Boredom is one of the most important things
I found this Bill Murray interview. It was him at the Toronto film festival talking about how his philosophy for working is just, you can do your best work when you’re very very relaxed. And the more relaxed you are, the better you can do what you’re trying to do. That blew my mind! That blew my fucking mind. Because up until that I thought relaxing meant like, just wasting time. You know what I mean? [But] relaxing is such a conscious effort. You don’t go on Instagram to relax, you don’t go on Facebook to relax.
Those get mistaken for relaxing so often. It becomes the practice of “Oh, I’m going to decompress by filtering in thousands of pieces of information.” All that’s doing is continuing to stress you out on a level you can’t even address…
…And it means that I’m never actually bored. And boredom is one of the most important things. If you’re never bored, your mind never wanders. And if your mind never wanders, you never get lost in thought. If you never get lost in thought, you’re never gonna think something you wouldn’t have thought otherwise.
– Dan Deacon interviewed at PopMatters (Bill Murray link)