the mental load into a task much less capital-intensive than a 6-week shred or joining a new weekly workplace book club. Resign to the practice of boredom, and you might begin to sculpt a stronger version of your identity for free.
References
1. Brooks, Arthur C. "You Need to Be Bored. Here's Why." Harvard Business Review, August 2025. https://hbr.org/2025/08/you-need-to-be-bored-heres-why.
2. "Daydreaming Could Be a Sign of Creativity and Intelligence." World Economic Forum, October 2017. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2017/10/lost-in-your-own-thoughts-it-could-signal-creativity-and-intelligence/.
3. Mann, Sandi, and Rebekah Cadman. "Does Being Bored Make Us More Creative?" Creativity Research Journal 26, no. 2 (2014): 165-173.
4. "Role Models and Their Influence on Children and Young People's Reading." National Literacy Trust, 2019. https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/research-reports/role-models-and-their-influence-on-children-and-young-peoples-reading/.