Boredom often prompts us to look for something, anything, to distract us. And now, perhaps more than ever, those distractions are always close at hand. Whether it be our phones, laptops, or TVs, there have never been so many convenient, enticing ways to escape. But fleeing from boredom is a fraught affair. Leaning on technological crutches to prevent it can lead to attachments and addictions that make it more challenging to lead a happy and fulfilling life. So what should we do when we are confronted with boredom?

In Why Boredom Matters: Education, Leisure, and the Quest for a Meaningful Life (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Kevin Hood Gary considers how we can encounter boredom in a way that helps us to live flourishing lives. Instead of seeking endless distraction, or resigning ourselves to simply enduring boredom, Gary instead encourages us to turn routine tasks into focal practices. Drawing from the philosopher Albert Borgmann, Gary describes focal practices as opportunities “to attend deeply, in a sustained way, to one thing, overcoming the temptation to move from one thing to the next” (p. 91). By treating everyday activities like cooking, walking, and reading as focal practices, we can transform the mundane into the profound, allowing us to not only overcome moments of boredom, but also to more deeply appreciate the depth and the mystery of our lives.