Boredom is the waiting room where good ideas show up.

Ideas need empty time to surface, and empty time has been almost entirely eliminated. Once every queue and bus ride is filled, your mind never drifts, and drifting is where connections between unrelated things get made. What looks like a dull afternoon is often the preparation for something you think of during it.

Be deliberately bored for twenty minutes this week. No phone, no music, nothing to read. Stare out of a window as though it were a legitimate activity, because for this purpose it is the activity.