Not long ago, I realized that I hadn't been truly bored in years.
Every spare minute, whether I was waiting for a bus or standing in line for coffee, had been swallowed up by my phone.
At first glance, this seems like a harmless habit.
Why stare at a wall when you can catch up on the news?
Yet psychologists have long argued that boredom is not a problem to be solved but a signal worth listening to.
When the mind has nothing to latch onto, it starts to wander, and a wandering mind is where many good ideas come from.
In one well-known study, people who first spent fifteen minutes copying numbers from a phone book later came up with more creative uses for a pair of plastic cups than people who had skipped the dull task.
So last month I decided to put the idea to the test.
For thirty days, I left my phone in my bag whenever I was waiting for something.
The first week was harder than I had expected; my hand kept reaching for a device that wasn't there.
By the third week, however, something had shifted.
I noticed the color of the sky on my walk to work, came up with a name for my sister's new bakery, and finally figured out how to fix a stubborn bug in my code.
I am not suggesting that we throw our phones away.
But the next time you find yourself with nothing to do, resist the urge to fill the gap.
Boredom, it turns out, may be the price of a good idea.