Ask HN: How to avoid boredom in a nondestructive, sustainable way?

Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, nihil deerit.

Cicero: Epistulae ad familiares; IX, 4

(Either an exercise in Latin or web search.)

More generally, Nature is a wonderful entropy engine (not my line but I can’t find any citation online). Find a hook there…if not gardening then hikes, kayaking, birdwatching, etc.. Leave nothing but footprints.

Write a grant proposal on some area of interest that would require only paper, pencil, your library, standard computing resources, Internet. Submit it to yourself. Celebrate when you get it approved. Work at the pace you choose. Submit oral status reports to yourself, and bask in the positive feedback you receive from the only reviewer of any real merit, you. Document if you want, but don’t obsess…no one will care after 50 years anyway, though there have been exceptions (Emily Dickinson, Thomas Traherne). Write a bot that tweets you occasional praise from official-sounding organizations.

Volunteer work of any sort can be soul-affirming. Create art, music, poetry. Only boring people get bored. Don’t be boring.

Grow something. Plants, fish, brine shrimp or microbes if you're impatient; tortoises if you want to invest time. Life you love can provide you immense, endless, fractal joy.

Slime molds make great pets.

I like to read books. I'm pretty sure there are more great books than I have time to read in the rest of my life.

VR Games are fun too.

It would help to know more context. In what sense does your current state of boredom lead to destruction?