We often live on autopilot: we get up, attend to urgent matters, complete our tasks… and at the end of the day we feel we’ve been busy, but not truly present. Amidst all the rush and the screens that never turn off, it seems we’re leaving something essential behind: ourselves.

The constant presence of these devices has generated a new fear, unimaginable to our grandparents or even our parents: the fear of being bored . Today, it’s almost unthinkable to wait a few minutes without checking our phones, or to let our minds wander without receiving notifications. Our phones accompany us from the moment we open our eyes until just before we close them at night.

The problem is that we’ve come to accept certain habits as “normal” when they actually affect our rest, our health, and ultimately, our happiness. Arthur Brooks , a social psychologist and professor at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School , is the author of 13 books and one of the most influential experts on leadership and happiness. He warns that this inability to tolerate boredom is behind much of the current rise in depression and anxiety.

“Taking out your phone every time you’re bored is the perfect recipe for depression, anxiety, and a constant feeling of emptiness,” says Arthur Brooks.

For Brooks, the root of the unease lies in the fact that “people don’t know the meaning and purpose of their lives, much less than in previous generations, and they don’t even try to find it, precisely because we’ve found a way to eliminate boredom.” And that escape route has a name: the phone. “How? With that thing you carry in your bag, with a screen—the one you take out even when you’re standing on the corner waiting for the light to change. It’s like you’re saying, ‘What? Do I have to wait 15 seconds?’” he explains.

Although he acknowledges that nobody likes being bored, Brooks insists that it’s a necessary and even healthy state. To prove it, he proposes a simple experiment: “Tomorrow, when you go to the gym in the morning after waking up, don’t take your phone. Can you do it? Imagine being alone with your own thoughts. I promise you that’s where your most interesting ideas come from. Without communicating with anyone. Don’t even turn on the radio.”

He started practicing it for just 15 minutes a day and says the experience transformed him: “First, the ordinary things in your life stop seeming so boring. If you start enjoying the everyday, you won’t get so bored with your work, your relationships, or what’s going on around you. But most importantly, you’ll start asking yourself the deepest questions about your life, about purpose, about meaning… and who knows, maybe you’ll even feel happier.”

Ultimately, it’s not about escaping boredom, but about allowing ourselves to listen to ourselves. Perhaps that’s the first step toward a more meaningful life.