The Creative Benefits of Boredom; Harvard Business Review, 9/9/14

David Burkus, Harvard Business Review; The Creative Benefits of Boredom:

"“Gasper and Middlewood suggest that boredom boosts creativity because of how people prefer to alleviate it. Boredom, they suggest, motivates people to approach new and rewarding activities. In other words, an idle mind will seek a toy. (Anyone who has taken a long car ride with a young child has surely experienced some version of this phenomenon.)

Taken together, these studies suggest that the boredom so commonly felt at work could actually be leveraged to help us get our work done better…or at least get work that requires creativity done better. When we need to dream up new projects or programs (divergent thinking), perhaps we should start by spending some focused time on humdrum activities such as answering emails, making copies, or entering data. Afterward, as in the Mann and Cadman study, we may be better able to think up more (and more creative) possibilities to explore. Likewise, if we need to closely examine a problem and produce a concise, effective solution (convergent thinking), perhaps we should schedule that task after a particularly lifeless staff meeting. By engaging in uninteresting activities before problem-solving ones, we may be able to elicit the type of thinking we need to find creative solutions.""