Jay Shetty

It is actually a state of wanting stimulation, but being unable to find anything satisfying.

It's a kind of restless searching state, an itch without a scratch.

And here's where it gets interesting.

When Man and her colleagues actually studied what that restless searching produces...

they discovered something nobody expected.

They ran an experiment where one group of participants was given a classic creativity test, the kind where you have to think of as many uses for a common object as possible, like a plastic cup.

They listed their ideas, average results.

Then they ran another group through a boring task first, copying numbers out of a phone book by hand for 20 minutes, just copying numbers, the most tedious activity they could construct.

Then they did the same creativity test,

The bored group wasn't slightly better.

They were dramatically better.

More ideas, more original ideas, more unusual ideas.

The boredom had done something to their thinking.

Man did a second version.

This time she made the boring task even more passive.

Just reading numbers from a phone book rather than copying them.

Even more boring.

The creativity scores went up even further.

Boredom wasn't the enemy of creative thought.

It was the precondition for it.