E19. This Episode's Topic Is the Most Exciting Yet: Boredom! Oh, and There's Some Neuroscience, Too

Boredom and neuroscience in one episode? You may be thinking, "I'll give this one a pass," but I promise it's not as meh as it sounds! Boredom can actually be used as a creativity tool - and I have the neuroscience to back it up. You'll hear about what studies have shown in terms of how boredom stimulates creativity, and how to cultivate intentional boredom using several different methods. Then I delve into what the latest neuroscience on creativity shows about why boredom and related brain activities like daydreaming are so essential if you want to cultivate your own creative powers. Finally, I tackle some of the typical advice you see floating around about doing creative work, like that you should try to eliminate distractions (Twitter scrolling, anyone?), and why it might not be such good advice after all. I think you'll find this episode useful if you tend to get on your own case about not doing enough active creative work - it shows how our zone-out time is just as important if not more so than the task-oriented part of creativity. So let's get lazy!    This episode's accompanying blog post can be found here. You can also read this post for more about the CEN and DMN.Find out more about the book I mention, Creativity by Elkhonon Goldberg.