[havan_agrawal]

I might be suffering from imposter syndrome, but I feel like I'm not the right audience for "taking advantage of boredom".

I feel people who benefit from this "diffuse state" are those who already have a base level of competence in their field or challenging problems they're trying to solve, and so boredom gives their brain an opportunity to express creativity in that domain.

For me, my brain is just "quiet" when bored. It doesn't come up with "novel ways to solve problem X", or "a brand new idea". When it is at all noisy, it is mostly regurgitation of thoughts I've already had before, replays of conversations from the past week, mundane things like that.

Does anyone else feel this way, or is it just me?

[nullandvoid]

I think this is a learnt skill. If you're not constantly engaging with new material, asking questions on what you're reading, learning with intent, then your brain isn't going to evolve from this baseline on its own randomly.

I say this as someone trying to move the needle towards this same thing.

Some days I am suprised at my motivation to learn new things, and questions I ask / relationships I form - much more so when i've been putting in time deliberarely practicing how I learn each day.

[3abiton]

For me it depends on the projects I worked on intensly. After months of delivery, I sometimes stumble upon some example that might trigger an idea later on when I can't fall asleep that gives me new insights of some of those projects.