Boredom is where your best ideas go to wait for you.

Ideas need empty space to surface in, and there is no empty space left in most days. When nothing is coming in, your mind starts wandering across things it has collected and joining them up, which is where almost every good thought of yours has come from. Fill every gap with a screen and the joining never happens. The ideas are still there, waiting for a quiet minute.

Leave the headphones off on one bus ride this week. Do the dishes without anything playing. Boredom is uncomfortable for about four minutes and then it turns into thinking, and that is the part most people never reach.