I listened to the latest Prof G Markets twice. Scott Galloway and Ed Elson are playing with a question: Has Apple lost its mojo? Is it no longer a growth company? Has it matured? Has it become... boring? And that’s when it hit me—
We have lost the plot.

We don’t reward stability. We don’t respect longevity. We don’t value things that just work anymore. Instead, we’ve built an economic system where meaningless change is more exciting than real innovation, where flipping last year’s model on its head is considered progress. Where companies—terrified of being labelled boring—crank out half-baked, dopamine-drip features no one asked for. Flip phones? AI-for-the-sake-of-AI? Hardware gimmicks that exist to sell you more hardware? It’s a circus of distraction; nobody can keep up with it.

So, if you give me five of your minutes, I’ll try to persuade you that boring isn’t just good—it’s what we need.

I spend a lot of time inside Apple’s ecosystem. Not because I’m a die-hard zealot, but because I care about tools that work. And for all its faults, Apple has built some of the most reliable, thoughtfully designed products in modern history.

Not the flashiest. Not always the most cutting-edge. But the ones that—year after year—just feel right. The ones that disappear into the background and let me focus on the work I do.

That’s why I use them. That’s why I notice when they change. And that’s why Apple is the best example of the disease I’m talking about: They know how to build products that last and will soon be punished by the markets.

I have five-year-old Apple devices that still run like beasts. They’re fast, functional, and do everything they were designed to do—nothing more, nothing less. And that should be enough.

But that’s not where attention is directed. Instead, we’re conditioned to believe that progress means new, that better means upgraded, and that last year’s machine is now somehow inadequate. And worse, the software updates, the performance tweaks, the subtly engineered nudges all whisper the same message:

Move on. Buy more. Buy new. Stay in the cycle.

Let’s not get it twisted—this isn’t just about tech companies pushing new products. They’re playing to their real audience: Wall Street and our fabricated anxieties.

One of those audiences is easily manipulated, and the other is impossible to satisfy. I'll let you decide which is which.

A business that delivers 2% annual growth and keeps its sales rock solid? Boring. But in the world of market speculation, it’s not about how well you perform—it’s about how much better you did than some overpaid analyst’s guess.

That’s the game. A dopamine-fueled treadmill where companies aren’t just expected to grow; they’re expected to outgrow every prediction, every quarter, forever.

And when they don’t? When they prioritise sustainability over speed?
When they choose longevity over churn? They get labelled as mature. Stagnant. Boring.  And boring? Boring has a terrible reputation.

The problem isn’t just "them". It’s mostly us.
Marketing works. We’ve been trained to see stability as failure, and we were never taught how to deal with boredom.

Our attention spans shrink, relationships don’t last, we throw away more food, more products, more people—because there’s always something newer, trendier, “better” around the corner. Everything is temporary by design. And we’ve bought in. We cycle through everything like fast fashion. We crave new—not because we need it but because we’ve been conditioned to want it.

The idea that something could stay good enough for too long? That's boring, and boring is bad. It’s a threat to the system. A threat to growth. A threat to excitement. A threat to our "will" to live like an anxious teenager forever.

Boring isn’t just good; boring is essential. And not because I say so, but because reality says so.

Boring is a government that works, a stable society, a quiet neightbourhood—the kind that lets you build a business, plan a family, a future, and sleep at night knowing the world isn’t on fire.
Boring is a stable partner who’s there through the good mornings and the hungover ones.
Boring is a computer that runs like a beast for ten years, not one that needs replacing the second a thinner model drops.
Boring is a phone that doesn’t slow to a crawl the moment a new one hits the shelves.
Boring is software updates that enhance, not sabotage.
Boring is a tool that works so well, for so long, that you forget it even exists—because that’s the point. It serves you, not the other way around.
Boring is the real sustainability. Not some corporate greenwashing stunt. Not a “carbon-neutral” pledge thrown onto a keynote slide to appease regulators.
Not a well-written speech delivered at the UN by an actor or an anxious school dropout.
 Real sustainability is a product so well-built that you don’t need to replace it with every cycle, with every distraction.

We should demand better—from ourselves first, then from organisations, markets, and leaders.

That means changing how we buy, build, and think about what matters. Not rejecting progress—but redefining it. Moving from mindless consumption to mindful use.
We should demand technology that serves us, not vice versa.

In this context, boring is better. And if that makes Wall Street anxious?
Good.

They need to change, too.