By Tom Henkenius · September 2026
I hope you got some downtime this summer. Actually, let me put that another way. I hope you were bored.
I wasn't. I launched this company a year ago and I work twelve-hour days. Then I fill what down time I do get with podcasts, Reddit, Wordle. I signed up for this and I'd do it again. But I miss being bored.
There was a time when boredom simply happened to us. You stood in line. You sat in a waiting room. You waited for a friend at a restaurant. You drove somewhere with nothing good on the radio. Nobody called it mindfulness. You were just waiting for the dentist.
Our connectedness has made us very good at eliminating those moments.
This all came to mind this week when I read a brand new stat: about one in four American adults now say they use their smartphone almost constantly, according to Pew Research Center data published this month. Among adults under 30, it's 42%. More than half of us, 53%, think we're on our smartphones too much.
We're looking at our phones as we watch TV, literally multitasking our downtime.
Swiping isn't helping
Researchers at the University of Toronto ran seven experiments with more than 1,200 people to find out whether all that swiping actually helps. A video loses you, so you swipe to the next one, and you end up more entertained than ever. That's the theory, anyway.
These researchers had half of the people watch a single ten-minute video they couldn't skip. The other half got seven shorter videos they could jump between whenever they felt like it.
Everyone predicted the second group would be less bored. Everyone was wrong. The people who couldn't switch were significantly less bored, and they rated the experience more satisfying, more engaging, and more meaningful.
Swiping didn't cure the boredom. It manufactured it.
So why don't we just stop?
We can't, and we shouldn't want to, stop filling our time. Because the pure version of nothingness is genuinely awful, and there's a famous study proving it.
In 2014, researchers at the University of Virginia put people alone in a room for six to fifteen minutes and asked them to entertain themselves by thinking. That was the entire assignment. Most hated it.
Then the researchers added a button that delivered a mild electric shock. Every participant had already said they would pay money to avoid feeling it again.
Sixty-seven percent of the men pushed it anyway (only 25% of women did). The ones who did averaged about one and a half shocks in fifteen minutes, not counting one guy who gave himself a hundred and ninety.
So if you've ever tried to just sit quietly with your thoughts and lasted about ninety seconds, you're not broken. You're normal. That version is hard for almost everyone.
The empty room was never the assignment
In 2012, researchers at UC Santa Barbara gave people creative problems, and then gave them all a break. But, for the break, they were split into four groups. One group got a demanding task. One got a simple, undemanding one. One group just rested. One got no break at all.
Only one group came back from the break and performed better.
It was the group doing the simple thing. Undemanding enough that the mind drifts, occupied enough to give it somewhere to drift from. Sitting still didn't help. Doing something easy did.
Which means we don't need to be striving for stillness. Your hands can be busy. Your body can be moving. What matters is your mind can wander.
You already know where your mind wanders
It just seems easier to do in the slow days of summer. Bring a book to the beach and at some point you set it down and just watch the water for a while. Maybe something shakes loose (or maybe not).
The problem is that the beach ends. And none of us are throwing away our phones. So, when do you let your mind wander?
For me it's running. A swim is better, but that requires driving there and back and a run only requires walking out the front door, which tells you how often I swim.
Another for me, the grocery store. Twenty minutes pushing a cart with nothing in my ears is one of the few reliably unoccupied stretches in my week, and I guard it.
We send one email a week worth opening. Grooming that works, myths we have put through the wringer, and the occasional trend we tell you to skip. No spam, no fifteen-step routines.
Which is where we come in
At Henkey's, we spend a lot of time telling men to build a grooming routine. Here's what we don't usually say out loud: by definition a routine means that you stop thinking about it. That's the payoff.
Which makes standing at the sink almost exactly the undemanding task from that UCSB study. Simple enough that your mind drifts. Occupied enough to give it a running start. Four or five minutes a day where the work is handled and you're somewhere else.
Leave the music on, sure! But stop propping the phone against the mirror. The difference is this: the phone wants a decision out of you, to swipe or not to swipe. The music is hopefully just setting a tempo.
The case
Everything today is an experience. Coffee became a ritual. Skincare became self-care. A walk became a chance to get your steps in. Even doing nothing got repackaged as mindfulness, with an app to help you get better at it.
We also now pay real money every month to never wait ninety seconds. I dread the one streaming service we haven't upgraded, because the ads feel unbearable in a way they didn't fifteen years ago. We're paying, by subscription, to guarantee that no part of our day is ever unoccupied.
You don't need to meditate for twenty minutes or buy a dumbphone or book a silent retreat. You don't need to sit in an empty room and stare at a wall, and if you did, you'd be reaching for the shock button.
You need your version of the run. The grocery store without the headphones. The four minutes at the sink with your hands moving.
That's not the empty part of your day. It's the part getting you ready for everything that comes after.
Confidence is built.
What we read
About half of Americans say they spend too much time on their phone. Some are trying to cut back — Pew Research Center (survey of 9,750 U.S. adults, May 26 to June 1, 2026)
Swiping through online videos increases boredom — American Psychological Association (Tam et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, seven experiments, N = 1,223)
Inspired by Distraction: Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation — Psychological Science (Baird et al., 2012)
Just Think: The Challenges of the Disengaged Mind — Science (Wilson et al., 2014, eleven studies)
I Hope You Were Bored
By Tom Henkenius · September 2026
I hope you got some downtime this summer. Actually, let me put that another way. I hope you were bored.
I wasn't. I launched this company a year ago and I work twelve-hour days. Then I fill what down time I do get with podcasts, Reddit, Wordle. I signed up for this and I'd do it again. But I miss being bored.
There was a time when boredom simply happened to us. You stood in line. You sat in a waiting room. You waited for a friend at a restaurant. You drove somewhere with nothing good on the radio. Nobody called it mindfulness. You were just waiting for the dentist.
Our connectedness has made us very good at eliminating those moments.
This all came to mind this week when I read a brand new stat: about one in four American adults now say they use their smartphone almost constantly, according to Pew Research Center data published this month. Among adults under 30, it's 42%. More than half of us, 53%, think we're on our smartphones too much.
We're looking at our phones as we watch TV, literally multitasking our downtime.
Swiping isn't helping
Researchers at the University of Toronto ran seven experiments with more than 1,200 people to find out whether all that swiping actually helps. A video loses you, so you swipe to the next one, and you end up more entertained than ever. That's the theory, anyway.
These researchers had half of the people watch a single ten-minute video they couldn't skip. The other half got seven shorter videos they could jump between whenever they felt like it.
Everyone predicted the second group would be less bored. Everyone was wrong. The people who couldn't switch were significantly less bored, and they rated the experience more satisfying, more engaging, and more meaningful.
Swiping didn't cure the boredom. It manufactured it.
So why don't we just stop?
We can't, and we shouldn't want to, stop filling our time. Because the pure version of nothingness is genuinely awful, and there's a famous study proving it.
In 2014, researchers at the University of Virginia put people alone in a room for six to fifteen minutes and asked them to entertain themselves by thinking. That was the entire assignment. Most hated it.
Then the researchers added a button that delivered a mild electric shock. Every participant had already said they would pay money to avoid feeling it again.
Sixty-seven percent of the men pushed it anyway (only 25% of women did). The ones who did averaged about one and a half shocks in fifteen minutes, not counting one guy who gave himself a hundred and ninety.
So if you've ever tried to just sit quietly with your thoughts and lasted about ninety seconds, you're not broken. You're normal. That version is hard for almost everyone.
The empty room was never the assignment
In 2012, researchers at UC Santa Barbara gave people creative problems, and then gave them all a break. But, for the break, they were split into four groups. One group got a demanding task. One got a simple, undemanding one. One group just rested. One got no break at all.
Only one group came back from the break and performed better.
It was the group doing the simple thing. Undemanding enough that the mind drifts, occupied enough to give it somewhere to drift from. Sitting still didn't help. Doing something easy did.
Which means we don't need to be striving for stillness. Your hands can be busy. Your body can be moving. What matters is your mind can wander.
You already know where your mind wanders
It just seems easier to do in the slow days of summer. Bring a book to the beach and at some point you set it down and just watch the water for a while. Maybe something shakes loose (or maybe not).
The problem is that the beach ends. And none of us are throwing away our phones. So, when do you let your mind wander?
For me it's running. A swim is better, but that requires driving there and back and a run only requires walking out the front door, which tells you how often I swim.
Another for me, the grocery store. Twenty minutes pushing a cart with nothing in my ears is one of the few reliably unoccupied stretches in my week, and I guard it.
We send one email a week worth opening. Grooming that works, myths we have put through the wringer, and the occasional trend we tell you to skip. No spam, no fifteen-step routines.
Which is where we come in
At Henkey's, we spend a lot of time telling men to build a grooming routine. Here's what we don't usually say out loud: by definition a routine means that you stop thinking about it. That's the payoff.
Which makes standing at the sink almost exactly the undemanding task from that UCSB study. Simple enough that your mind drifts. Occupied enough to give it a running start. Four or five minutes a day where the work is handled and you're somewhere else.
Leave the music on, sure! But stop propping the phone against the mirror. The difference is this: the phone wants a decision out of you, to swipe or not to swipe. The music is hopefully just setting a tempo.
The case
Everything today is an experience. Coffee became a ritual. Skincare became self-care. A walk became a chance to get your steps in. Even doing nothing got repackaged as mindfulness, with an app to help you get better at it.
We also now pay real money every month to never wait ninety seconds. I dread the one streaming service we haven't upgraded, because the ads feel unbearable in a way they didn't fifteen years ago. We're paying, by subscription, to guarantee that no part of our day is ever unoccupied.
You don't need to meditate for twenty minutes or buy a dumbphone or book a silent retreat. You don't need to sit in an empty room and stare at a wall, and if you did, you'd be reaching for the shock button.
You need your version of the run. The grocery store without the headphones. The four minutes at the sink with your hands moving.
That's not the empty part of your day. It's the part getting you ready for everything that comes after.
Confidence is built.
What we read
About half of Americans say they spend too much time on their phone. Some are trying to cut back — Pew Research Center (survey of 9,750 U.S. adults, May 26 to June 1, 2026)
Swiping through online videos increases boredom — American Psychological Association (Tam et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, seven experiments, N = 1,223)
Inspired by Distraction: Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation — Psychological Science (Baird et al., 2012)
Just Think: The Challenges of the Disengaged Mind — Science (Wilson et al., 2014, eleven studies)