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Comment by Goronmon | Hacker News Reader

During the first few days we were at a loss for what to do. It had been our routine to watch whatever is on TV after dinner, and suddenly we were both dumbstruck for ideas. So we went to sleep at 8:30 p.m.

Two things about this confuse me.

1) Running out of "stuff" to do. Maybe it's because it's been literal years since I've watched scheduled programming and don't understand the habits involved anymore, but I can't understand this idea of not knowing what to do with free time. We watch what's likely way too much TV on some days, but all the things they "discovered" they could do with all this time are still things we do regularly, without cutting off the TV entirely.

2) How do people just "go to bed" early because they get bored? I'm actually jealous of that idea. If I just decided to "go to bed" early, it would most likely involve me staring at either the ceiling, my phone, or a book for a few hours.

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Re 2: They could if they were tired. TV keeps you up when you're tired. If you don't have it to do, then you may find out how tired you are.

And boredom and tiredness are somewhat related. "Bored" could be "everything I might do takes too much energy to be worth it". There's a component of "tired" in there.

There is something to that. Not that TV as such has really been a draw for me, but screen time (including just surfing the Web) is. When I'm with relatives that still don't have broadband, I do tend to go to bed early -- not because I'm "bored" as such, but because I don't have something else competing with being tired.

I sometimes send myself to bed early if I’m in a poor mood and see it descending into a mental breakdown, especially when it’s getting towards the part of the evening where being tired and energised makes things worse. And I will always make sure to get an earlier start out of it.

This is more of a coping mechanism for depression than getting bored though. I kind of understand boredom less and less over the years, most of the times I’m really just feeling lethargic or demotivated and wishing there was _something_ I could do, rather than feeling like there’s nothing to do.

There is _always_ something to do. It’s just a matter of being interested or bothered.

> Running out of "stuff" to do.

This happens to me after about 2-3 weeks of crunch time; I’ll have replaced my normal habits with working, and there’s a confusion when there’s suddenly no more work to do.

This is what I hate about "crunch time". I keep a priority list of my personal goals/tasks so I have perspective when I'm thinking of pulling another 60h week.

Reminding yourself that crunch time shouldn't be a regular recurrence is a good thing.

> 2) How do people just "go to bed" early because they get bored? I'm actually jealous of that idea. If I just decided to "go to bed" early, it would most likely involve me staring at either the ceiling, my phone, or a book for a few hours.

I did a no electronics and no electric light after sundown thing for a couple weeks. Lived after-dark hours by a couple candles—found two beeswax tapers are about the smallest amount I could comfortably read by, assuming they were close, though unshaded looking at them directly by accident and being blinded/feeling eye-pain was a real problem. Beeswax because once you notice how chemical-spill-smelling the cheap parafin ones are you can't un-notice it.

I went to bed way earlier than I would have otherwise, during that time, and generally much better rested than usual. I think it was a combination of the lower light and the lack of hyperstimulation from having a world of audio-visual, passive and interactive, entertainment at my fingertips. I'd usually read for a while then turn in, not because there wasn't more I could do (there's always more to read) but because it was just time to sleep and because I didn't have a friggin' carnival going on in my house I actually felt that.

I'd thought my whole life I was a night owl, but now I'm pretty sure 90%—or more—of the "I just can't sleep at night, it's how I am" stuff you read on here and other places on the Web is the same problem I (actually) had/have: our houses are friggin' amusement parks complete with incredibly bright lights, so we're constantly hyper-entertained and hyper-distracted. Of course we can't sleep! We've got more and better entertainment than a damn Emperor's celebratory feast would've in yester-year—with the relative plenty in food and drink to match, I might add, should we desire it—and it's on tap, in our homes, 24/7.

Also, many device screens and light bulbs have daylight color temperature which can disrupt melatonin. It's amazing how blue LEDs are built into everything.

I wish some of the smart bulbs makers would get rid of their fancy mood lighting colors and make a light bulb that automatically adjusts its color temperature and brightness with the sun (or at least an ideal sun cycle if you don't want to go to bed at 5pm in the winter, or live in Alaska).

I already do this with hue white LED bulbs and timers in the app. I love how the blue mid day light looks like natural sunlight, and in the evening it's a nice warm glow. I have it fade to dark between 9pm and midnight, so I know it's time to go to bed when it starts getting difficult to see things.

Do you think a dim led tea light in a dark colored glass container would work similarly?

Probably would.

Again, I think the light was only part of it, the rest being that you're very limited in what you can do without electronics. Even if you make an exception for, say, putting on an album to listen to and then not messing with it (no skipping around or browsing music on a screen) there's still not a ton. And what's left might be lots of fun—you can board game in low light, certainly, and toss maybe ten candles around the room and you could play card games just fine, you can read sheet music and see well enough to play an instrument, you can write, and so on—but none of it's the kind of sensory assault of watching TV/Youtube/whatever or playing a video game is. Reading or practicing your scales isn't in the same sleep-banishing league as inviting a world-class acting troupe into your house for the evening to put on any show you desire, ya know? Or having some kind of answer-any-question-you-think-up-on-a-whim (kinda, almost, as long as you don't dig too deep) oracle available. Which is basically what the modern Internet is—anything you want, any time, wall-to-wall world-class performances of anything you like, answers to whatever dumb trivia pops up in your head, at a button press. Every stupid nagging thought can take hold and drive you to action at any time because it's actionable. Powerful, sure, amazing, sure, but a good (healthy) idea to let it loose in your home at all hours? I think not.

I did try to find some sort of small desktop battery-powered incandescent nightlight for a while but all that stuff's LED now. Probably would be fine anyway, I just wanted the smooth and warm light frequency curve. May try the LED route some time, though even fairly weak ones are a hell of a lot brighter than two candles so you'd have to watch the wattage carefully to not end up with something that, in an otherwise dark house, is actually pretty damn bright.

You might try bedtime bulbs. They have a good spectrum and can be combined with dimmers.

Had similar experiences to you when going camping with no electricity. Feel asleep very early. I should try to replicate it at home. I do low lights but still use screens too much.

It works surprisingly well. But only if you're actually bored.

If you'd rather be doing something, then you'll keep thinking about that until you stands up again.

It only happens to me if I'm in a depressed phase or sleep deprived without really noticing it.

Not really enviable though, tbh. It does not feel good (at least for me)

>1) Running out of "stuff" to do. Maybe it's because it's been literal years since I've watched scheduled programming and don't understand the habits involved anymore, but I can't understand this idea of not knowing what to do with free time.

I'm jealous. I usually pop open my laptop and burn through the hours until it's time to sleep. I wish I knew what to do with my free time more often.

This one I empathize with 100%.

Well, maybe they had sex but didn't want to put that in the article.

2) Drugs. This has been my number one use for cannabis. If I need to go to sleep early for what ever reason, I smoke a bowl, lie down, and am out in no time.

A large glass of chocolate milk works for me.

Repeat after me: I am an outlier, therefore my outcomes should also be outliers.

It's a bit self-indulgent but I've found it increasingly true the more I relate to, erm, non-outliers.

This is good advice, but the question here is who's the outlier. I had the same reaction and I'm pretty sure just about everyone I know would too. Or perhaps the point I'm missing is that everyone should assume that everyone, including themselves, is an outlier.

I wonder if age has anything to do with it. As I've gotten older, not only has the idea of being bored evaporated, but the idea of other people feeling bored is borderline offensive. Life is short, time is precious, there's always a zillion more things that could be done (maybe productive things, or maybe just fun time-wasting things) than there is ever time to do those things. And then someday it's all over. I associate being bored with when I was a little kid, or even when I was in my 20s and it still felt like my whole life was ahead of me. When you've convinced yourself that your whole life is ahead of you, time feels a lot less precious.

Perhaps you live in a bubble of remarkable people.

Try listening to conversations between coworkers, people in coffee shops, and at the grocery checkout.

Most people operate their lives like a smartphone has conditioned them to: never pull relevant information, only receive what's pushed.

You just captured my feelings exactly. As I get older it's not about finding something to do - it's about filtering down on the things I want to try and do.

As a 4-months-to-40 person and I know they are tropes but hiking, exploring wilderness, learning survival techniques, building things from wood, inventing strange useful objects and growing food and many other things are up my alley these days.

What I would do as a kid if I was bored are all things I can't stand anymore: Going to an amusement park, a movie, playing or watching sports, anything generally involving a lot of seeing or working with humans... hearing screaming kids, listening to music (especially if it's forced upon my ears without my ability to stop it), smelling perfumes... oh gawd keep it away.

I'm also curious if I'm an outlier at my age (or beyond?)

As I've gotten older, not only has the idea of being bored evaporated, but the idea of other people feeling bored is borderline offensive.

As long as we're batting the n=1 ball back and forth, I have the opposite reaction to you. When I was young and an arrogant go-getter, I found the idea of other people being bored, or unproductive, or non-curious to be offensive.

Sometimes I was tactful about it, but that's how I felt, especially when I was consuming a large diet of hagiographies describing successful people as burning the entire candle factory, not just burning the candle at both ends.

Then I obtained two important and (for me) correlated things: Life experience. And empathy.

The former has shown me that I was the outlier. The latter has shown me that these are good and worthy people, they're just good and worthy in ways that my former Cult of Productivity does not value.

And even if I am still interested in productivity and so forth, empathy has helped me see them as they are without judging them.

Boredom is a state of mind, no surprise it can be viewed differently from person to person. For me personally, boredom allows me time to reflect and meditate. I don't mind it.

One thing I realized about this is that when I was younger, I had a million ideas of what to do, but most of them were out of reach. I either didn't have the necessary knowledge, the necessary skill, or the finances to do the things I thought up. Now that I'm older, I often have many of those things. So I'm a lot less bored than I used to be. In fact, I have to pick and choose like you say - there are more things I'm able to do than I have time for. I better do something meaningful (even if that's just watching a really moving show or reading a good book).

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