[ricardbejarano]

Boredom.

[cliffwarden]

I can't agree with this more. I've never been able to "think" my way into a good idea. I always have to daydream and have an idle mind about it for a while

[vlod]

Agreed.

Back when I was commuting on Caltrain (SFBay area train the runs mostly through SV), rather than doom-scrolling on my phone I tried hard to get into the habit of just mindlessly looking out the window, sometimes thinking about problems I had this day/week and how I would prevent/solve them using a tech solution.

Having a notepad and pen on my lap (electronic devices can be hard to avoid temptations) gave me the ability to jot things down. Sometimes solutions to unrelated problems can spark ideas for current ones.

[makeitdouble]

That's valid if you're too well off to have any other serious problem. And that's sure how we got most of our philosophy in the west, Descartes was is no way struggling to survive.

For comparison, double entry accounting was surely not invented through boredom.

[ilyt]

> For comparison, double entry accounting was surely not invented through boredom.

The man that invented it had time to spend writing books and not slaving away at work.

Your "for comparison" is same "a well off man did what they liked" as the thing you're comparing to.

[makeitdouble]

He was a merchant, and instead of writing a book actually did the thing and spread the practice:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-entry_bookkeeping

[KineticLensman]

No, but perhaps from the tedium of trying to reconcile accounts managed without double-entry

[ilyt]

I'm pretty sure everything you and I think boring have someone interested in it enough to research.

[GrumpyNl]

Or the toilet.