If I find myself day after day doing nothing much, just watching tv or youtube or reading, you know what thought crosses my mind? I have time to do all these things when I’m old! Whilst I have a strong body, whilst I can walk and get around and see the world, think clearly, learn new things and use my mind, and whilst I can generally DO STUFF, let’s do some stuff! But.. what kind of things can you do?
What to do when bored
If you’re feeling bored and wondering what kind of stuff to do to get you back to feeling happy and interested, here is a list of 133 ideas for stuff to do when you’re bored.
If you have any suggestions to add please leave them in the comments section at the end of this article.
Ideas for USEFUL things to do when bored
If you’ve got some spare time and don’t know what to do, how about using that time to make a bit of extra cash by writing articles online for money. You don’t have to have an English degree or experience to write a fun article that other people will enjoy reading.
You can write about your recommendations for books, movies, recipes or anything you’re interested in. You can write about your favorite quotes or about what inspires you in life. You can write about absolutely anything that you like, as long as it’s fun! Have fun writing about it, expressing your opinion and expressing yourself and in the meantime you can even earn some money for this!
One great place to write for money is Squidoo, which pay you between a few pennies to over $15 a month per article. Earnings depend on how many people read your article and how many people buy items you recommend within the article via your affiliate links. But it’s definitely a great way to earn whilst having fun. To join Squidoo and start writing articles today click here.
If you have an idea for a cool website, start making it now!
Ideas for websites can vary hugely but here are a few ideas to get your thoughts going:
- personal blog about your life
- poetry blog
- baking blog about your cooking adventures
- cool places to visit in your city, reviewing all the places & restaurants you’ve been to
- games review blog about computer games or other games
- a “how to” blog about how to do something you love doing eg knitting, gardening etc
- a personal development blog
- a “fun finds from around the web” blog
- a fashion blog
- a movie review blog
If your site is successful, it can be another stream of income! Add Adsense adverts to it and a few affiliate links, and start earning right away!
If you like drawing, why not spend your bored time drawing, and whilst you’re at it, earn some money from it the same time! There are a few ways to earn from drawing:
a.) Zazzle:
The website Zazzle lets you sell your artwork as posters and postcards and also they let you put your art on a HUGE number of other products ranging from T-shirts, mugs, kitchen towels, clocks to even iphone cases and mousepads.
b.) Cafepress:
Cafepress is another great website, very much like Zazzle where anyone can sell their artwork.
c.) Spreadshirt:
Spreadshirt is yet another neat place to put your artwork on T-shirts and other products.
If you enjoy making crafts and doing stuff like crocheting, knitting, carving, embroidering, jewelry-making, candle-making, soap-making, sewing etc etc, then you can do all these things when bored, and if the thought of amassing a ton of crafts at home doesn’t appeal, then you can sell them on sites like Etsy. You find things to do when bored AND make money off it! Win win!
A useful way to spend your time when you’re bored is to think up potential business ideas that would be fun to work on and useful to the world. Even if it’s just a thought exercise, it could be enjoyable coming up with ideas, and there’s always the chance that one of the ideas you come up with will be the next BIG idea that could make you a millionaire!
Get deep. Ask Google about the meaning of life and purpose. Start to understand these things better by reading and hearing what others have had to say about it.
Have you ever tried reading a personal development book or a book that’s aimed at broadening your spiritual side? If you’re bored, now might be a good time to give it a try! Some amazing books I personally recommend (I’ve read and loved them all!) are found here.
If you’ve got a kitchen at your disposal and you’re bored, you can use the opportunity to teach yourself to cook a new dish.
Find a recipe that sounds interesting online or in a cookbook if you have one handy. Maybe go for something you’ve never heard of before like Afghani food or a Peruvian dish, just to be adventurous! Or try and make something sweet and fun like ice cream, cookies, cakes, or raw chocolate (mm!). Go to the supermarket to get the ingredients and have a ball in the kitchen being creative! It doesn’t matter how it turns out – it’s the journey that counts! 
Plus if the best happens, you’ll discover a new skill, a new dish AND make yourself something to eat all at the same time!
Why not throw ingredients together and try to invent a brand new culinary dish? You may discover the next big thing since the potato chip! Yum!
Because cheese is tasty and you can always learn a new skill! Plus when you make stuff yourself, it sometimes comes out more tasty than in the shops! And it can be a new hobby that produces a useful byproduct!
If you really enjoy it and invent some new amazing type of cheese you could even sell it and make some profits off this hobby.
If you’re of legal age to drink, you can have fun inventing cocktails and if you’re not allowed to drink yet, you could always play around with different juices and drinks to create a unique mocktail!
Another fun ideas is to learn how to make beer and other alcoholic beverages.
If you go on Amazon, you’ll find a lot of cheap instruments there that you can buy without giving it too much thought. I myself bought a ukulele off Amazon for less than $30! Here are a few examples of affordable and fun instruments you can try to teach yourself: (You can click on any of them to see them in more detail)
Once you have the instrument at home, the next time you’re bored, you can pick it up and play around with it. There are LOADS of youtube videos you can use to teach yourself how to play the instrument from being a complete beginner so that you teach yourself to play, and you can also go to the library and get a book explaining more about how to perfect your technique.
Until your keyboard arrives, you can play around on this virtual piano.
If you’re bored, now’s a good time to read up on anything you’ve been curious about. There are lots of great websites explaining all sorts of interesting things about stuff we really should know, like the website saywhydoi.com which explains stuff like why tennis players wear white, why we sometimes have salty food cravings, why we say phrases like eat your heart out and why we clap to praise a performance. Interesting stuff!
Of course Wikipedia is another great site to fill in some gaps of knowledge about stuff. And if you find yourself reading a Wikipedia article and notice it is missing in details that you know on the subject, you can update the Wikipedia page and help others learn too.
If you’re interested in something specific, be it physics or health, travel or gardening, photography or history, stamp collection or economics – if you’re bored, now’s the time to read up on that too. If it’s something practical like photography or learning a certain craft, do it!
Some ideas for things you may be interested in teaching yourself:
Film making, animation, history, geography, science, eocnomics, music, art, business, investment, how to code and program, how to use Linux, how to use a certain computer program that you haven’t gotten round to figuring out yet (eg figuring out what all the buttons do on Excel or Word or a paint program, or learning the keyboard shortcuts for things), photography, nutrition, how stuff works, why things are as they are, how to knit, how to craft, how to juggle
If you’ve always wanted to learn how to make movies, you can start with making youtube videos. You may want to go for a vlog type thing, which can be like training you to be a presenter one day, or you may want to get a few friends together, write a script and make a short film together. If you’re a budding animator, you can create an animation or if you’re a musician you can share your songs on youtube too.
Another good thing about youtube is that if you get a lot of views on your videos you can make money from making fun stuff on there!
When you’re bored, now’s the opportunity to tidy your room or maybe just your desk, clean the car, tidy up the basement, sort out that drawer or cupboard, or organize your bag. It’s a good time to rake up the leaves, sort out the garden and wash the dishes. You know you’ll feel better doing *something* rather than nothing.. 
Plus you’ll end up enjoying your new tidy space and have less work to do later when you’d rather be doing other things!
When you’re cleaning up, especially with garages and basements, you tend to find a bunch of stuff that you can donate to a good cause, or you could always sell stuff on eBay and make some extra cash.
How about using your time to create a piece of writing? Who knows, you may be the next great author, poet or script-writer! Everyone’s got to start somewhere! Maybe you start right here, from a place where you were bored and wondering what to do!
It can also be fun to get together with friends and brainstorm ideas together for stories.
A good thing to do when you’re feeling bored is to use the time productively to keep a healthy body by working out. You can go to the gym or you can do your own workout at home. Some workout DVDs can be really helpful and fun. I especially like the dancey ones. Here are a few good ones that are available on Amazon.com:
You can also experiment with lots of other work-out and exercise methods from yoga to pilates to dance. You can get DVDs on all of these or you can use your time to scout out a good class you can go to later.
Use the chance of having some quiet time to yourself to get in touch with your spiritual side. Relax, close your eyes and observe your breaths. Empty your mind of thought and just let yourself enjoy the peace. Enjoy the feeling of feeling good.
If you know what you want, organize your desires into something you can look at to remind yourself and keep you on track. There are a lot of ways you can organize your goals:
- Write a goals list of all the things you want to achieve
- Create a vision board which is when you cut out pictures from magazines of all the things you want to achieve
- Write a bucket list of all the things you want to do and see before you die
Buy low sell high isn’t just the mantra of the stock market – it also applies to making money on eBay. If you’re bored, it can be a good time to add another stream of income by getting started on eBay. Scout out good bargains, buy them, and sell them for what they’re really worth.
Have you got piles of unorganized photos sitting around your house or on your computer? How about organizing them into an easy-to-browse format?
You can organize photos into albums arranged by date or by occasion.
You can create online albums with folders.
You can use scrapbooking techniques to create a really pretty scrapbook album with your images.
You can take the opportunity to use the time constructively to put your computer files in neat categories and subcategories to make things easier to find. Delete old stuff you don’t need. You’ll thank yourself later for it!
Whether you know how to program and app or not, now could be the time to start looking into how to build one, if it’s something that peaks your interest. Read up on how to make an App, think up cool app ideas and build one! This 12 year old (click link to see) did just that, so you can too!
It may be yet another stream of income for you if it’s successful!
Find out what’s going on in the world. If regular news isn’t your style, then catch up on celebrity gossip, sports news, new games releases, movie releases or whatever you *are* interested in.
Look into volunteering opportunities with charities and other good causes. There are so many kinds of volunteer work you can do ranging from:
- Working on helping animals
- Helping kids
- Helping the beauify and preserve the environment
- Helping set up resources of the homeless
- Helping people find their feet after they’ve beene in difficult situations
- Helping spread awareness for a certain cause
- Helping stand up for certain rights
If you have stuff that’s been on your mind and has been bothering you, a good way to sort it out and “get it out” of your system is to write it out in a “Dear Diary” journal setting. It can feel like a relief to express it. If you can, try and reframe the issue in a positive light and write yourself into a better place so that you come out of it feeling better or at least hopeful.
Start with 10 things, and notice how you feel a bit better after writing this list! 
See how many more things you can come up with! I bet there are a lot!
Plant flowers, herbs, vegetables or even a fruit tree. Spend time in the garden nurturing your plants and enjoy seeing them grow. It’ll be worth it when they bear flowers, herbs, vegetables and fruits that you can enjoy and eat!
If you don’t have a garden, you can still grow things in pots at home or on the windowsill.
Get some language books and CDs out of the library, use the internet and teach yourself a language you’ve always wanted to learn.
Maybe you want to learn a more unusual language like sign language or morse code.
It’s always a good idea to back-up your computer files onto an external hard-drive or onto some other backup service. If you’re bored, why not use the time to secure your files?
Do a virus scan just to make sure everything is ok.
Update all the stuff that needs updating eg virus checker and firewall.
Delete any junk you don’t need.
De-frag if necessary.
Change your desktop picture.
Customize your desktop options and color settings.
Use your time to pamper your nails and get ‘em looking pretty!
Alternatively, give someone else a mani / pedi!
It’s useful to have it up to date.
Ideas for FUN stuff to do when you’re bored
If you don’t feel like reading a useful book like an educational book or one on personal development, read a fun book. Whether you love romance novels, fantasy and science fiction or anything else, a book is a great way to get you out of boredom.
Here are a few of my personal recommendations for great books that I’ve really enjoyed in the past:
- The Kingkiller Trilogy by Patrick Rothfuss
- Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon
- Mitch Albom books like The Five People you Meet in Heaven
- The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
- Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon
- True Story Swear to God by Tom Beland
There are so many great movies out there. When you’re bored you can re-watch an old movie that you know you love; see what’s on TV right now and see if there’s something interesting; visit the video store and rent a DVD or go to the cinema to watch a new release whilst munching on some popcorn.
You could even do a movie marathon, watching back to back movies. This works especially well for trilogies (like Back to the Future and Lord of the Rings) and other movie with sequels (eg Xmen, Harry Potter etc).
Here are a few of my personal movie recommendations for a rainy day when I’m bored. I could re-watch these over and over again and still enjoy them!
- Back to the Future trilogy
- Big
- My Big Fat Greek Wedding
- Disney classics like The Lion King & Beauty and the Beast
- Pixar classics like Toy Story and Monsters Inc
A fun thing to do when bored is to catch up on some TV. Catch up on the series you love, start watching a new one, or if you’re in a more educational mood, watch a documentary.
Get some friends or family together and play a game.
Or if you’re on your own, you can always play an online game. There are loads of fun ones that are great at boredom busting! Just search google and you’ll find a bunch.
Here are just a few games ideas to get your started:
Games to play with other people:
Chess, checkers, backgammon, boggle, apples to apples, general knowledge, pictionary, charades, pub quizzes, trivial pursuit, monopoly, downfall, jenga, battleships, card games, marbles, dominoes, pogs, french skipping, cat’s cradle, clapping games, tag, stuck in the mud, British bulldog, blindman’s buff, what’s the time Mr Wolf, Simon says, acting games (get a book with some suggestions, they’re REALLY fun!), dungeons and dragons, role playing games, Risk,
Games to play on your own:
crosswords, sudoku, word games like “word hero” or word search, isketch, online trivia games (eg triviador), solitaire, minesweeper, online card games, skip rope, skip-it, take the typing speed test, online Risk and other Games by Email
There are tons of great computer games ranging from puzzle-games to racing games, to adventure games. Here are some of my personal favorites that I would heartily recommend for a rainy day:
Also: Day of the Tentacle, Heavy Rain, Monkey Island, Portal 2, Grim Fandango…
Again, you can get a few friends together and play a sport together. Anything you like, from shooting hoops to football and everything in between. Here are a few ideas for stuff you can play:
- Basketball – Soccer – Football – Badminton – Tennis – Baseball practice – Dodge ball – play catch – frisbee – running contests – ping pong – darts – bowling – hockey – ice skating – skating – roller blading – cycling – go mountain climbing
Take the opportunity to get in touch with your creative side. Draw a cartoon, sketch a still life in your room, draw a self-portrait. Experiment with pencil drawings, colored pencils, pen and ink, paint, watercolor, charcoal, pastels, collage – anything that takes your fancy!
If you have some clay handy or a crafts shop nearby where you can get some, play around with sculpting.
If you have some crafts you can play with, do that. Some ideas to get you started:
Quilting, batik, tie dye, sewing, knitting, crochet, scapbooking, jewelry-making, soap-making, sand art in jars, candle-making, badge-making, plush-toy-making, painting pebbles (making rock creatures) etc
If you already know how to play an instrument, take this opportunity to practice playing. Practice a piece you already know, try learning a new one, try figuring out a piece by ear even if you don’t have the notes, make up a new composition and record it, make up lyrics and sing along to your new composition. Or you can take an old tune and make up new lyrics to it just for fun, making a parody song.
If you’re a dab hand at music editing with some music software, you can play around with taking old songs and video sound clips and remixing them or adding all sorts of cool effects to them.
If you’ve got some friends who also play instruments, get together for a jamming session. If you enjoy it, maybe you guys could start a band and be the next big thing! If nothing else, at least it will be fun!
Listen to music that you already love. Dance around your room whilst listening to it. Sing into your hairbrush.
Go to spotify, youtube or last.fm and listen to “related artists” or “recommended artists” that you’ve never heard of. Discover new bands and musicians that you love yet never knew until now!
Check out when the bands you like are performing in your area. Book tickets!
There are a lot of great podcasts and radio shows to keep you entertained while you’re doing other stuff that doesn’t occupy the mind too much (eg cleaning, cooking, knitting, crafting).
One of my personal favorite podcasts is WTF with Marc Maron. If you’re interested in life stories of people in comedy, films and music – check it out!
Talk radio is also entertaining. Some of my personal recommendations:
- The Chris Moyles Show
- The Late Show with Joanne Good
Go to a “what’s on in my city” website and see if there are any cool events happening right now or in the coming days that you want to go to.
If you’ve always wanted to learn to dance or you’ve always been curious about trying out pottery or metal work, horse riding or programming – or whatever else sounds interesting to you – search online to see if there are any classes in your area for that thing you’ve always wanted to try. Do it!
Maybe there’s a cool musical on or a great photography exhibit on that you can go and see.
Make your day’s mission to do as many good deeds and random acts of kindness as you can. Go around looking for people you can help and be kind to. Examples of things you can do:
- Smile at a stranger
- Offer as many hugs and kisses to your loved ones as appropriate
- Let someone go ahead of you in a queue or when driving
- Write a list of 10 things you love about a person, then give it to them
- Hold the door open for someone
- Surprise someone you love with a little gift for no good reason other than because you love them
- Help someone by helping them with their chores
- Leave an uplifting message or quote in a book in the library or bookshop
- Recommend a friend’s work to others to help them spread the word
- Buy a homeless guy something to eat or drink
- Remember to say thank you
- When you find something to compliment, let the person know!
- Pick up some litter
- Say “good morning!” / “good evening!” to a stranger
- Donate some of your things to charity
- Offer someone to drive them or accompany them if they need to go somewhere
- Visit a friend or family member who’s down and needs support
- Offer your seat to someone on the train
If you love travelling, how about using your free time to plan your next vacation? Scout out countries, cities and villages you want to visit, find the perfect hotel, modes of transportation, sites you want to see and create an organized document with all the details. If you organize it well ahead of time, you can find some really good bargains in flight prices and hotel bookings, so why not do it now?
Use your imagination and creativity to invent a new game. It can be anything from a thought-game like “I spy with my little eye”, to a card game or a board game – anything!
If you come up with something good, maybe you could even sell it and make some good money off it!
If you have your own pet, go and spend some time playing with him / her.
If you don’t have your own pet, visit a friend, neighbour or relative who has one and play with them. Offer to walk them so you can play with them outside.
If you don’t know anyone with a pet, you can always go to a pet shop and see the cute animals there.
Get an origami book from the library and make cool stuff! Give them to people you love to bring a smile to their face.
Find a jigsaw puzzle to put together. If you’re up for the challenge how about doing a 3D one?
Here are some great 3D puzzles that can be loads of fun!
There are loads of awesome youtube videos to help keep boredom at bay.
Check this article out for a bunch of feel good videos: Feel Good Videos
Other neat youtube channels I’d recommend are:
- charlieissocoollike
- chewingsand
- communitychannel 
- communitychannel
- crabstickz
- crashbandadam
- danrezler
- elmify
- evmoneyTV
- jennamarbles
- Jim Chapman
- itswaypastmybedtime
- keeporjot
- myharto
- simonscat
- sxephil
- Tanya Burr
- vlogbrothers
- wheezywaiter
- Zoella
StumbleUpon is a great tool to offer you random, funny, interesting and cool websites, videos and pictures online. Check it out here.
Similar to StumbleUpon, Reddit collects some of the most interesting things on the web plus there’s a community that chat about their finds. It can be a fun place to hang out: Check it out here
Pinterest is more geared towards pretty and funny pictures than most things and it can be a great place to see cool things and get inspired.
Check it out here
Ideas for PEOPLE oriented stuff to do when you’re feeling bored
Have fun catching up with someone about anything. Tell each other jokes, talk about your dreams, talk about your plans for the week, play a game on the phone. There are lots of ways to alleviate boredom when you’re with another person, even if they are on the phone!
Sign into skype, windows live messenger (msn), facebook chat, icq, your blackberry, phone, or whatever tool you use to chat to people through text chat. See who’s around and start chatting! Maybe it’s an opportunity to say hi to someone you haven’t chatted with for a looooong time!
Start typing an email to someone. It doesn’t matter what you write to them about, you’ll find something, even if it’s just asking THEM a bunch of questions! When you feel like you have nothing much to tell someone in an email, I find it really helpful to start asking them questions and then you’ll find that your own stories pop up in relation to the questions so that you can share a few of the good ones in the email.
It can be fun to browse through your friends list on facebook or your contact list in your email program and pick a person to write to who you haven’t written to or heard from in ages but you’re curious about how they’re doing. Take the plunge. Rekindle the tie! Email them!
Find a forum where people are talking about stuff that interests you, be it celebrity gossip, sports, personal development, making your own beer or anything else. Reading the threads on forums can be fun and give you some ideas for stuff to do, and adding your two cents to answer people’s questions or to comment on people’s thoughts can be fun too!
Two heads are better than one, and more heads are sometimes better than two! So get some friends to come round, or go to their place, or meet up somewhere outside and hang out together.
Invite a friend over to cook or bake. It can be more fun to do it together than alone!
If you’re single and have been meaning to find a partner for a while, you can use your moment of boredom to do something about it. Sign up to a dating website like:
- okcupid
- eharmony
- plenty of fish
It can be fun browsing profiles and reading about how people describe themselves.
Some of these websites have an instant messaging tool which allows you to start chatting to people right away.
If you’re looking for a penpal there are loads of penpal websites out there to meet people from exotic countries. Some sites you can use are:
- Penpal International
- Interpals
If you’re looking to meet new people, sign up to meetup.com and see what kind of meet-ups are going on right now where you can meet like-minded people who like the same kind of things you’re into.
Go to a cafe, a park or anywhere where there are people and observe these creatures in the wild! How do people behave towards one another? Listen to how they talk to one another: their tone of voice, their words. What kind of vibes do you get off different people? Which people would you consider going up to and saying hello to in different circumstances? What makes them look friendlier or less friendly? Look at body language clues, look at their faces and what stories they tell.
I know your parents told you not to talk to strangers, and usually this is good advice. But if you’re old enough and are a good judge of character, it can be fun to get to know another human being. If you see someone sitting on a park bench, just relaxing, how about saying hello? Or if you’re using your day to go exploring and are on a bus or on a train, you can always smile at someone and start a conversation. I know a few people who met their romantic partners by doing just this!
With a friend, go people watching and rate the passers by with points for different things:
- Score for friendliness
- Score for attractiveness
etc
Ok, admittedly, any “people rating” is a bit judgy and not exactly spiritually enlightening, but it can be a fun way to get to know your friends’ romantic tastes or just can show you the world through another person’s eyes.
Fun things to reminisce about with friends:
- Favorite memories with family from your childhood
- Favorite games and toys to play with when you were a kid
- Favorite TV programs from when you were a child
- Funniest things that happened in school ; funniest teacher
- Craziest things that happened in school; craziest teacher
- Greatest birthday parties you’ve been to / had
- Best vacation you’ve had
- Funny adverts that used to be on TV
Any excuse is a good excuse for a party, so why not let boredom be your excuse! Use your time to think up a party theme, things to do in the party, who you’ll invite etc, and plan the best party ever! It can be fun just to plan it, and then you can put the plan into action whenever you like, be it that very evening, the following week, or the next time an occasion arises. It’s never too early to start planning what you’d like to do for a birthday party!
70. Organize a firework display evening
Just for the fun of it, decide to throw a fireworks party. Go to the shop to get some fireworks, invite some friends over, and prepare a small party for them.
Ideas for PLACES to go to when you’re bored
Put your shoes on and get some air. Go for a walk around the block; the exercise will be good for you and maybe whilst you’re out there enjoying the fresh air, some inspiration will come to you about what you feel like doing next.
For some ideas for where to go for walks check out this article: Places to go for a walk
How well do you know your neighbourhood? If you think there are areas of it that you haven’t explored, maybe now’s the opportunity!
If you know your area really well, then you can travel out to a new area you haven’t seen and go exploring there. It can be fun to see a new area, see the architecture there, discover new shops, restaurants, markets, cute squares, pretty gardens and all sorts of hidden gems.
Next time your friends want to go somewhere new, you’ll have a few new places up your sleeve!
If there’s a beach near you, it may be fun to go there to enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of the beach. Do some people watching, maybe bring a book with you. If it’s warm, you could go for a dip in the ocean.
Go swimming. Try doing handstands underwater. See how many laps you can do. Teach a little kid how to dive.
If there’s a “pick your own” farm in your area, it can be a fun day’s activity to go there and pick your own fruit and vegetables.
Even if there isn’t a pick your own farm near you, maybe there’s a wild blackberry patch where you can go fruit-picking.
Lots of museums have free entry and exhibits so this can be a good way to spend some idle time. You may discover a new passion for certain ancient languages and cultures, for science, natural history, aviation, space or for whatever the museum specializes in.
Like museums, some art galleries are free to visit, and it can be inspiring to see beautiful paintings. It can make you feel uplifted when you see beautiful art, or it can inspire you to want to have a go and paint something yourself.
You can go to a local park if you live in a city, or even a National Park if you feel like going somewhere bigger, to enjoy nature.
79. Go to a playground
If you’re a kid, then going to a playground when you’re bored is a good option.
If you’re a grown-up, find a playground that’s empty and pretend you’re a kid again!
This is sure to wipe boredom away!
Go to an arcade by yourself or with friends. There are loads of fun games there like:
- Air hockey
- Shooting hoops for a prize
- Dance machines (DDRs)
- Car racing machines
- Pin ball machines
- Foosball
- Snooker / Billiards
- Arcade game machines
Check out your local bowling alleys. Practice on your own or get some friends together for a bowling game.
Take your bike around the block, or to ride around a nearby park. Enjoy the wind in your hair and the fresh air.
Now’s a good time to get anything you’ve been meaning to get. Maybe it’s new clothes, new bag, a new book, a new toy or even just a stop by the supermarket.
If you don’t feel like going out to shop, you can also browse some online shops for cool stuff. You can even make your own cool personalized products on Zazzle.com
Go past your favorite shops just to see what cool stuff is out there. You don’t have to buy them to have fun. Seeing them and maybe playing with some of the sample copies can be just as fun too!
Check out all the comics you haven’t read before. Stick around and read some in the store.
If you need recommendations for comic books for girls, check out this link: Comics for Girls
Head over to the library and pick out some new books to read. Maybe try a new kind of book that you’ve never tried before.
A day at the zoo or at the farm, seeing the animals can be loads of fun!
If there’s a pet shop near where you live, a fun activity can be to go there and see all the cute animals. If the pet shop owner is nice, they may even let you pet a few!
Try on all sorts of funny costumes just for the fun of it!
Pretend you have a fancy function to go to or that you’re getting married and go to a fancy dress shop or bridal shop just to enjoy trying on the beautiful dresses. Feel like a princess for a day!
Bring a bunch of bread with you and have fun feeding the ducks and geese. Watch how they enjoy the feast you’re giving them.
You could also do this with pigeons if that’s easier to find.
Another similar fun thing to do is to set up a bird feeder in your garden, fill it with peanuts or bird seeds and watch the birds delight in your gift to them.
Go to an open space like a park and go kite flying! Watch it soar!
94. Fly a toy helicopter / plane
Buy a toy helicopter or plane with a remote and fly it outside on a nice day.
95. Go a pond to sail a toy boat
Buy or build a toy remote control boat, go to a park with a pond and play with it there.
There are lots of ways you can go sailing:
- Hire a rowboat in a lake
- Hire a canal longboat for your whole family
- Hire a little pedal boat in a lake
- Hire a speedboat
- Hire a yacht
- Go on a cruise
Go alone or with family and friends.
Or organize a camping trip for the future. Alternatively you can go hiking and seek out a good place for a camp spot in the future.
99. Go for a picnic
Make some yummy sandwiches and other picnic food, put it in a cool box or basket and set some friends together to go for a picnic!
Here are some fun ideas for tours:
- TV or movie studio tour
- Chocolate factory tour
- Cheese factory tour
- Fire station tour
- Money minting tour
- Police station tour
- Wine making tour
- Coffee making tour
- Farm tour
An unusual and fun day’s activity can be to go horse riding.
Some gyms have big trampolines you can have a go on. Some cities have a trampoline center just for the purpose of jumping around and having fun!
Ideas for SILLY things to do when bored
Practice making sounds like different things: try to make the sounds of different animals, or make the sound of a water drop falling in a puddle, or of a car starting up and accelerating. Play around with different sounds. Challenge yourself to replicate them. You may discover a hidden talent and a potential career to make sound effects!
104. Have a go at beatboxing
There are lots of “how to” videos on youtube that teach you how to beatbox. Have a go!
You can also try making beats and rhythms with your hands and other body parts!
Play around with Feng Shui and rearrange the stuff in your room. Maybe your bed would feel better on the other side of the room? Or maybe you could take that pile of books and put it into the corner. Play around with different looks.
Go to a cafe or a park and watch the kind of people who are around. Just for a fun imagination exercise, imagine who these people are, what kind of lives they have, what’s their relationship if they are together, how long have they known each other and how do they know each other: what’s their story?
107. Practice impressions
Have a go at practising to immitate different celebrities, politicians, friends and family members. It can be a fun thing to do, especially if you do it like a game together with other people.
With a friend or on your own, find tongue twisters (there are lots of them around on the internet), and have a go at saying them. If you’re with a friend you can make it into a competition of who can say it the longest before getting tongue tied!
Look at a picture in a magazine, book or anywhere for a minute, then cover it up and write down as many thigns that you can remember. How many things do you remember? Next time try to better your score and remember more things.
Another memory game can be to try and memorize a deck of cards in order. How many can you remember the first time you try? What about the second time?
You can play this with a friend: the person who remembers the most things wins.
Get your or your female friend’s make-up kit out and play around with it. You can practice putting it on yourself or on a friend. You can practice doing different looks, like “The zombie” or “the beauty pagent queen”. If you’ve got a face painting kit handy, you can play around with that.
If you enjoy this, maybe you have a future as a make-up artist!
Try seeing how many accents you can do! Here are a few to try:
- American (of which there are loads of types: Bronx, Southern, LA etc)
- British (of which there are lots of types: Posh RP, cockney, Liverpudlian, Mancurian, Northern, Bristolian and West Country, ect etc)
- French – Spanish – Russian – Irish – Welsh – Scottish – Australian – New Zealand – Polish – Italian – African – Jamaican – Mexican – South American – German
You can do this on your own with the help of youtube videos to help you get the accent right, or with friends.
If you’re on your own, time yourself for how long you can stare at yourself in the mirror without blinking.
If you’re with another person, see who can go the longest when you look into each others eyes. Who looks away first? Side note: psychologically speaking, the person who looks away first is the “least dominant” of the two!
If you’re with friends, a fun activity can be to see what kind of costume you can put together with nothing more than what you have at home. You can try making a toilet paper dress, or an astronaut suit of tin foil, pots and pans. Or how about an animal costume from leopard print clothes or from shaggy carpets? Be silly! Use your imagination and have fun!
If you enjoy this you may enjoy Cosplay!
If you feel like it, why not experiment with different looks?
You can experiment with different hair colors, styles and looks. Buy a bunch of hair products and see what you can do with them. Straighten, curl, braid, tease and style!
You can play with your own hair or with others if they’re up for it!
Using pillows, sheets, blankets and anything else you might have at hand, attempt to create the best fort or hideout ever! It can be like a little comfy retreat where it’ll be fun to sit in peace, read, meditate, etc.
You can try to build stuff out of lego, cards, dominoes, matchsticks, toothpicks or anything else! You could even build a house made of food! Get a bunch of cookies, sweets, icing and other goodies to build a house or some other cool construction! You can use the icing or jam like cement!
See if you can figure out how to build a robot from stuff you have at home and from stuff you can get at the hardware store. If you have a brainy friend who can help you figure it out, get him in on the action!
Maybe you’ll awake with new inspiration for stuff to do after a good nap!
122. Run a bubble bath
You can even light some scented candles and just relax in the steamy bubbles…
Find the best paper airplane design – there are a bunch of them if you search on google. See which one flies the best!
Can you make other paper flying machines? How about a paper helicopter? a parachute for a toy soldier? Or a paper hot air balloon?
Take a shoebox and put inside it a letter to your future self. Think of what kind of things your future self would like to be included in the box alongside your letter. What will you put in it? Put a seal on the box saying “Open in the year ____” (say 5 years from now, or 10 years from now or even “for your wedding day”!). When you’re finished, bury the box somewhere you know you’ll find it!
This is a fun art to master. It’s probably a good idea to do it on a warm day because when you start out, you’ll likely get a bit wet!
The idea is to have a bottle of water, and pour it into your mouth WITHOUT letting the top of the bottle touch your lips. You leave the bottle top in the air, hovering a couple inches about your mouth and catch the water in your mouth. It’s super satisfying when you do it!
121. Practice catching grapes
Toss a grape, a nut or a sweet high up, and try to catch it in your mouth!
- pillow fight
- Water gun fight: For summer, a fun way to keep cool is to get a bunch of water guns or water hoses and have a water fight outside!
- Pom pom fight: Make some pom poms from soft yarn (or buy them) and then have a pompom war with your friends where you throw them at one another. They’re really soft so they don’t hurt at all and it’s really fun!
It’s tricky! but it can be done! There are tons of really talented foot artists. Google it!
Search for optical illusions and entertain yourself looking at them.
Look for “magic eye” illusions and try and see them.
Write something encouraging or helpful for a future person to find. Put it in a bottle, cork it, and send it out to sea.
Get various different kinds of soap wands of different sizes and play around making different kind of bubbles!
Go to the supermarket and buy something you’ve never seen or tried before. It may be an exotic fruit or vegetable, or something else.
Go to a restaurant and order something you’ve never tried.
Get a book about the Guiness World Records, see if there’s one in there that sounds fun to try yourself. If you find one, try it!
For your brothers and sisters or friends , create an obstacle course from stuff you have at home. Stuff you can use include pillows, kiddy pools, hoola hoops, weights to lift, bikes, exercise machines you have at home, a home trampoline, your stairs at home, and anything else you can find in your house!
- Google your name and see what comes up.
- Google your friends’ names / family members. You may discover something interesting!
- Google people from your past who you’ve long ago lost touch with. Old classmates, old school teachers.. Google your old schools and see what’s going on with them now.
- Research your family history and draw up a family tree: It can be fun to trace your origins and understand more about where you came from and find out just how big your family is.
- Google auto-completer entertainment: Start typing a phrase into google and see what the top phrases that come up are.
eg. Start typing “What is” or “why do I” and see what people search for.
The internet is full of fun personality quizzes that tell you a little about your personality. Here are a few to get you started:
- helloquizzy
- okcupid quizzes
- Quibblo
- Silly quizzes on The Oatmeal
Or get a massage yourself!
Search online, in newspapers, magazines and on TV for competitions you can enter and use your time to try your luck! You may strike it lucky!
Some competitions are just a matter of sending in your answer on a postcard or via email or text. Other competitions are more involved where you have to enter a painting, photograph or a piece of writing or something like that. Have a go!
Got any more ideas? Let us know!
Leave a comment below with your comments and ideas for more fun stuff to do when you’re bored.
I read a lot of interesting posts here. Probably you spend a lot of time writing!
i quit my day job, now i earn a lot of money on-line to keep from getting bored