2026 June 2 I'm bored (or boring)

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me to talk about fixing "I'm bored." So let's get started.

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This week we're going to talk about how curiosity is the fix for that feeling of either "I'm bored," or "I don't feel like doing anything," or "I don't know if anybody's interested in what I say" — all of those things.

But first, the situation — kind of like setting up the plot line in a book. You're retired, perhaps, or put into retirement by some life situation, such as being let go, a divorce, a sudden move, illness, anything large and unusual. At first, it's just great. You can sleep in, have breakfast at two in the afternoon if you want. You can do whatever you want, including nothing.

But usually, after a few months — or even a few weeks — of this kind of sudden freedom, you start to feel like although you can do anything, you really don't feel like doing any particular thing at all. You could plant some veggies — well, maybe tomorrow, or tomorrow, until it's too late to actually plant them. You could learn a new language — but there really isn't any reason to learn a new language. Your world is full of options, none of which seem especially important to you.

There are a number of solutions to this, and we'll revisit this again from a different perspective. But one of the easiest things you can do is to let your natural curiosity come out and become active again. You don't have to plan anything. You don't have to look for some new technique. It's simply giving your natural, childlike curiosity the chance to be active.

You may have forgotten about that curiosity, or maybe it was trained out of you by being told to stop daydreaming all the time. But children are naturally curious — it's how they survive, quite literally. They're always trying new things. They find something on the floor, immediately put it in their mouth to see if they can eat it. Can't eat it? Can they play with it? Can't play with it? Throw it away. They're touching things, pulling on things, prodding stuff, trying to move any way possible, just to see what's over there versus here.

And then we went to school, where we had to sit still, not question the teachers, and learn the proper way for doing everything. Curiosity — other than maybe in a few classes like art and music — was often discouraged.

Well, guess what? Now is the perfect time to let your curiosity come back in full force and start discovering new things. Only this time, it isn't for a reason other than just the reward of learning something new.

And this isn't just some way to pass the time. It has huge social and health benefits as well. When you become curious about a topic that's interesting to you or to somebody else, you'll usually want to share that enthusiasm with others. That means you suddenly have something to talk about — rather than your health, or how the world has gone crazy, or all the standard things that people with nothing to say tend to talk about.

As we always say, thinking outside of yourself, looking at the world around you, is extremely important to remaining engaged with the world. And one of the biggest ways to remain engaged is to socialize with other people. But if you never have anything interesting to talk about, you tend not to really participate in conversations — and that has multiple drawbacks.

The act of learning and sharing, teaching, talking, listening, thinking, responding, engaging, sharing emotions, and all those related activities are way more important than just a nice way to spend some time. All of those activities tend to build interpersonal bonds. And that alone tends to significantly strengthen your brain and your whole being.

We won't go into how much these activities help your neuroplasticity and brain health, because we recently covered that in a past episode. But having relationships with other people — with no other life changes — can reduce cardiovascular disease and stroke by nearly 23% or more, and reduce cognitive decline by nearly 33%. There are similar significant improvements across many areas of personal health.

And while there are many reasons people do or don't have social relationships, one of the "don't" reasons often comes down to: "I'm not interesting," or "I don't have anything to talk about," or "I'm not relevant anymore." These are false stories about your identity that society has kind of pushed upon you. And this is where your natural curiosity can be your guide — to help you discover many new topics to share with others.

The goal isn't to be Mr. or Ms. Encyclopedia. It's only to have new information to share with other people. So you don't have to read up on the new breakthroughs in the potential quantum effects of cell microbiology — although I will say it's both fascinating and relevant to aging. But any topic at all that you or others might find interesting is fair game.

One suggestion I heard years ago was to buy the weekend edition of any major newspaper and read through all the sections. I try to do that with the Wall Street Journal. You could try the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe — you get the idea. The weekend edition usually has sections on not just the news and editorials, but also things like fashion, book and film reviews, adventure stories, technology, and lots more. The idea isn't to be an expert, but to be involved in the world around you — so you can talk about more than the current ten-second sound bites you heard.

If you can't afford the paper — either delivered or online — that's another reason to go to the library, where you can probably find not only U.S. but international papers as well. And you get to meet other people, talk to them, and develop more interpersonal time with others. So if somebody mentions Japan, you can say, "I was just reading about how Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was just saying..." — you aren't showing off, you're moving the conversation into a new area. And that stimulates the brains of everyone involved.

At this point, it's worth a little mention of AI. Using Google or an AI to look something up doesn't have the same effect as actually thinking of something and discovering new information on your own. Just like every other muscle and every other part of your body, your brain needs to be exercised to stay in shape. Neuroplasticity is enhanced by new information, novel situations, and focused attention. A three-second prompt and reading the answer from Claude or ChatGPT, in reality, has very little benefit.

Whereas doing some research — either with those same tools, or reading Wikipedia, picking up a book, whatever method you want to try — exercises your brain in a more involved way. Think of it like muscles. If you say, "I exercise by lifting a gallon of milk out of the refrigerator when I cook" — well, that's sort of true, but it's not the same as following a Pilates or yoga video on YouTube, because the exercise video uses more of your body and uses the muscles in a different way. That's what brings the benefits. And it's very similar with your brain — using more of it, and using it in a different way.

That's also, by the way, why when you write something down with a pen in a notebook, you tend to retain it longer than when you just type it — and certainly far longer than when you just speak it into something. It uses more of your brain, so more of your brain can reference each other to remember what happened.

So to recap: a great way to make it easier to socialize with people and find more interest in general is to let your curiosity essentially run wild and just follow whatever thoughts come up. You can try writing down the topics as you explore them and see what you can discover about your interests. Remember that the socialization part is critically important for both brain health and overall health. And since you're discovering new things by freeing your curiosity, you automatically have new things to talk about or contribute to other conversations.

Don't forget about weekend editions of the major newspapers, both domestic and foreign. They usually have sections on many different areas of life and allow you a kind of taste of what's going on in the world in only an afternoon or two. Think about going to the library and picking up an English-language newspaper from anywhere — I said Japan, but it could be anywhere in the world. There are English-language newspapers in pretty much every capital city. You can go there, and you can actually travel there in your mind and see what's going on.

So that's it for the evening. Homework is going away for the podcast, since we're developing some courses and challenges — but thank you very much for joining us.

Remember, one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. Check out UKR7.com and WCK.org — those are links to help the people of Ukraine and World Central Kitchen. They do wonderful work throughout the world, responding in all sorts of destinations when disaster strikes. And while those are two big international organizations, local charities are always looking for help and always glad to see volunteers.

But even if you're not in a position or mood to volunteer right now, just a simple smile can change someone else's day for the better in ways you can't imagine.

As always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along. Please subscribe and hit that like button. Have a great week. Remember to live the life that you dream of, because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com.