Prove me wrong: Boredom, or idleness, is essetial for creativity.
Over the years I've noticed that it is the periods of boredom, or not having things to do, or in other words, being idle, are the ones that bring out the creativity in me.
Lately I've been extremely busy just keeping up with work (quite successfully.) Several indenpendent things happened at same time (virus that messed with world being just one of them) and caused massive work load for us. During this time I've been able to do just the essentials. Yes, I kept things rolling and lights on, but it's just doing what is required. There is no creativity, no new things involved.
On the other hand, when this virus first hit, our business was second in line to get hit (first being our customers.) While this was not a financial problem for us, it meant that we got almost no phone calls, no messages, nothing. Suddenly lots of time previously taken by other things -- was free. I suddenly had (almost) nothing urgent to do!
It took me a week or so before I installed full development environment at my home computer and in few weeks more that things rolling on things I almost never do. I had fun literally playing around with game ideas, and while nothing came out of them, they still were relaxing distraction.
Whenever I have had extended down time something similar has happened every time. Sometimes work related (some low-priority thing I might not normally touch), but I also get started with projects I haven't had energy to start before, like game development. I never get very far there (down time is almost always limited) but at least I get something done.
Years ago I read some blog post from someone, I don't remember the details, but gist was that as a business owner the goal is to make yourself unnecessary. Make your employers do the work - you teach them how, they keep the business rolling, and you make sure they have the tools to do that. Maybe then I could start thinking about other things to get done.
At this moment, I feel that I am on route to that goal. There's just this small issue of needing good software people. These days they're not exactly easily available...
