The Bored Brain Theory: How Ideas Really Form

Coming up with new content ideas is hard. No one really talks about that part. We see polished posts, clever hooks, beautifully structured sessions… and assume the ideas behind them arrived fully formed. Effortless. Obvious. Natural.

But most of the time, they don’t.

Most of the time, you sit there staring at a blank page, wondering how everyone else seems to have a constant stream of inspiration while you’re trying to remember when your brain last produced anything remotely original.

For years, I genuinely believed I just wasn’t one of those people, the “creative” ones. The ones who always have ideas. The ones who somehow know what to say, what to make, what to create. I grew up believing I wasn’t creative. Not even a little bit.

I had a very clear picture of what “creative” looked like. It looked like my mum, effortlessly artistic, naturally talented, the kind of person who could just make things beautiful. It also looked like my brother, casually picking up a guitar and making it sound like he’d been playing for years.

 And then there was me. Very… plain…

I was good at following. Give me instructions, and I’d deliver. Reliable. Consistent. Nothing ground-breaking, but nothing disastrous either. But leading something? Creating something new? Coming up with ideas worth sharing? That felt completely out of reach.

I didn’t raise my hand nor speak up, and I definitely didn’t think I had anything original to contribute. Because in my mind, I just didn’t have it.

Looking back, that wasn’t entirely true. There was one thing I was…. Curious. I loved books. Old encyclopaedias, random topics, things that were probably outdated but still fascinating. I’d jump from one subject to another with absolutely no structure.

My mind, however, was… chaotic. Concentration wasn’t my strength. I’d drift. Get distracted. Start something, then mentally wander off somewhere else. At the time, that didn’t feel like a strength.

Later in life, reading became an escape between chaotic weekends, routines, and the kind of tiredness that doesn’t leave much room for anything beyond the basics, books became a quiet space. And I didn’t read with a plan. I read randomly. Yes, I had a favourite fiction author. But I also found myself drawn to completely different things, human behaviour, decision-making, how the mind works.

It didn’t feel productive, it just felt… interesting.

Then I came across The Ideation Equation – How a Handful of Habits Can Make You a Creative Genius  by Linus Bille .

And I remember thinking…wait. A method for creativity? Is that even real? Because up until that point, I genuinely believed creativity was something you either had… or you didn’t. I wasn’t fully convinced, but I gave it a go.

Audiobook on. Physical book open. Fully immersed, slightly disconnected from the world, my preferred learning setup. And then it pointed me towards another book.. and I did not wait until I finish the one I was reading before ordering it:

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson.

Than immediately after finishing the Ideation Equation, I was already deep diving into Where Good Ideas come from. Both books ate very good and I highly recommend them.

My biggest lesson? Good ideas don’t just appear out of thin air. They grow from whatever we feed your brain. All those random books I’d been reading? All those unrelated topics? All that curiosity that felt a bit scattered? That was my mental library.  Every fact, every concept, every odd little idea quietly waiting as a dot.

And then comes the part no one talks about enough: boredom. The best ideas don’t show up when we try to be creative. They show up when we’re bored… painfully bored. Because when our brain is bored, it doesn’t just switch off, it starts looking for a little dopamine hit and shifts into a mode called the Default Mode Network. This is the stage where daydreaming, memory wandering, connecting unrelated dots and creative insight happen finally has room to appear. If you are into scientific papers like me, you can learn more about it at The role of the default mode network in creativity.

And I can absolutely confirm that from experience. At the time, I was spending entire days staring at thousands of lines of undocumented SQL and DAX. No comments. No context. Just line after line of “what is this even doing?” The kind of work that numbs your creativity so thoroughly that your brain starts quietly searching for an escape route. And while I was just trying to survive the code, the Default Mode Network was busy stitching ideas together in the background.

And that’s when it happened, ideas for content, events, sessions… they all started bubbling up. Not because I was trying to be creative, but because my brain finally had the space (and the boredom) to start connecting the dots.

It didn’t just happen once, either. It kept happening. Most recently, I had another one of those unexpected “oh!” moments. I was reading a book about how to win a debate which was not particularly remarkable (I mean.. it was boring!!!) But when I read about Aristotle and his three pillars of persuasion:

• Ethos
• Logos
• Pathos

And that was it. Eureka! I remember stopping mid-page. The book? Immediately irrelevant. Because all these dots started connecting.

• Audience trust.
• Design choices.
• Empathy-driven and accessible design

And right there, the idea just… formed. “Ethos, Pathos & Logos: Aristotle’s Lesson for Ethical Data Design” Yes. You heard that right.

I dropped the book, opened my laptop, and the session description just flowed. No overthinking. No second-guessing. Just clarity.

It also happened to be the last day to submit a session for SQLBits 2026. So I submitted it. And then… it got accepted.

I was flabbergasted when I got the news…not because I had this “great idea”, but because of how it happened. It wasn’t forced. It wasn’t the result of sitting down and thinking, “Right, I need to be creative now.” It was the result of reading random things, collecting ideas without pressure and letting my brain wander freely, having space to connect the dots when it needed to.

For years, I thought I didn’t have ideas. But actually I wasn’t feeding my brain enough variety. And I definitely wasn’t giving it time to process. Creativity isn’t about being the most artistic person in the room. It’s about input… and then space.

Feed your brain with different things, even things that feel unrelated. Let yourself be bored every now and then. Trust that something is happening in the background.

Because those “eureka” moments are built quietly, over time, from everything you’ve absorbed. So if you’ve ever thought, “I’m just not creative”… Maybe it’s not that you don’t have ideas. Maybe your brain is just waiting for the right moment to connect them.

And sometimes, that moment looks like a long shower, a quiet walk or very long day with undocumented SQL.