The Case for Being Bored.

Boredom is the most maligned emotion of the modern day. It is also, fMRI scans suggest, the one most consistently associated with the brain mode in which the most interesting connections get made.

When you stop forcing your attention outward — when the input dries up — a network called the default mode lights up. It is the network of mind-wandering, of self-narrative, of half-formed ideas talking quietly to other half-formed ideas. It is, in short, where ideas come from.

“A person who is never bored is a person whose default mode network is always being interrupted by someone else's content.”

A working theory of creativity

How to practice

• Walk somewhere familiar without headphones. Twenty minutes. No podcast.
• Wash dishes the slow way, looking out the window.
• Sit on a bus stop bench five minutes before the bus arrives. Just look at things.

These will, the first few times, feel unbearable. That feeling is your dopamine system recalibrating after a long evening of being fed. Wait it out. Something useful is on the other side.