Interview: Why you shouldn't trust boredom | Kevin H. Gary (re-release)

May 6, 2025·27 min·2 clips

A study found 60% of men preferred electric shocks over sitting with their thoughts for 15 minutes.

1. TED Health presents educator Kevin Gary's 2023 TEDx Valparaiso University talk on boredom, followed by an expert interview on ADHD and attention. 2. Host Dr. Shoshana Ungerleiter opens the episode and later interviews Dr. Elizabeth Harstad, a developmental behavioral pediatrician and researcher at Boston Children's Hospital who trained at Loyola University and earned an MPH from Harvard. 3. Gary's thesis is that boredom is not a trivial problem but a complex mood state that generates problematic behaviors and deserves explicit strategies. 4. Gary opens with his son Lucas's first-day-of-kindergarten verdict: 'Dad, I'm tired of hearing about hallway procedures'—framing boredom as a problem that begins in school and persists through adult life. 5. Studies cited in Gary's talk show that an overwhelming majority of high school students report chronic boredom, which Gary connects to misbehavior, disengagement, and eventual dropout. 6. Gary links adult boredom to 'several troubling addictions'—excessive drinking, eating, and spending—describing entire industries as 'designed around making us bored.' 7. A University of Virginia study Gary cites found that 30% of women and 60% of men chose to give themselves a painful electric shock rather than sit alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes, illustrating boredom avoidance as a near-physical drive. 8. Gary identifies two dominant strategies humans use to handle boredom: avoidance (leaving, daydreaming, checking phones) and resignation (enduring it passively, as in a seventh-grade class Gary witnessed where students copied a PowerPoint word-for-word for 45 minutes every day without protest). 9. Gary argues both avoidance and resignation are insufficient and proposes a 'practically wise middle way' illustrated by two personal stories. 10. In the first story, Gary dismissed his Chicago roommate Mark as 'just kind of dull' within one day, but daily contact forced him to discover Mark was a thoughtful, innovative teacher who became a lifelong friend—evidence that boredom's judgment of people is unreliable. 11. In the second story, Gary initially found a teachers' lunch group engaging, then recognized it as a 'complaint culture' that was 'addictive' but ultimately boring, and eventually found a different group that discussed books, hobbies, and teaching successes instead. 12. Gary's three takeaways are: don't trust boredom (it is often arrogant and wrong), protect your attention (a bored mind is 'primed to get distracted from distraction by distraction'), and talk about boredom explicitly (invoking writer Walker Percy's observation that modern life is 'a sophisticated boredom avoidance scheme'). 13. Dr. Harstad explains that boredom is not a core diagnostic symptom of ADHD but that children with ADHD frequently report boredom because their inattention symptoms make it harder to sustain engagement across activities. 14. Harstad distinguishes misdiagnosis risk: a child can show ADHD-like symptoms without meeting the diagnostic threshold, which requires the symptoms to be present in multiple settings and to cause measurable functional impairment. 15. Harstad notes that short, rapid-cut digital media may not help children sustain attention, while watching a full-length film with sequencing and family discussion uses a different and more beneficial cognitive process. 16. For children under six, Harstad recommends behavioral accommodations and family-based supports as the primary intervention; for children six and older, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends also discussing stimulant medication with families. 17. Harstad describes 'scaffolding' as building consistent routines—such as where a child puts their backpack and coat, and how they unpack after school—that externalize the organizational supports children with ADHD may not generate internally. 18. The interview tone is clinical and methodical, with Dr. Ungerleider asking structured questions and Harstad providing evidence-based answers that reference AAP clinical guidance and published ADHD research. 19. Parents of children with ADHD, educators managing inattentive students, and adults who suspect late-diagnosed ADHD will find the Harstad interview directly applicable. 20. Listeners seeking personal narratives or individual success stories may find the second half's clinical framing dry; the Kevin Gary talk is the more emotionally engaging portion of the episode.

As heard by us

A useful reframing of boredom as a cue to question snap judgments and protect attention.

TED Health uses Kevin H. Gary's talk to make boredom feel less like a dead end and more like a warning light. His point is simple but useful: when something feels dull, the judgment may say as much about our attention as it does about the person, task, or moment in front of us.

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Why you'd press play

If boredom keeps making your choices for you, this TED Health talk gives you a way to push back.

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