Treat boredom and side projects as a renewable idea engine

A small design team was drowning in deadlines. Their lead kept saying they needed new ideas, but no one had time to chase any. They decided to formalize something they were already doing in secret: side projects. Each person kept two playful threads alive, and they scheduled one hour of protected play a week. It sounded indulgent. Three weeks later, a throwaway animation test became the hook of a client campaign.

Boredom played its part too. The team started joking about “laundry ideas,” the ones that show up when your hands are busy and your mind wanders. One developer took long, device-free walks after lunch and kept an index card in a back pocket. Twice in a month, they came back with fixes for bugs that had stumped them at the screen. The office microwave beeped, coffee cooled, and progress ticked forward.

Not everything should be monetized. One analyst kept watercolor as a hobby and refused to post it. That private space gave them a place to experiment without judgement. Oddly enough, the color studies changed their slide decks. They swapped cluttered heatmaps for simpler gradients that told clearer stories. The quarterly review landed better because the ideas had room to breathe.

This pattern lines up with incubation effects in creativity research, where stepping away lowers fixation and allows unconscious processing. It also draws on diversification of projects to manage mood and maintain momentum. And it protects intrinsic motivation by keeping at least one thing just for joy. I might be wrong, but many teams don’t lack time, they lack protected play and a boredom ritual that lets ideas surface.

Pick two to four small side projects that feel like play and give them one protected hour this week, no deliverables, just exploration. Add a boredom ritual to your day, like a device-free walk or easy chore, and keep a note card handy so ideas have a place to land. Choose one hobby you won’t monetize or post so you have a private lab where experiments can be messy. At the end of the week, write one line about how a side project or hobby fed your main work so your brain sees the payoff. Block the hour on your calendar now.