November 12, 2011

The Benefits of Boredom

When you’re doing nothing, you’re just getting started:

It’s easy to underestimate boredom.

However, boredom and its synonyms can also become a crucial tool of creativity. When people are immersed in monotony, they automatically lapse into a very special form of brain activity: mind-wandering.

In recent years neuroscience has dramatically revised our views of mind-wandering. [P]eople who consistently engage in more mind-wandering score significantly higher on various measures of creativity.

From the ever-fascinating Jonah Lehrer's essay, The Importance of Mind-Wandering in Wired.

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