In 2014, psychologist Timothy Wilson and his colleagues put people alone in a bare room for up to fifteen minutes. There was no phone, no book, and nothing to do but think. Beforehand, the participants had been given a mild electric shock and said they would pay money not to feel it again. Then they were left in the room with a button that would deliver one more.

About two-thirds of the men and a quarter of the women pressed it at least once. They chose pain over their own company. It was a small study with a small, unusual task, and it's worth reading carefully. But it points at something many of us recognize: a few unstructured minutes can feel strangely unbearable.

Most of us don't reach for a shock button. We reach for a phone. That reflex, repeated dozens of times a day, may be the quietest competitor your good habits have.

The gap you never notice you're filling

Think of the moments in a day that belong to no one. You're waiting for the kettle, standing in an elevator, or sitting in the car after you've parked. Maybe you're between two tasks, or you've just finished one and haven't chosen the next.

These used to be where reflection, daydreaming and the first stirrings of an idea happened. Now they are filled before you've consciously registered them. The thumb moves first, and the decision comes later, if it comes at all.

This matters for habits because most habits are built from exactly these moments. The five minutes you meant to stretch, the page you meant to read, and the breath you meant to take before starting work all live in the gaps. If the gap is filled automatically, the habit never gets a chance to begin. You didn't decide against it. Nothing in the moment was empty enough to hold it.

What boredom actually is

We tend to treat boredom as a mood that happens to us, the way weather does. Researchers describe it more precisely. John Eastwood and colleagues define boredom as the aversive experience of wanting to engage in a satisfying activity but being unable to. Notice the two parts: there is a hunger, and there is no fit between that hunger and anything available.

Westgate and Wilson built on this with what they call the MAC model, for Meaning and Attention Components. In their account, boredom shows up when two things go wrong together. The first is attention: the task is either too easy and leaves you under-stimulated, or too hard and overwhelms you. The second is meaning: the activity feels pointless.

This is useful because it turns boredom from a vague discomfort into something you can diagnose. When you feel that restless itch, one of three things is usually true. Your attention is underused, your attention is overloaded, or what you're doing has come loose from anything you care about.

There's a second finding that matters. Boredom isn't merely unpleasant. Research by Bench and Lench suggests that it works like a motivational signal, nudging people toward seeking something else that feels more worthwhile. That is its job. The trouble is that a phone answers the signal instantly, cheaply and without any sense of meaning. The itch gets scratched, but the question it was asking never gets answered.

Why the phone wins every time

A phone is the perfect boredom remedy for the attention half of the problem. It offers endless novelty with almost no effort, so under-stimulation disappears in a second.

It does nothing for the meaning half. That is why an hour of scrolling can leave you feeling oddly emptier than before. The attention was fed and the meaning wasn't. Often the discomfort returns a few minutes later, which sends you back for more.

Over time, a pattern can form. The cue is any unfilled moment. The routine is picking up the device. The reward is the relief of escaping a mild, specific discomfort. That is a complete habit loop, built on avoidance. Like any loop that's been repeated thousands of times, it runs without asking you.

The cost isn't only the minutes. If you never let an empty moment stay empty, you never practice tolerating it. The capacity weakens, as any capacity does without use. Then a habit that requires a few quiet, unstimulating minutes, like meditation, journaling, stretching or practicing an instrument, starts to feel unusually hard. Often the difficulty isn't laziness. The habit is being compared against an instant hit of novelty, and it can't compete on those terms.

Boredom isn't the enemy of good habits

It would be easy to conclude that the fix is to avoid boredom altogether, by making every habit exciting. That doesn't hold up, and it doesn't match the research.

There's evidence that mild boredom can be productive. In a study by Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman, people who first spent time on a dull task, copying numbers from a phone book, then did better on a creative task than people who skipped it. The effect was modest and the setting artificial, so it shouldn't be oversold. But it supports a simple idea: an under-stimulated mind tends to go looking, and what it finds is sometimes useful.

So the goal isn't to eliminate boredom. It's to change your relationship to it, so the first flicker of restlessness is no longer an emergency that sends you to the nearest screen.

Practicing the pause

Tolerating an empty moment is a skill, and like most skills it grows with small, repeated, low-stakes practice. You don't need a retreat or a digital detox. You need to interrupt the reflex a handful of times a day and see what happens.

When you do, the first thing to expect is that the discomfort peaks and then eases, usually faster than you'd guess. The urge to escape feels permanent only while you're obeying it.

The second thing is that the MAC model gives you something to do with the feeling. Instead of fleeing it, you can ask which part is off. Is my attention underused, overloaded, or is this just disconnected from anything I care about? Often the answer points straight at a habit. If it's underuse, that's a good moment for a small physical or creative task. If it's meaning, that's a good moment to remember why the next small thing matters to you.

Your next moves

  • Pick three "dead zones" today. Choose three specific gaps you reliably fill with your phone, such as waiting for coffee, the first minute in the car, or the walk from your desk to the kitchen. Write them down. You can't interrupt a reflex you haven't located.
  • Leave the phone out of one gap entirely. In one of those three moments, keep the phone in your pocket or bag. Stand there for sixty seconds and notice what boredom feels like in your body. Name it plainly: "restless," "itchy," "flat." Naming it takes away some of its mystery.
  • Run the MAC check. The next time you feel the itch, ask one question: is my attention underused, overloaded, or is this just meaningless right now? Pick a response that matches your answer. For underuse, stretch or tidy something for two minutes. For overload, stop and breathe. For meaninglessness, say in one sentence why the next task matters.
  • Put a habit in the gap. Attach one tiny habit to your most reliable dead zone, such as five slow breaths or one stretch. Use a rule like "after I press start on the kettle, I'll do five breaths." The gap needs a plan, or the phone will take it by default.
  • Add friction to one reflex. Move your most tempting app off the first screen, or log out of it. The aim isn't to ban it. You want the grab to take long enough for you to notice you're doing it.

Where Cadence fits

Small steps matter most in the empty moments, because that's where a small step has room to happen. Cadence is built around the idea that big change grows out of tiny, repeatable actions, the kind that fit into a minute you would otherwise lose to a reflex. If you'd like a gentle way to give those gaps a purpose and see them add up, you can take a look at Cadence. Either way, the next time you're standing at the kettle, try waiting a minute before you reach for your phone.