Jay Shetty

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.

But why?

Why would sitting with empty, frustrated restlessness make you more creative?

The answer lives in the most important brain system you might have never heard of.

And I need to spend some real time here because once you understand this, you will never look at an idle moment the same way again.