Sparse Stimulation

My clearest and sharpest thinking occurs when I’m bored. Unfortunately, it seems like there is a billion (trillion?) dollar industry centered on sucking all of the boredom out of you. There is now an effectively infinite amount of stimulation available in the digital age; we could consume new content for our entire lives and by the end of our life we would barely scratch the surface of all the content that exists. So, it is possible to never be bored. This was not the case up until a few decades ago.

Nature on its own offers very limited stimuli. Maybe boredom is by design. It feels weird to do nothing, yet its second-order effects are so massively beneficial in the long run. My best research ideas come when I’m laying in bed at night. My deepest introspective thoughts come when I’m standing still in the shower. These moments also count as progress. In fact, these insights are more valuable to me than any other use of my time.

The counterintuitive aspect of boredom is perhaps how sparse the rewards are: out of ~30 minutes of laying in bed, maybe only 30 seconds of it are spent reflecting on a great idea and the rest of the time does not ultimately yield anything tangible. This may be what drives us to engage in constant stimulation, as every second feels like it is providing something to us. But again, this is an illusion: those 30 seconds of creativity and imagination outweigh the counterfactual 30 minutes of constant yet unproductive engagement.