Boredom

To the extent that we can give a brief answer to the question of where novel ideas come from, it's curiosity. That's what people are usually feeling before having them.

When a friend of mine used to grumble because he had to write a

paper for school, his mother would tell him: find a way to make it

interesting. That's what you need to do: find a question that makes

the world interesting. People who do great things look at the same

world everyone else does, but notice some odd detail that's

compellingly mysterious.

Meaninglessness is boring. Boredom can be described as a meaning withdrawal, in analogy with drug withdrawal, as a discomfort that tells us that our need for meaning is not being met.

Curiosity seems to be more individual than fastidiousness about truth or resistance to being told what to think. To the degree people have the latter two, they're usually pretty general, whereas different people can be curious about very different things. So perhaps curiosity is the compass here. Perhaps, if your goal is to discover novel ideas, yo... See more

Is there a way to cultivate curiosity? To start with, you want to avoid situations that suppress it. How much does the work you're currently doing engage your curiosity? If the answer is "not much," maybe you should change something.

"Boredom has at its core the desiring of satisfying engagement but not being able to achieve that," Eastwood said. "And attention is the cognitive process whereby we interface with both the external world and our internal thoughts and feelings. So it falls logically that attention must be at the core of the definition."

It's the same with people who

do great things. They know they'll feel bad if they don't work,

and they have enough discipline to get themselves to their desks

to start working. But once they get started, interest takes over,

and discipline is no longer necessary.

Do you think Shakespeare was gritting his teeth and diligently

trying to write Great Literature? Of course not. He was having

fun. That's why he's so good.

Kids are curious, but the curiosity I mean has a different shape from kid

curiosity. Kid curiosity is broad and shallow; they ask why at

random about everything. In most adults this curiosity dries up

entirely. It has to: you can't get anything done if you're always

asking why about everything. But in ambitious adults, instead of

drying up, curiosity be... See more