I've noticed something extraordinary people have in common:

Newton spent months in isolation staring at an apple tree. Einstein took long, solitary walks where he'd think about nothing in particular. Kanye West created some of his best music in isolation, away from the noise. JK Rowling conceived Harry Potter during a boring train ride. Steve Jobs took walks in nature with no phone, no agenda, no stimulation.

We like to think of these people as geniuses. But most of them weren't born geniuses.

They don't have better genetics.
They don't have access to more information.
And they certainly don't work harder than you do.

But they have something else: Boredom. Long stretches of uninterrupted, unstimulated time where their minds could wander.

While everyone else was busy seeking constant entertainment, they were doing the opposite.

And that's exactly where their breakthroughs came from. But if boredom is where genius lives, why do we run from it?

The answer is simple but shocking.

As it turns out, your brain hates boredom.

It hates it so much that it would rather you hurt yourself just to avoid it. I'm not kidding...

In 2014, researchers at the University of Virginia ran an experiment. They put people alone in a room with nothing but their thoughts for 15 minutes.

No phone. No books. No distractions. Just them and their mind.

Before they started, the researchers gave them an option: They could press a button to receive a mild electric shock.

You'd think nobody would do it. Why would anyone choose pain over boredom?

But as it turns out, 67% of men and 25% of women did it anyway.

People literally preferred to hurt themselves rather than sit alone with their own thoughts.

That's how intolerable boredom has become. That's how much we've trained our brains to fear the one mental state where genius actually happens.

Before I show you how to use this mental state to access genius level thinking, we first need to understand what is it.

Boredom is an unlikely candidate when you ask someone what makes a genius. Few of us even understand what it really is.

There is no universally accepted definition of boredom. But it can be defined as an uncomfortable feeling that occurs when there is a mismatch between the desire for meaningful mental engagement and the availability of stimulating options.

The reason this happens is because humans evolved in environments where information was scarce and novelty was valuable. The brain developed a novelty‑seeking system to motivate exploration.

In the distant past, boredom was rare because daily life forced sustained attention on survival tasks such as hunting, gathering, tool‑making, taking care of children and reproducing.

Yes, that too.

But even in pre-modern civilisations we still weren't boredom adverse. In fact, many cultures welcomed it and saw it as an important part of life.

Stoic philosophers such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius practiced prosoche (mindful attention) and apatheia (freedom from disturbance). They deliberately sought quiet contemplation to examine thoughts.

In Medieval Europe monks followed the Liturus Horarum (Divine Office) with multiple silence periods throughout the day for prayer and contemplation. This was structured boredom for prayer and contemplation that was sacred and deliberately used for spiritual insight.

19th‑century Romantic poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote about “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” that arose during wanderings or quiet moments in nature leading to poetic inspiration.

Our brains are evolutionarily wired to benefit from boredom, but modern technology has turned boredom into an uncomfortable, avoided state, which cuts off the very mental space where genius ideas are born.

The dopamine pathways in your brain are hijacked by artificial stimuli such as social media and endless scrolling. Modern overstimulation creates a perpetual “wanting” loop and this is why it's so painful for you to entertain your boredom. To alleviate the pain you end up reaching for you phone without even realising.

A study of 2,500 smartphone users tracked daily “boredom episodes.” and found that the average person experiences 14 boredom episodes per day, each lasting 2–5 minutes, and participants report high distress when unable to fill the gap with a device.

But here's what we miss out on when we avoid boredom...

Access to a powerful mental state called the Default Mode Network (DMN). You can think of it as the brain’s “creativity engine” circuit. When you’re not focused on a task—when you’re day‑dreaming, remembering, planning, or just letting your mind wander, this network lights up. It’s the part of your brain that stitches together memories, ideas, and possibilities that aren’t tied to what you’re seeing or doing right now.

It only activates when you're NOT stimulated. When you're bored. When you're thinking about nothing in particular. That's when your brain connects seemingly unconnected ideas. That's when you solve problems you've been stuck on for weeks. This is when genius happens and history proves it.

Newton didn't discover gravity while reading. He discovered it while bored, staring at an apple tree.
Einstein couldn't have developed the idea of relativity if he was constantly glued to his radio. He developed it during long, unstimulated walks.
Kanye didn't create his best music while scrolling. He created it in silence, on remote islands.

They weren't geniuses despite boredom. They were geniuses because of it.

Now you understand what boredom is, why it's essential for your most creative work, and how the geniuses of our past and present use it to accomplish things that average people will never achieve in their entire lives.

That's truly powerful.

But understanding isn't enough. You need a system.

Here's how to unlock your genius potential and activate your DMN. It's actually stupidly simple.

Not meditation. Not "mindfulness." Just boredom.

Start small. Build the habit.

During this time, let your mind wander. That's when the real thinking happens. You're not trying to meditate or achieve anything. You're not trying to "be present" or "find inner peace."

You're just... bored. And that's the point.

It will hurt. It will feel like you're wasting time. It will feel useless.

Your brain will scream at you to check your phone. Your dopamine system will beg for stimulation. You'll feel an almost physical urge to do something.

That's not a sign you're doing it wrong. That's a sign you're doing it right.

Once you've scheduled your boredom blocks, you need to protect them.

This is where energy tracking comes in.

Energy tracking is a simple system: You assign a "unit cost" to every activity in your day, then track how many units you spend. At the end of the day, you check how many units you have left.

Think of it like a bank account for your mental energy.

Daily Budget: 1,000 units

Every activity you do costs a certain number of units:

At the start of your day:

Throughout the day:

At the end of the day:

This ledger does three things:

1. It makes the invisible visible.
Most people have no idea where their mental energy goes. They feel exhausted at the end of the day but can't explain why. The ledger shows you exactly where your energy is being drained.

2. It reveals your biggest energy-hogs.
You might discover that:

Once you see these drains, you can cut them.

3. It guarantees you protect your boredom block.
By reserving 15 units at the start of the day, you're making a commitment to yourself: "No matter what happens today, I'm protecting this time for my DMN to work."

When you see "15 units reserved for boredom block," you know you have the mental bandwidth to actually do the block. And when you do the block, your brain generates the insights that separate geniuses from everyone else.

Now that you're protecting your boredom blocks and tracking your energy, you need to stop the constant bleeding of stimulation.

Most people graze on information all day: a notification here, a newsletter there, a quick scroll through social media, a podcast during the commute.

This constant grazing keeps your dopamine system hungry and your DMN offline.

Instead, batch your information consumption into specific windows:

Everything else? Off-limits.

No checking your phone between these windows. No "quick scrolls." No "just one more notification."

When you batch, you're doing two things:

This is the final and most most important stop.

Treat your boredom block like a non-negotiable appointment with yourself.

Not a "nice-to-have." Not a "when you have time." A commitment.

After a few days of protecting your boredom blocks:

It will feel like magic but it's just neuroscience. It's what happens when you give your brain permission to do what it evolved to do: think deeply.

Now you've created a system where your DMN can fire, your creativity can flow, and your genius can shine.

You now have the system. You understand the science. You know how the greatest minds in history leveraged their boredom to become... great.

But understanding isn't doing. So here's what I want you to do:

For just 7 days, run this experiment. Starting tomorrow schedule one 15-minute boredom block.

No phone. No input. Just you and your thoughts.

Do it for 7 days straight.

After each block, write down three things:

That's all. No journaling. No meditation. No "optimization." Just notice.

By day 7, you'll have something most people will never have: access to their untapped genius.

That's when everything changes.

You will taste what it feels like to think without interruption.
To have ideas surface without forcing them.
To access the part of your brain we like to call "genius".

You'll realize that the time you thought was "wasted" was actually the most valuable time of your day.

After the 7 days, you'll face a choice:

Do you go back to the scroll? Or **do you protect this?

That choice is yours alone. But I can tell you this: every genius in history chose to protect it.

And you can too.