How to spend time productively when you are bored?

Are you bored? Are you tired of mindless scrolling your mobile? And feel guilty of wasting time on social media? But then realize there is nothing else you can do. Well, here is list of 51 productive things to do when bored at home instead of mindlessly scrolling social media.

Here are 51 ideas to spend your time productively when you are bored.

Take an online course 

You can take either free or paid courses at some of the Online Study platforms. You can take course as technical as Machine learning/Python OR also as simple as crochet stitching and embroidery.

Let me list some learning platforms for you –

• Coursera
• Udemy
• Edx
• Khan Academy
• Canvas
• FutureLearn
• Codeacademy
• Udacity
• Kadenze

Then of course, there is Youtube which has videos about everything under the sun. You will surely be brighter and wiser at the end of every learning session. I recommend one hour of non-negotiable learning every day. You will love it, trust me.

Learn new hobby

Hobbies fade away as we grow into adults. Reading, gardening, playing all the hobbies that we inculcate in childhood just get sidelined as we get busy with our careers. Why not nuture the hobbies again? Find out where your old guitar is or which book would you like to read now.

Hobby will help you to be creative and manage stress or boredom of routine better.

So if you have an interest or hobby, develop it. Let it blossom.

Listen to podcast

Podcast are great alternative to reading books or watching videos. They are digital audio files (mostly series of audio-files) that you can listen to through podcast app or website. Podcast cover vast range of topics from fiction to personal growth.

You can listen to a podcast even when you are cooking or gardening or even driving. Subscribe to couple of podcasts and you will be notified of any new episodes coming up. My favourite Podcast is Not overthinking by Ali Abdaal (Which is about productivity and time-management) and The Ranveer Show (About wide range of topics but I generally listen to interviews with renowned personalities).

Apple users can listen to Apple podcast while Android users have built-in free podcast – Google Podcasts. Download it from playstore now.

Learn new skill

You need skill sets to excel in your career. They may be hard skills such as technical-know how or soft skills such as confidence, public speaking, communication skills.

Technology keeps changing and it is equally important for us to be abreast of the ever-changing technology. You may also realize that improving the soft skill set will make you better at your work or in your life. So figure out what skill would you like to acquire.

All the earlier mentioned learning platforms also provide you with skill set that you need to acquire for your next promotion at work.

Earn money online

There are many ways of earning money online. Web-designing, outsourcing, copy-writing, transcription, Digital marketing and many more options can become your primary source of income.

Let me warn you, do not fall for get-rich-quick schemes. Explore genuine platforms such as Fiverr or Upwork where you can offer your expertise and earn.

Learn how to save the money as every cent saves is as good as cent earned.

Read more >> How to save money every month from your salary?

Watch TED talks

Watching TED talks is similar to watching Youtube or listening to Podcast. There are many inspiring celebrities, achievers and entrepreneurs who share their experience, their struggle and their success stories on TED talks. If you are the one who gets inspired by ‘rags to riches’ or ‘if I did it, you can too’ kind of real stories, then this is for you. Enjoy your time getting inspired and motivated by the best in business.

Create weekly meal plan

If you love cooking at home, then you will love weekly meal planning too. This is just about making columns for all the meals of the day and figuring out what would you like to cook. Meal planners save time and money. It also reduces wastage of food. I know if sounds silly to be listed here but if you inculcate the habit of doing it regularly, you are going to have fun planning easy yet interesting meals.

Make a vision board

If you are a dreamer or love planning then vision board is for you. Vision board is collective representation of ideas on one board. It may be green board with pinned pictures or quotes or slogans. It may also be a digital board created on Canva app. You can make vision board for one year or for life. You may list your goals, ambitions, beautiful memories and pictures of your loved ones. Vision board is meant to inspire you to aim for your goals and achieve them.

Be creative with your vision board.

Clean your home

Cleaning the home for one full day may be cumbersome activity. You can break it down to small tasks. One room at a time or one shelf at a time. Spick and span house is always a welcome sight. Set timer to 10 or 15 minutes so that it doesn’t get prolonged for long time. Or it will soon become drudgery.

Organize your closet

This is one of the favourite tasks for my free time. You can rearrange all your accessories. Have a look at ones you have, ones you no longer use and ones you need to buy. Just 10-15 minutes peek into your closet regularly will keep your closet organised.

Clean your workspace

We all love colourful, vibrant stationery. Just that we lose count of how many erasers and sharpeners we own. LOL.

Run through your workspace, clear out the clutter, discard the useless or broken stuff and rearrange the workspace for next day. Do you think your workspace needs some cozy frames? Think about it.

Organize files on computer

When you are working on same computer for couple of years, there may be many files that need sorting and rearrangement. Handle couple of them every day. Rearrange them in the order you think is most suitable so that all files shall be retrievable immediately when needed.

Clean your inbox

As goes for computer, so goes of email inbox. Read and mark all the emails. There is option in Microsoft outlook where in you can ‘read’ all the emails. May be you would like to have a look at that.

Rearrange your furniture

Rearranging the furniture will give a new and different look to your room. Think of what furniture would fit better in a different location. Good Luck with that. J

Watch documentary

Netflix or Youtube or National geographic may be good places to look for educational and informative documentaries. 

List down your career goals

Make your career plan. List down 1-3 long term goals which you intend to reach in another 10-15 years. Break them down into smaller goals and tasks. This can give you a clear perspective on how your career is shaping currently.

Clear the gallery on your phone

New mobiles come with 128GB+ storage so we get the privilege of storing 1000s of photos. Sort the photo gallery so that pictures which are really close to heart do not get lost in that crowd. Sorting on one particular day may be impossible, so choose one part at a time. Make folders to separate the pictures you want to keep.

Look for passive income ideas on pinterest

This is also a wonderful idea. Though it would mean scrolling on mobile, yet this is going to be productive and creative. There are many passive income ideas you can work upon. You can make passive incomes by investing your savings or by earning rent on your spare car, extra room in your home or by selling courses or by rendering services that you are good at.

Did you know you can keep your board ‘secret’ on pinterest? Isn’t that wonderful?

Practice mindfulness

Mindfulness is about focusing on awareness of the present moment. While we are scrolling mobile with no particular purpose, we consume lot of ideas or information that we do not intend to seek. What we can do instead is take every thought every idea into account.

Let me explain it with an example. Suppose you are drinking glass of water. Be mindful. Observe the motion of water from glass to your mouth down to your throat then into your stomach. Observe how it makes you feel, your body feel. Mindful is just that – acknowledging and accepting every feeling, emotion that arises within you for every action that you undertake or that happens around you.

Practice gratitude

Be grateful. For people, for circumstances, for opportunities. Instead of focusing on what you lack or wish to have in future, express gratitude for what you have been blessed with. Your breath, your life, your eyes and all that you have today.

Gratitude, for abundance of what you have, attracts abundance further.

Meditate

Meditation is about focusing mind in silence or in chanting. It’s about acknowledging each thought that arises in mind and setting it aside to focus on breathing or in chanting. There are different ways of meditation. Figure out what suits you.

Meditation bring peace and calms the mind. It diminishes stress and pain as person attains higher level of consciousness.

Practice journaling

Journaling is about pouring your deepest thoughts and expressions into paper. It is about writing everything that you do or think or feel in a notebook (physical or digital)

Journaling is like thinking aloud. It’s like giving words to your emotions. It helps to relieve the emotional chaos and provides better sense of self-identity.

Write down what you want to have less of or more of in life. Less of stress, anxiety, worry, pain. And more of joy, happiness, good health, peace. You attract what you think, so think more of positive.

Practice creative visualization

Wikipedia defines Creative visualization as “Creative visualization is the cognitive process of purposefully generating visual mental imagery, with eyes open or closed, simulating or recreating visual perception, in order to maintain, inspect, and transform those images, consequently modifying their associated emotions or feelings, with intent to experience a subsequent beneficial physiological, psychological or social effect such as expediting the healing of wounds to the body, minimizing physical pain, alleviating psychological pain including anxiety, sadness and low mood, improving self-esteem or self-confidence, and enhancing the capacity to cope with interacting with others.”

Creative visualization is creating mental images of the goals that you want to achieve. It’s about creating the feeling and experience of having achieved the goals. Every big achievement starts with a dream. So dream big. Our mind is amazing machine. It multiplies what you feed to it. When you dream a vision, your mind starts working out plan of action to reach towards that vision.

Read and learn about manifestation of your desires

“ You can start with nothing. And out of nothing, and out of no way, a way will be made. “

Michael  Bernard Beckwith

Such is the power of manifestation. Creative visualization is one of the technique of manifestation. Learn and explore about various other techniques of manifestation.

Make new affirmation for the week

Affirmations are the feel good facts that we say to ourselves. We can condition our mind to attract happiness, good health and everything that you wish for by affirming it to your self. Follow life-coaches or speakers like Marisa Peer to learn how to affirm positive beliefs in your life. Say out loud these affirmations in your free time.

Read an interesting book. Try new genre everytime.

Books are our tunnel into imagination, into past and at time also within our self. There are various genre of books such as fiction, self-help, informative, suspense-thrillers. Choose what you love the most. Do not fear to experiment with new genre.

Read first 50 pages, if you do not find it interesting, just move over. You need not read a book just because it is classic or because someone else loved it. You will ruin the experience of reading for yourself if you are stuck with books that you do not enjoy reading. Learn how to read more books in lesser time.

Read more >> How to read more books every week this year?

Try new make-up hacks

It just brightens your day and makes you more hopeful of good time ahead. It will also make you look more prim and proper. Good ironed clothes and little bit of self-care always gives an  impression that you care to put your best foot forward on every working day.

Paint your nails with lovely, bright colours

Awww, this is my favourite thing to do at the end of weekend. It’s part of my ‘getting ready for the week ahead’ routine. I love to flaunt bright lovely colours.

Try new DIY face mask

Every woman deserves every opportunity to pamper herself over weekend. Search for different DIY ideas of face mask. Whip up new recipe every time to apply on face or hair. It will not only bring glow on your face or shine in your hair but also make you feel relaxed.

And yes, men are also welcome to give it a try and discover that self-care is not only for girls.

Try new hairstyle which you can use for next party

If you feel that every time you end up with same look at every party you attend, why not try something new beforehand. Look out for some good hairstyles and try them in your free time. You will find out how long it takes to finish a particular look and also figure out which one is your favourite. Various kind of messy bun looks are my favs.

Yes, same can be done for make-up too. If you are like me who wears just a lipstick and eye-liner to work, you will agree that there is lot to learn in this area. Right from how to choose best foundation for your skin tone to how to create smoky eyes, there is lot that can be fun to learn and experiment.

If you have other girls who can do it along with you, it’s going to be more fun.

Try cooking a new dish that is quick (and interesting too)

I know not everyone loves cooking. But everyone can surely benefit from some easy, quick recipes that can be cooked in a jiffy. Learning such quick recipes will ensure that you save lot of time (spent on elaborate home cooking) and money (spent on ordering food or fine dine dinners).

Also cooking at home is surely healthy as you get to choose quality ingredients and control size of your portion. You can stay away from junk food with empty calories.

Workout

Try new workout ideas. Working out for at least 20 minutes each day can refresh your mind and body. You may search for youtube videos or follow influencers on instagram for new workout routine. Learn all about fitness and about building fitness routine here.

Download THE ULTIMATE FITNESS PLANNER to plan a regular workout routine.

Read more >>

• How to build fitness routine in simple and easy way?
• Which is the best exercise for me?

Explore your neighborhood

Where do you get fresh flowers or which is the closest laundry? Walk around in neighborhood and you will know this and much more. Take a friend along and it’s fun-time. Search online or take a walk around.

You may also sign-up for local groups which conduct activities about exploring or about volunteering in your city. You will make new friends and support new causes too.

Go out for a walk or jog

Walking in the open refreshes mind, body and soul. You are lucky if you can walk into woods or at a beach. If you live in city, you will be amazed to discover your neighborhood in new light every day you walk around. I bet you will discover a new store every time you walk around even if you have walked past that street since ages.

Walking is good for your health too as it burns calories and you can achieve your fitness goals faster.

Research something you always wanted to know about

There are so many things that hear around us. Some new words. Some new concepts or ideas. Most of the time, we just forget about them till we hear them again. Instead, note down those new concepts or words and research about them.

Over period of time, you will have learnt lot of new things that you always wanted to know about. You will soon become an expert in interesting small talks which are otherwise pretty awkward.

Update your resume

If you are serious about your career goals, it is always good habit to keep your resume updated. It is not only handy but also makes you review about where you are and where you wish to be in your career.

Plan your day or next day

This is one of the most amazing habits of successful people. At the beginning of y our day, plan your day ahead. You can spend few minutes every night reviewing your day against your plan. This makes you decide what are your priority tasks that you would like to accomplish that day.

Write a creative story. Make it funny, horror or dramatic. Just spice it up.

When we were kids, we would write stories as part of our English assignments. When have you last written a story? It’s been ages, right. Well, try this one in your free time. Re-write a story in your own version. It could be as old one as The thirsty crow. Make it funny or spice it up with horror. Do it your own way adding dialogues. This could be fun.

Story-telling not only improves your creativity and imagination but also your vocabulary. So it will be beneficial in improving your public-speaking skills.

Draw or Colour a picture

Draw a caricature or mandala or some abstract design. Splash some colours on canvas. It is relaxing and soothing to your mind. It also improves your cognitive skills and brain function.

Do laundry instead of keeping it to weekend

If laundry takes up big time on weekend, it is better to do it in some free-time which you would otherwise spend on scrolling social media feed. On the other hand, it gives you additional free time on weekend which you can spend in catching up with your friends.

Make a pinterest board and pin ideas

Make a pinterest board for ideas that you seek. May be you are looking for ideas to decorate your house or are planning for your wedding or friend’s wedding for that matter. Pin the interesting ideas on the board so that you can use them later.

I know this isn’t actually one of the ideas that can replace mindless scrolling. Just because it can actually help build ideas to take action, I have included it here. Be mindful of your scrolling and stick to looking for ideas that you intend to.

Help someone or Volunteer to charitable organization

There is always someone you can help. You can help your sibling with a subject they are struggling with.  Or you can help your mom clean the room. Or you can register with local volunteering organization that needs helping hand. It is righteous way of giving back to the society.

Redecorate your house

You can create some DIY decorations or just rearrange the furniture in your house to give it a different look. Little bit of change of décor or splash of colour gives a new dimension to the beauty of the house.

Call or meet friend / Family

It’s always a good time to catch up with friend and family. So if you have some free time, call a friend you haven’t spoken to since ages. Or at least send a text. You will just love it. It is always a sweet feeling to know that someone far away thinks of you and cares for you. Your friend is going to absolutely love it too.

Try it and let me know how it went in comments below.

Create a budget

You can make a budget for your monthly expenditure or for your yearly savings or for your travel plan. Making budget is fun as you explore new ways to save money or make best use of every penny spent. You will be amazed at new ideas that you will explore while budgeting.

Plan a travel even if you are not planning to travel soon

Travelling is fun and adventurous. While planning for travel is equally exciting. Make your bucket list of places to visit. Find out where you can go in which season or month. Figure out best way to travel, how to book cheap tickets to destination, what are interesting places to see or things to do. Search for some hacks to cut down cost of travel and stay. Explore packing ideas, what you can carry, what you need to carry and all that.

It is said that doing something towards your goal will actually make you achieve your goals faster.

May be once you figure out inexpensive ways to travel,  you may travel more, you never know.

Create playlist of your favourite songs

We get over our favourite songs sooner than we think. It is always good idea to keep replacing them with new favourites so grab your songlist and shuffle them to add new ones. Groove along as you are testing the songs.

List down new habits you would like to build

Habits maketh man. Success is not caused by short term efforts. It is result of building habits and practicing them consistently. List down what are the good habits that you would like to inculcate in yourself over this year. Start slowly with one habit. Adding new one as you master earlier one.

Give yourself or loved one a massage

Who wouldn’t love a massage after a tiring day! Grab some essential oil and massage tired feet and hands, if not whole body. It is going to take 10 minutes and leave you relaxed for rest of the evening.

You can also use humidifier to spread the fragrance of your favourite essential oil in the house. It is soothing and calming.

Write down your goals for all aspects of your life – for your family, career, health, finance, spiritual life.

This will need some racking of brains and some rewiring in your heart. Dig yourself deep inside and figure out what are your goals for next 1, 3 and 5 years in each area of your life. Set 3 goals for each area and you will know how aligned your present actions are, with your future goals. Change your actions if needed. Eliminate all the activities that are not taking you closer to goals of your life. Recognize the time-wasters.

Read more >> How to make your own Personal Development Plan?

Grow microgreens or small, flowering plants in your balcony

Growing plants is easy yet so difficult. There is so much you can learn about growing microgreens or flowering plants in your balcony or your garden. Microgreens are nutritious and can be added in daily food. Flowering plants will add beauty to your balcony and look so satisfying. With trial and error you will master the art of growing plants.

So here were 51 productive things to do when you are bored. So next time you realise that you are mindlessly scrolling your mobile, just stop. Figure out how would you instead spend the time productively.

Stay in touch

Let me know in the comments below, what would you like to improve in your self.

You can also learn about ways more about self-improvement on my Pinterest account, Instagram and facebook. Join my facebook group to mingle with like-minded people who are interested in personal growth and self-improvement.

We are in this together!!!