Sit through ten minutes of boredom without your phone and you’ll meet thoughts you didn’t know you had.

Boredom is where a lot of thinking happens, and it has become almost impossible to reach. Any gap longer than four seconds gets filled now, which means the slightly odd ideas that only surface in an unoccupied mind never get the chance. They are not profound. They are just yours, and you have not heard from them in a while.

Take one bus ride, one queue, one walk this week with the phone in your pocket and nothing in your ears. Ten minutes is enough. Keep a note afterwards for anything that showed up, because it tends to arrive once and then leave.