Time on your hands can cause stress – but I’m learning to lean into it

I had this great idea. I was going to launch a brand-new magazine. I had a name, a list of content, and all the writers and photographers I wanted to employ. I went so far as to mock up a cover. I was ready to fly into a new project in 2026, fuelled by renewed ambition and creative energy. It all felt so exciting, invigorating and new. Until it didn’t.

After a few days of thinking it through, making notes and doing sums, I started to feel overwhelmed. Then stressed. And, eventually, despondent. In the end, I realised what had really been going on: I was not inspired to pursue a grand creative dream. I was just a bit bored. It was late December, I had a bit of a cold and had been lying around in my pyjamas for days on end with nothing else to occupy my mind. 

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Time on your hands is a dangerous thing. My brain has always had a tendency to conjure ludicrous plans when left untethered. And no, I am not trying to portray myself as a creative maverick, brimming with colourful, captivating ideas. Most of my ideas are rubbish. Once, on a long weekend away with my wife, intended to be a pleasant period of relaxation and stillness, I announced over dinner that I was planning to start a gravel business. I had never shown any interest in gravel previously.

But I had been sitting around in a hotel room for 24 hours, without any work distractions or parenting obligations to fill my head with. And so I developed a fascination with the amount of gravel in the hotel courtyard and started speculating about who might be making money out of it, and how I might muscle in on the whole caper.

It took my wife to point out that I already had a perfectly enjoyable day job, that the gravel industry was none of my business and that discussion of it was not conducive to a romantic getaway.

Is it boredom that drives me down these futile avenues of thought? Not quite. It’s more a discomfort with silence. I’m probably not alone in needing constant mental activity to stave off the haunting spectre of anxiety. Without something to do, something to plan, something to dream about or just somewhere for my brain to amble, it will settle into its default position, which is worry.

I have spent a long time trying to fix this. I’ve tried meditation, mindfulness, breathing techniques and mantras. At the more conventional end of things, I’ve tried colouring-in books, playing video games and watching re-runs of The Sweeney in a bid to settle my agitated thoughts. It has all helped to one degree or another. 

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This condition has long been recognised in philosophy and literature as one of the central challenges of being human. When the real world is giving us nothing tangible to stress about, we self-generate pressure to keep ourselves busy. Why? Leo Tolstoy wrote: “Boredom is the desire for desires.” We all think we are striving for a bit of peace. But when we experience it, we panic because we have nothing to strive for. Evolution has conditioned us to be always on the lookout for the next thing.

This magazine idea burned inside of me for the best part of a week, urging me to take action. In the past, I might have ignored the point at which a daydream mutated into a source of agitation. I would have thrown myself into the project, convinced that to neglect it would be lazy and weak. Eventually I’d have burned out, become angry and frustrated and neglected the more important aspects of my life.

It’s happened countless times before. But this time, I caught sight of myself. I realised I was starting to worry about the creation of an entity no one else knew about, cared about or needed. 

Abandoning the idea would have no negative consequences for anyone. Whereas leaning into boredom and lethargy might actually help me feel better. 

So that’s what I did. I made a note of my idea and saved it on my computer in case, one day, I have the time, money and inclination to do something with it. Until then, I think it’s much healthier to take no action whatsoever. In times of boredom, the hardest thing to do is nothing at all. I’m giving it my best shot.

Sam Delaney’s book Stop Sh**ting Yourself: 15 Life Lessons That Might Help You Calm the F*ck Down is out now (Little, Brown, £22) and is available from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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