Why boredom is precious

We've eliminated boredom from our lives. It's one of the greatest mistakes of our era.

Boredom is a signal. It tells you your mind has space, that attention isn't occupied. For millennia, it was in these spaces that ideas, creative daydreams and insights arose.

Now, the moment a queue, a commute or a silence appears, the reflex is instant: pull out the phone. The space is filled before it's even been felt.

Cal Newport, in "Digital Minimalism," argues for protecting some unstructured time rather than filling every gap with another stream of input.

The experiment: This week, the next time you're waiting for something, let the boredom come. Watch what happens in your mind when you don't fill it. If the first move is usually a phone check, use the stop checking your phone guide to test a pause before the feed opens.