51 Things to Do If You’re Bored

“I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.” ~ Thomas Carlyle

I once shared a house with a very peculiar young man named Andy. He was peculiar in lots of ways, but one of the most annoying was the fact that he was always banging on about how Britain was a terrible country because there was nothing to do here but go out and get drunk.

Andy didn’t like drinking, much less getting drunk, so he never went out. He spent all his free time outside of work in his room, apart from Monday evenings, when he went to an Urdu class at the local community centre. He was learning Urdu because he wanted to move to India, he figured there’d be more things to do over there.

Andy had a particular issue with women drinking, he felt that it was indecent and inappropriate. He also thought that I had a drinking problem because I was seldom in the house. And in his mind the only reason I could be leaving the house, particularly if I stayed out over night, was to go out drinking. He refused to acknowledge that most of the time I was just away on business trips.

As you might imagine, Andy and I didn’t get along all that well, at one point we had a fight so bad that we both ended up smashing plates on the kitchen floor.

But I did once write him a list of fifty-one ways that he could better be spending his time, with no alcohol involved. It’s also quite a useful list for anyone who is bored.

1. Join a book club
2. Learn to play the guitar
3. Organise an event to raise money for a charity
4. Write a book
5. Teach yourself about quantum physics
6. Go out running
7. Volunteer to sit with, or read to, old people in hospital or at a care home
8. Visit an art gallery or museum
9. Watch a football match
10. Go out for a meal with some friends
11. Take a ballroom dancing class
12. Learn sign language, or any other language you fancy
13. Take up painting
14. Become a part-time cake decorator
15. Offer to coach a kids sports team
16. Go to the zoo
17. Get a dog and take it for long walks in the park
18. Don’t bother with the dog and just go to the park anyway, take a picnic or something
19. Go paint-balling
20. Join a martial arts club
21. Train for a marathon
22. Train for a triathlon
23. Join a local, Sunday league football or rugby team
24. Visit the Lake District
25. Visit the Peak District
26. Learn to ride a motorbike
27. Join a choir or an orchestra
28. Start a band
29. Join an amateur theatre group
30. Become a Samaritan
31. Do some carpentry
32. Or furniture restoration
33. Go shopping
34. Throw a dinner party
35. Go to the cinema
36. Go to the theatre
37. Go to a festival, gig, or other music performance
38. Go to a poetry reading
39. Go to a comedy night
40. Take part in an open mic night and perform your own music, poetry, or comedy
41. Read a book
42. Go to one of those farms that lets you look around and pet the animals
43. Take up horse riding
44. Become a train spotter
45. Fix up an old car or motor bike
46. Volunteer as an appropriate adult or independent visitor
47. Join a political party or a campaigning group and try to drum up support for your cause
48. Find some flash mobs to take part in
49. Go to an amusement park
50. Take a cooking class
51. Take up photography

I know there are plenty of others, but I felt I’d made my point sufficiently with fifty-one.

What kind of things you like to do when you’re not pubbing or clubbing?