Being Bored Makes You Innovative in Two Ways

You associate slack time with tediousness and boredom. In practice though, having periods of 'nothing-to-do' actually stimulates innovation. Being bored makes you innovative in more than one way. 

You get your best ideas when you're not working.

First of all, it's scientifically proven that slack time sparks creativity. Let me ask you the question: "At which moments of the day do you get your best ideas?". Probably outside of work, right? You get them for example when you wake up, when you're under the shower, driving or jogging. A research-initiative among business professionals from all over the world here on LinkedIn confirms this (see: Top 10 Eureka Moments: shower, sleep and drive), as you can read in the following quotes.

You get your best ideas….

"in my dreams, either sleeping or day dreaming, while walking in the woods or outdoors in nature, but rarely when I am in the office."

"lying in my bed just before sleeping; I often get up then to write down the idea in order not to forget it; when showering; when doing a walk in nature."

"whilst driving, many times have I had to call my own phone leaving a voice mail with the idea before I forget it!"

"walking the dog, I almost see things more clearly than sat at a desk. Quieting the conscious mind giving the unconscious mind room to breath."

"late at night about 10 min after I go to bed. When my brain has slowed down and I am free to think whatever I want".

Now, there is a second reason how innovation benefits from slack time.  A recent study by professor Ajay Agrawal (University of Toronto - Rotman School of Management), Christian Catalini (Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management), and Avi Goldfarb (University of Toronto - Rotman School of Management) highlights a new aspect. Slack time makes you also more innovative, as you take real action. They analyzed activity on Kickstarter, the crowdfunding website, in nearly 6,000 American cities. They found out that "mundane, execution-oriented tasks, such as those associated with launching a crowdfunding campaign (e.g., administration, planning, promotion), are an important input to innovation that may benefit significantly from slack time".

 Slack time offers you the opportunity to DO something with your creative ideas.

To get your idea launched requires a huge amount of work. So a time-off of your regular duties is a great enabler for getting all the operational and organizational red tape done. Corporate innovators and Startup founders know this so well from practice. Paul Graham, Founder of the renowned Y-Combinator, says in 'How to Get Startup Ideas': “It’s no coincidence that Microsoft and Facebook both got started in January. At Harvard that is (or was) Reading Period, when students have no classes to attend because they’re supposed to be studying for finals.” 

A lot of companies struggle with becoming more innovative, although the need for it is unquestioned. They put on extra pressure, making people work harder to innovate in overtime. From practice I know that when pressure gets too high no original ideas materialize. That's why well-known companies like Google, 3M and Wella have special slack time policies to spark innovative ideas and - actions among their employees.

So, if you want to be innovative, give yourself and your employees some slack-time. I assure you most people won't be bored for long as mentioned in the title of my post. A lot of them will definitely spend their time on something new, they wanted to do already for a long time and never came to it due to the heavy workload. 

Do yourself a favor, give yourself some slack

In this way you create an inspiring environment where people can get ‘slow hunches’ and work on them in their slack time, which is essential to spark innovation.

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