No one likes to suffer from boredom. We don't fancy boring subjects at school, boring teachers at the university, and boring assignments at work. However, we can never escape from boredom completely. But that's not a bad thing!

We often perceive boredom as an entirely negative phenomenon. But, in fact, boredom can be your trusty sidekick. A psychologist, Dr. Sandi Mann, once experimented. She gave her subjects a task that consisted of rewriting phone numbers. Incredibly tedious, isn't it? After the group had finished rewriting the numbers, Dr. Sandi Mann told them to think of as many alternative uses for the two paper cups as possible. This was a standard creativity test that J. P. Guilford, an American psychologist, founded in 1967. The test results showed that people's creativity might improve if they spent some time doing boring work beforehand. And it did happen: participants came up with some pretty interesting ways of using cups.

But Dr. Sandi Mann did not rest on that. She gave the group an even more tedious task: they had to read phone numbers aloud for a while. After it was over, the participants returned to thinking up unique ways to use the cups. This time, their ideas were much more creative! For example, in the first phase of the experiment, the group used cups as plant pots and sandbox toys. But they still thought of the cup as a container. After the second, more boring phase, the group went beyond the container, creating crazier ideas like earrings, phones, various musical instruments, and even a Madonna-style bra. Thus, Dr. Sandi Mann concluded that bored people tend to be more creative than those who are not.

The ability to be bored is one of those basic qualities that make us human beings. Perhaps many years ago, some ancestors of ours got bored and, as a result, invented the wheel. Boredom is the respite our brain should take before a burst of efficiency and creativity. If we're not bored, our executive attention network is active. And while we become more attentive and focused, the constant activity of this network prevents our brain from creating unique ideas. But boredom, in turn, triggers creative thinking.