The psychoanalyst Martin Wangh described boredom as an “inhibition of fantasy” and a number of studies have indicated that those suffering from “boredom proneness” lack external stimuli and are easily frustrated in challenging situations.

But perhaps we have got boredom wrong. There is a growing body of research that suggests by not allowing ourselves to be bored once in a while, we may be missing out on something important.

Channel your idleness

Many of our best ideas come to us during idle moments, such as while commuting to work, or taking a shower or a long walk. In fact, we may be at our most creative when we are bored.

In a study at Pennsylvania State University, psychologists Karen Gasper and Brianna Middlewood found participants who were bored performed better in creativity tests than those who were relaxed or feeling elated. They asked volunteers to watch video clips to evoke certain feelings, before testing their ability to think up words. The researchers found that when asked to think of vehicles, most people say “car,” but if someone was bored, their minds might wander, even as far as to respond with “camel".

The most tedious parts of our jobs may be harbouring a potential for creativity that might surprise us.

In a series of experiments conducted by psychologists Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman from the University of Central Lancashire in the UK, participants were asked to copy numbers from a telephone book before being asked to think of as many possible uses for a pair of plastic cups as they could. Compared to a control group, those who were given the tedious task beforehand were more inventive. In a second study, Mann and Cadman added a third group and assigned them an even more boring task: reading the phone book. Again, the most bored group outscored everyone else in generating significantly more uses for the pair of plastic cups.