How to Fight Boredom When There’s Nothing to Do: An Unhelpful Guide

Let’s set an all-too-familiar scene: you’ve been stuck inside all week and you’re already bored. So bored that you kinda wish you’d just get the dumb virus already. Frankly, there’s only so many consecutive episodes of Law and Order you can watch before you want to throw your TV out of the window (no offense Dick Wolf, you’re a national treasure). But don’t despair yet — some white asshole is here with unsolicited, unhelpful advice!

Learn a new skill

You’ve probably heard this advice before: spend your new downtime learning a new skill to enrich your life. Sure, you could learn something that makes sense for you — something you’ve always wanted to learn or a new program that would improve your career. But that’s boring. It feels like work and no one wants to do more work.

No, learn a skill that’s completely unnecessary. Like how to use Excel. Or how to use that YoYo you begged your parents to buy you in 3rd grade. Listen, I know you still have that YoYo. Every time you tried to donate it to Goodwill your mom gave you that look that said “mmhmm, you just had to have that YoYo, didn’t you Connor? What a great use of my money.” So you just kept it for 20 years.

So, learn how to do some YoYo tricks. Walk the dog, around the world, I’m sure there’s a third example of a YoYo trick but I’m too lazy and bored to Google it. Learning some tricks might make you feel accomplished for a minute or two, but more importantly it will do nothing to improve your life or anyone else’s. And that’s the real opportunity here: unlearn that idea that everything you do needs to mean something.

Play with a ball of string

Cats all do it, so it’s got to be pretty fun. Try batting a ball of string or colorful yarn around on the floor until it unravels. Then roll it back up and try again. Personally, I like to step it up and try juggling with three balls of string. I’m a terrible juggler so it just makes a horrible tangled mess of string all over my living room. And then I get to spend the next several hours unknotting and winding the balls back up.

It’s great fun and it’s brought my cat and I closer together.

Make new friends

Everything’s closed and you aren’t supposed to be within 6 feet of anyone or in groups of more than 10 — so how are you supposed to make new friends? The internet? No, of course not, the internet is awful and full of monsters. That would be terrible advice. I only give unhelpful advice, not terrible advice.

No, what I mean to say is to make new friends. Break out your crafting supplies and make some puppets! Grab those old socks with the holes that you definitely could’ve fixed but instead you just shoved them into the back of your sock drawer forever. Draw some lips (and maybe a curly mustache) with a marker and glue on some googly eyes.

Presto! A new friend to talk to! Make sure to come up with a name and a funny voice for your new best buddy (If you just use your regular voice you’ll look like some weirdo talking to themself). It might feel awkward at first, but talking to new people is always awkward. Eventually you’ll find that you actually have a lot in common.

Watch more Law and Order… but with a twist!

I know, you’re bored of watching Law and Order. We’ve already covered how you’ve seen way too many episodes in one sitting and you feel like you’re losing your mind. Face it though, the only other thing on TV is the news and no one needs that kind of negativity in their life right now. Thankfully, I know of a way to make losing your mind while watching Law and Order much more fun (no, not a drinking game — that would count as helpful advice).

Mute the show and try to find an opera that syncs up to the episode perfectly. I don’t have any examples of perfect matches — to be quite honest none of them match up. But it sure is weird!

Write dumb articles on the internet

Hey, it’s something to do. Don’t judge me.