No. 9 1 min read
A short defense of boredom
The best ideas I had this year arrived while waiting for a train that was forty minutes late.
My train was late last Tuesday, and my phone was dead. For forty minutes I had nothing to do but look at the platform.
By the time the train arrived I had sketched, in my head, the entire structure of a new typeface. Not because the platform was inspiring. It was very much not. But because nothing else was asking for my attention, my mind went looking for something to do.
We have engineered boredom out of our lives almost completely. I am starting to think we have engineered out a lot of good ideas along with it.