things to do when you're bored
20 small side quests for when the couch is winning. Most of them you can start in the next five minutes, and none of them is another episode. Pick one and go.
- find out what the oldest building you can walk to used to be
- ask a librarian what they'd read if they had a free week
- order the thing on the menu you can't pronounce
- go to the top floor of a building you've never been inside
- draw the view from your window without looking at the page
- sit in the front row of something: a bus, a cinema, a church
- make a tiny museum of five things on one shelf and write a label for each
- cook something using only ingredients that are the same color
- take a photo of whatever is in front of you every 100 steps
- buy the strangest vegetable in the store and look up one thing to make with it
- write the first line of the book you'd write
- learn to say thank you in the language of the next restaurant you pass
- read the plaque on a statue nobody looks at
- sit somewhere public and guess what three strangers do for work
- move your chair to a different window for the afternoon
- find a spot far away where you can see your own window
- write a review of your own street, out of five stars
- learn one constellation and find it tonight
- find out how your town got its name
- walk the whole edge of your neighborhood in one go
If you'd rather have one handed to you every day, sealed, so you can't talk yourself out of it before you see it: that's Whim, a side quest app for iPhone and Android.