6 slow activities that look boring—but secretly make you more interesting

Modern life worships speed.

Fast Wi-Fi, same-day delivery, ten second videos.

We assume the most interesting people must be the busiest ones, juggling five projects, three side hustles, and a color-coded Google calendar.

But in my experience, the people who are genuinely fascinating usually have something else in common.

They spend a surprising amount of time doing things that look… boring.

Slow, quiet, unphotogenic activities; stuff that would never go viral on Reels.

Yet those are the habits that quietly make them deeper, sharper, more creative, and more fun to talk to.

Let’s go through six of them:

1) Reading actual books

On the surface, reading looks like doing nothing.

You are sitting there, not moving much, staring at paper.

If someone walks by, it is way less exciting than seeing you climb a mountain or smash a workout.

But long-form reading is one of the biggest "interesting person" cheats I know.

When you read, you borrow other people’s lives, mistakes, language, and ideas.

You absorb how different eras thought, how other cultures see the world, how scientists, activists, artists, and weirdos have tried to solve the same problems you are dealing with.

That turns into stories you can tell, metaphors you can lean on, and a richer way of seeing everyday life.

You start connecting random dots; a conversation about work suddenly reminds you of a study you read on motivation, and a friend’s breakup reminds you of a passage in a novel about attachment.

You become the person who says, "That reminds me of something I read…" and people lean in, because you bring fresh angles instead of recycled takes from social media.

Some of the most interesting people I know mix memoir, psychology, sci-fi, philosophy, travel writing, and graphic novels.

The variety is what makes them fun to listen to.

If you want to be more interesting, ask yourself a simple question: Is there at least one book I am slowly making my way through right now?

2) Walking without your phone

When was the last time you went for a walk without headphones, podcasts, or music?

Just you, your thoughts, and whatever is happening around you.

To everyone else, that looks like "just walking".

No productivity and no flex but, mentally, walks like that are doing a lot.

Your brain finally gets quiet enough to sort through the pile of unfinished thoughts it has been hoarding all day.

Questions that felt tangled at your desk start to loosen a little.

Ideas that were in the background move to the front.

Psychologists talk about the mind’s "default mode" that kicks in when you are not actively consuming something.

That drifting, daydreaming state is where insights happen.

For me, some of my clearest decisions about work, relationships, and even big lifestyle shifts have come in the middle of a slow, phone-free walk.

Not in front of a screen.

There is another bonus: You start noticing details that most people ignore.

The way a neighbor decorates their balcony, the way the light hits a certain wall at 5 p.m., and the tiny community of birds that live in that one tree on your street.

These little observations sound trivial, but they train your attention.

Interesting people pay attention as they have things to say about the places they live in, the people they see, the patterns they notice.

3) Journaling by hand

Journaling is another activity that looks painfully boring from the outside.

You, a pen, and a notebook.

No one can see what you are "building"; there is no metric, no audience, no like button... which is exactly why it works!

On paper, you can say things that feel messy or contradictory.

You can admit fears you are too proud to text, and you can write about jealousy, boredom, frustration, and weird desires without having to make it sound polished or wise.

Over time, those pages become a record of how your mind works.

That kind of self-knowledge is what makes someone interesting.

I have mentioned this before but almost every big decision I am happy with today started as some ugly scribble in a notebook.

It did not look impressive at the time; journaling also makes you a better listener.

When you practice naming your own thoughts, you get better at recognizing what other people might be feeling beneath their words.

That leads to deeper conversations, not just small talk.

4) Cooking slow, real food

From the outside, home cooking looks like chores: Chopping vegetables, stirring pots, and washing dishes.

Why do all that when you can tap a screen and have food show up? Because cooking slowly is one of the most underrated ways to build an interesting life.

You learn about ingredients, cultures, and techniques, you experiment, you mess up, and you discover that roasting a vegetable changes its entire personality.

If you are vegan or plant-curious, like a lot of readers here on VegOutMag, this gets even more fun.

You end up learning what to do with tofu, lentils, jackfruit, spices you cannot pronounce at first, and you start understanding nutrition enough to feed yourself and other people well.

Suddenly, your kitchen becomes a tiny laboratory.

Cooking also teaches patience: You cannot rush onions into caramelizing, and you cannot demand bread to rise faster.

Living in a world that wants instant everything, being comfortable with slow processes makes you different.

Honestly, few things are more interesting than someone who can talk about food with love, creativity, and personal experience rather than just, "Yeah, I order from that app too."

5) Practicing a craft in a clumsy way

Another slow, "boring" habit that changes you: practicing a skill you are not instantly good at: Playing an instrument, drawing, learning a language, and getting into photography.

At the beginning, it is mostly failure with wrong notes, ugly sketches, awkward sentences, and blurry photos.

From the outside, it looks like nothing is happening.

But inside, your brain is rewiring.

You are learning to tolerate imperfection, to stick with something long enough to slowly see progress, to notice details other people overlook.

Photography is like this for me.

Most of it is not glamorous because it is me sitting on the ground messing with angles, missing the shot, trying again.

That practice changed how I see the world.

I notice lines, symmetry, tiny reflections, the way colors play off each other.

Those details make everyday life more vivid.

They also give me stories to tell.

When you work on any craft like this, you collect experiences: The gig that went wrong, the trip where you tried to speak the language and completely butchered it, and the drawing that finally turned out how you imagined.

Interesting people are often just people who have stayed with a few crafts long enough to collect those stories and perspectives.

Yes, it is slow and, yes, it looks boring when you are in your room practicing the same chord again but that is where the good stuff grows.

6) Having long, undistracted conversations

In a world of DMs and group chats, sitting with one person for a long, phone-free conversation can look wildly unproductive.

No multitasking, no "just checking something quickly," and no half-watching a show in the background.

However, this is where real connection happens: When you give someone your full attention, they eventually relax into saying the thing they did not plan to say.

You learn about their childhood, their turning points, their quiet regrets, their secret dreams.

That makes you more interesting in two ways.

First, people feel seen around you and we naturally find those people compelling; the ones who make us feel heard instead of waiting for their turn to speak.

Second, you get access to a wider range of human experience.

You hear how a nurse sees the world versus a musician versus a teacher versus your friend who grew up in a different culture.

All of that lives in your mind the next time you think about career changes, politics, relationships, or mental health.

You become someone who can say, "I do not have that experience, but a friend once told me…" and then share something real, not just something you skimmed in a comment section.

Long, slow conversations are how you quietly build that archive.

The quiet way to become more interesting

None of these activities look especially impressive from the outside.

No one is going to clap for you for doing these things and there is no immediate badge or milestone.

However, over months and years, they compound.

You become someone with depth, stories, and opinions that did not come from the last viral thread.

Someone who notices things, feeds people well, asks good questions, and has their own inner life instead of just reacting to whatever is on the screen today.

If that is the kind of "interesting" you want, you do not need to overhaul your life.

Pick one slow activity from this list and give it some honest attention over the next month.

Let it be quiet, imperfect, and a little boring on the surface.

The secret is that beneath the surface, it is doing more than you think.