Boredom is the waiting room where you finally start noticing things. Don’t rush out of it.

Boredom is what an unoccupied mind feels like just before it finds something. The discomfort is real and it is short, and most people end it within about forty seconds by reaching for a screen, which is why the part that comes afterward so rarely gets reached. Ideas, curiosity and actual noticing all live on the far side of that gap.

Try sitting in it for ten minutes without filling it. On a bus, in a queue, waiting for somebody. Nothing may happen the first few times, and eventually your attention goes looking for something on its own.