Boredom has an image problem. It is the of the child on a long car journey, the employee watching the clock, the guest trapped by a verbose dinner companion. We treat it as an inconvenience to be eradicated, and for the first time in history we possess the means to do so instantly: a device in our pocket that can any moment with an endless supply of distraction.
Yet some psychologists that in our eagerness to abolish boredom, we may be discarding something of value. Boredom, they argue, is not a but a signal — an uncomfortable prompt indicating that our current activity is failing to engage us and that we ought to seek something more meaningful. Like pain, it is unpleasant precisely because it is meant to motivate change.
There is also evidence of a link between boredom and creativity. In one frequently cited experiment, participants who first completed a deliberately task — copying numbers from a telephone directory — subsequently generated more inventive ideas than a control group. The hypothesis is that an under-stimulated mind turns inward, wandering into daydreams in which novel connections are . Replications have produced mixed results, so caution is , but the idea resonates with the of many writers and scientists who describe their best ideas arriving during walks, showers or long, uneventful journeys.
None of this is to tedium. Chronic boredom is associated with poor mental health, and no one would advocate a return to genuinely monotonous labour. The argument is subtler: that a capacity to tolerate unstructured time, without reaching for stimulation, may be worth cultivating. The next time you find yourself in a queue with nothing to do, it might be worth resisting the phone — and seeing where your mind decides to go.