What to Do When You’re Bored at the Library

There comes a point in every student’s life when the library stops feeling academic and starts feeling… existential. You’re surrounded by books, deadlines, stressed people aggressively typing, and yet you have absolutely no idea what to do when you’re bored at the library.

You came here to be productive. Instead, you’re staring at a wall, questioning your degree choice, and wondering how long it would take security to notice if you simply lay down on the floor.

So here’s a very real, very unhinged guide to surviving library boredom. No toxic productivity. No fake motivation. Just honest student behaviour.

Weird Things to Do When You’re Bored at the Library

Let’s be clear: boredom in the library hits differently. You can’t leave. You don’t want to study. Your phone battery is already at 23 percent. Desperate times.

So here’s what students actually do.

You start people watching like it’s a professional sport. You invent backstories. That guy in the corner is definitely rewriting his dissertation for the fifth time. The girl with six highlighters hasn’t written a single sentence in 40 minutes. You silently judge everyone while feeling morally superior for absolutely no reason.

Then comes the fake productivity phase. You open a document. Rename it something serious. Adjust margins. Change the font three times. You convince yourself this counts as progress. It doesn’t, but it feels productive enough to delay guilt.

At some point, you Google extremely specific things. Not course related. Life related. “Can you change careers at 22?” “How much do alpaca farmers make?” “What happens if you don’t use your degree?” This is a canon event.

You also reread old notes and realise you have no memory of writing them. Who is this person? Why did they underline that sentence? Were they okay?

If things get really bad, you start planning your life in absurd detail. Future flat. Future job. Future routine. You decide you’ll wake up at 6am every day even though you physically struggle to wake up at 9.

And finally, the classic: you tell yourself you’ll leave in five minutes. You stay for another hour. This is a law of nature.

Productive Things to Do When You’re Bored at the Library (That Aren’t Actually Studying)

When boredom peaks, the idea of “just revise” is offensive. But there are low-effort things that feel useful without melting your brain.

You can clean your digital life. Delete random files. Unsubscribe from emails. Organise folders you’ll never open again. It feels like control.

You can brain dump everything that’s stressing you out onto a page. Not structured. Not aesthetic. Just chaos. Sometimes that alone clears enough mental space to survive the day.

You can read something completely unrelated to your degree. An article. A random Wikipedia rabbit hole. Your brain needs stimulation, not punishment.

Or you can accept the truth: studying alone while bored is miserable, and humans were not designed to rot silently in libraries.

What to Do When You’re Bored at the Library: Just Uni-Chat With Others

Here’s the part no one tells you. A lot of library boredom isn’t about the work. It’s about isolation.

You’re surrounded by people, yet completely disconnected.

This is exactly why Uni-Chat exists.

Instead of doomscrolling or pretending to study, you can see who else is nearby, who’s also procrastinating, who’s up for a break, a coffee, a rant, or even a spontaneous study session. No awkward cold approaches. No guessing. Just real students, right there.

Sometimes the best thing to do when you’re bored at the library isn’t forcing productivity. It’s finding other people who feel the same way and turning boredom into something social again.

Because libraries don’t have to feel lonely. And studying doesn’t have to be a solo endurance test.

Next time you’re stuck wondering what to do when you’re bored at the library, maybe don’t suffer in silence. Uni-Chat it.