Let’s clear something up first and straight out of the gate. Please note that being “boring” has very little to do with how exciting your life looks online and everything to do with how engaged you are with your own existence. I am not at ALL talking about performative “interesting” that hounds us online. That, very honestly, could be a blog post of its own. This isn’t about appearances.
You can live in a small town, work a normal job, go to bed at a reasonable hour, and still be deeply interesting and have a remarkable personal life. Conversely, you can travel constantly, attend trendy events, and still be painfully dull if you move through life on autopilot and without engaging with those experiences.
The difference is passion (In my humble opinion at least).
And not the loud, capital-P, quit-your-job kind that also seems to be making its rounds regularly on the internet. Capital P passion is usally used to sell you lifestyle coach or course that supposedly will fix your life. I’m talking about quiet attentiveness. Curiosity. The ability to take the mundane and tilt it just enough that it becomes intentional and…well, interesting!
If you want to not be boring, you don’t need to overhaul your life. I think the secret lies in reframing your perspective.
My authority to speak on this matter comes entirely from me having the audacity to write this and the fact that I KNOW I’ve been boring in certain phases of my life but interesting in others. That’s another note I guess, that is also worth mentioning here: You can become interesting if you find yourself falling into the lull of being a boring person. The vice versa can also be true. You can be interesting and then slip into monotony. Let’s not pretend these are permanent labels.
Alright! I think that’s all the disclaimers. Let’s dive into what I think makes an interesting person interesting…
The Core Rule: Care About Something (Preferably Many Things)
The most boring people I’ve met all share one trait: they don’t care. They scroll, they consume, they comment vaguely, but they don’t engage. No strong opinions. No private obsessions. No enthusiasm. OR their whole personality depends on whatever is trending that month. It doesn’t go deeper than that.
Passion is what gives life texture. You don’t have to be the best at something to love it. Nor do you have to know everything about everything. You just need to care.
Care deeply about your morning coffee and the perfect way to fix it.
Care about how your body feels when you walk, and how nice those birds are singing today, and how red that mailbox is.
Care about learning one strange, specific thing really well.
Boredom is less about what you do and more about how absent you are while doing it.
Moving Around: Make It a Game, Not a Chore
Movement is one of the easiest places to inject interest, because it already asks something of you physically. The trick is to stop framing it as productivity.
Instead of:
- “I need to go on a run.”
Try:
- “I won’t stop running until I’ve spotted ten blue things.”
- “I’m walking until I notice three houses with weird door knockers.”
- “I’m stretching while imagining I’m a medieval scribe trying not to get scoliosis.”
- “I’m running to collect five weird rocks. I will not stop until I have collected five weird rocks.”
Movement becomes interesting when it has a focus, not a finish line.
You don’t need a fitness goal (though those are totally fine too!). You probably just need something to notice. Something to collect. Something slightly ridiculous. Everything doesn’t have to be a to-do list, including movement. I think, in part, this is why it was so easy to move around as a kid. I wasn’t “going for a walk to walk off my dinner”. I was going on an adventure. I was going to collect dragon eggs (which involved finding the roundest rocks in the area and then bringing them home and painting them a variety of colors). Try and tap into the whimsy.
Mind-Building Activities: Give Your Brain Something to Chew On
A bored mind is usually an underfed one.
This doesn’t mean you need to be constantly “learning” in a grindset way. It means you should regularly do things that require sustained attention and mild effort.
Examples:
- Reading books that challenge your worldview or introduce unfamiliar ideas.
- Listening to long-form podcasts instead of endless short clips.
- Memorizing poetry, facts, or historical oddities for no reason other than delight.
- Thinking deeply about one question and letting it bother you.
- Oh! And write down what you discover. What’s the point if you don’t retain anything or can’t look back on it?
If all your thoughts are borrowed from the internet, you will sound like the internet. And the internet is, frankly, exhausting and irksome at times. It’s also ever-changing and ever enraged. You need to ground yourself in something that isn’t in a screen.
Life Skills: Competence Is Interesting
There is something deeply un-boring about a person who knows how to do things. And helpful. Dear Goodness, so helpful. Your friends will thank you.
Learn how to:
- Cook one meal really well.
- Sew a button.
- Fix something small instead of replacing it.
- Write a clear email.
- Host people comfortably.
Life skills ground you in the physical world. They give you stories as well as some confidence. They make you less dependent on convenience, which automatically makes you more interesting. In fact, I would go as far to say that competence is downright attractive. Curiosity about competence is even better. Don’t be a damsel in your own life, waiting for people to save you from whatever “dragon” crosses your path. While I give the internet a lot of crap, I do think it is amazing for cracking down on lame excuses to not learn how to do something.
Hobbies: Be Bad at Something on Purpose
You don’t need a monetizable hobby. You need a hobby that absorbs you. The internet will try to tell you that hobbies and interests are “cringe” (Not always, but I’ve seen it). Try, friend! You don’t have broadcast it. Just try the thing and feel good inside.
- Paint badly.
- Play guitar poorly.
- Dance badly.
- Garden with reckless optimism.
- Collect something niche and inexplicable.
Hobbies are where passion is allowed to exist without justification. They remind you that joy doesn’t need an audience. And, sometimes, eventually, if you stick with something long enough, you might even get good???
If you can talk excitedly about something no one else cares about, congratulations. You’re not boring. You’re doing something right.
The Necessities (Yes, These Are Non-Negotiable)
Read
You simply cannot be interesting if you don’t read.
Reading gives you language and Perspective. It introduces you to thoughts you didn’t know you could have. There is not escaping its importance.
Read fiction. Read essays. Read things that annoy you a little. Read slowly. Read often. Read magazines. Read articles. (Maybe take a break from reading tweets, though).
Journal
Not because it’s aesthetic and definitely not because it’s trendy. Do it because if you don’t record your life, it might disappear from your memory.
Journaling turns experiences into a narrative. It helps you notice patterns and preserves the small, strange moments that would otherwise evaporate into a fine mist that is gone before you even realize.
Interesting people remember their lives (or most of it anyway). Journaling helps with that.
Get Off Your Phone (Sometimes)
Your phone is a boredom amplifier masquerading as entertainment.
Being constantly online flattens experience and trains your brain to be in a million places at once, but NEVER the present. Everything starts to feel the same. You stop noticing where you are because your attention is always elsewhere.
Boredom, ironically, is often the doorway to creativity. Put the phone down long enough to let your mind wander. Something will eventually happen. A spark will replace that boredom eventually, but you have to let it happen. You’re also training your brain to be lazy and never come up with ideas on its own. This is why our first instinct when we’re bored or uncomfortable is to seek solace and direction from our devices.
Final Thought: Pay Attention
Not being boring is not about doing more. It’s about noticing more. Build a life you are actively paying attention to, and boredom won’t stand a chance.
Passion is being present. That is the takeaway here, I think.
But Idk, man. These are just my opinions. It’s your life.
By the Brooke 