A resolution for 2026: Use your time less productively
(3 min read)
The latest neuroscience tells us that boredom is precious and we should cultivate it
The New Year – a time of renewal and rebirth when we vow to get our act together. It’s a time that provides fertile ground for those online gurus, tempting us with the promise of productivity life hacks. For the ‘new you, each moment will be crammed with productive life-enhancing activity.’ Wasted minutes will be so last year.
Think of those moments you wasted in 2025! You would hop on the train for your morning commute. After a few minutes you realise you’re the only one gazing aimlessly out of the window; the other commuters sporting AirPods and looking at iPhones. You would admonish yourself, unlike your fellow travellers, you’ve wasted time that could’ve been spent productively.
Allow moments of downtime
But what if the opposite were true? What if allowing your mind those moments of downtime is precisely what makes you more effective. The latest neuroscience paints an interesting picture.
What your mind pays attention to is increasingly a battleground, in today’s media landscape.
Marketing today primarily targets our ‘attentional system’. And there’s a reason it does so in such a voracious way.
Think about it this way, our parents and grandparents’ generation were targeted with marketing that sought to exploit physiological responses: Alcohol, junk food and cigarettes.
Physiologically-directed marketing
Our children and grandchildren will be targeted in ways that exploit the mind’s attentional system. We become hooked on that little shot of dopamine that we get when we expect to be amused or entertained… or if its social media, to be noticed or envied.
The difference between attentionally-directed marketing and physiologically-directed marketing is that the former delivers payback, not just in direct financial gain, but in data. And data is of course in the words of journalist Carroll Cadwalladr, “the crack cocaine” of the tech industry.
While we knew that snacks and fizzy drinks were being actively marketed to us, marketing targeted at our attentional habits is on a scale so vast that it has been effectively invisible.
Imagination, problem-solving and creativity… it’s unlikely that any of these can survive the onslaught to our senses that we are encouraged to see as normal.
Carve out some time for daydreaming
Do you put pressure on yourself to be always up to speed with the latest podcast or TED talk? In your fleeting moments between business flights, do you feel that you should log on to your laptop to check those spreadsheets? If so, you’re like the many corporate leaders whom we are encouraging to carve out some time for daydreaming.
“Boredom isn’t a bug — it’s a feature” in the words of Arthur C. Brooks, a Harvard professor.
Brooks argues that in a world of constant stimulation — especially from phones and endless digital distraction — we’ve lost the quiet mental space that boredom naturally provides. Rather than a state to flee from, boredom activates a mode of thinking associated with daydreaming, self-reflection, and deep internal processing. When we aren’t constantly occupied with external input, our minds wander, confront big questions about meaning and purpose, and make novel connections.
Your mind’s own simulation machine
When we daydream something essential happens. The mind switches from paying attention to external stimuli. And turns towards its own internally generated stimuli.
Something called the default mode network takes over. Think of this as your mind’s own simulation machine. When our default mode network is dominant, we imagine what-if scenarios. We simulate different outcomes. We travel back-and-forth in time, generating stories and make novel connections. All of these mental activities are essential components of problems solving and creativity. It is not overly dramatic to say that daydreaming is your mind’s source of continuous renewal.
Just as an over-farmed field yields less and less, a mind bombarded with external stimulus will be less and less productive. We need what a colleague of ours at Threshold calls ‘mental fallow time.’
Now bear with us, if the analogy between agriculture and neuroscience, isn’t too much of a stretch.
Crop rotation
Crop rotation boosted agricultural output exponentially in the 18th and 19th centuries. This came down to its more scientific and systematic application. Crop rotation succeeded because it recognised a fundamental truth:
Systems degrade when stressed continuously in one direction.
This insight applies far beyond agriculture — including human cognition.
Just as soil needs variation to remain fertile, the brain requires shifts in cognitive mode and recovery periods. Without these, productivity declines.
Do your mind a favour. Become a daydreamer in 2026
To find out how we can help leaders in your organisation to be more impactful, influential and persuasive visit www.threshold.co.uk
