Dr. Cal Newport

Your mind is – sometimes we get the distraction.

Sometimes we don't.

That's a much better place to be because now when it comes time to actually focus on something, your mind is like I've been here before.

Like we don't always get the distraction.

So this is going back early 20th century psychology.

There's probably a more neuroscientific way to think about this.

But it's like breaking Pavlovian loops of like sometimes at the end of the day, I'm exhausted.

it's Instagram time and it like scratches an itch.

But other times I'm bored, I'm in line at the pharmacy and I don't look at the phone.

My brain learns like, yeah, we don't always do it.

And so the idea is that, you know, if you make boredom more tolerable,

then you're much more likely to succeed with doing things that are boring but hard.

And I think deep work, for example, is boring just in the clinical sense if there's lack of novel stimuli.

You're just doing the same thing for a long time.

So I've always advocated for that.

It's like you shouldn't be super uncomfortable with boredom.

Like don't go seeking it.

I'm not a big believer of – and boredom is where all creative insight comes from.

I think it's a strong evolutionary cue.

Like leave this state.