Srinivas, I simply don’t know what to say

Zenbad (nice one, Christopher!), I like your question and it deserves more thought than I’m going to give it, but plowing on regardless . . . one benefit is time, another is mode of thought, and a final is stochastic felicity.

Time: boredom implies time on your hands, I find. Perhaps I have little to do, and so feel bored. More likely, I have a ton of things to do, but am bored with it so either (a) procrastinate or (b) do it anyway but let my mind enter a neverland of dreams. Either way, I gain time to ponder things which I otherwise would not give time to.

Mode of thought: the fuzziness of a bored mind lends itself to slower modes of thought, don’t you find? Very undermind. This ties in nicely with the “time” benefit above.

Stochastic felicity: I think I just invented this term, but it scans well. By it I mean something like “random luck”: wandering around my office I’ll pick distractedly at a book or a discarded journal article, and before I know it my undermind has spotted a phrase or equation which just happens to be the vital link in an unsolved puzzle I’m working on. Felcitious, and stochastic.

Phil, what would you list as the benefits of boredom?

Yours in gratitude,

Christopher