Hello there, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC, where today we're speaking to the professionally dull.

Boredom Lab is a psychology lab at York University where we make people bored for science.

Okay, the scientists aren't boring, but they do study boredom and how much surprisingly we may have to thank it for.

The new ways of working, the new ways of shopping, new ways of living.

It's all creative solutions to problems that we might not have had that creativity

had we not had the boredom to allow those creative juices to flow.

The bore. What is it good for? Business Daily from the BBC.

Thank you. The Boar. What is it good for? Business Daily from the BBC. So one of my favorites that someone sent me recently was a security guard who got bored and handcuffed himself.

And then lost the key and couldn't get out. So someone had to actually come and help him out. And when they asked him why, he was just like, I was bored.

And it was something to do.

And if you look in news stores, this happens all the time.

Florida boredom researcher, Erin Westgate.

There's this story of this man in Russia who they found.

He had confiscated a tank and drove it into a grocery store and stole a

single bottle of wine, I think. Again, when they asked him why, he was like, well, I was bored,

as if being bored was a reason to go joyriding in a tank. And we know that boredom creates this

sort of urge in people to seek out new novel experiences.

And for sure, I think for most of us, stealing a tank would be a novel experience.

True. Never done it myself, though. Although my loved ones will say that I can get fidgety, distracted, grouchy even.

The bigger question, though, and one I'd like to address today, is whether boredom might actually have a bad rap.

Is it sometimes a necessary, useful, even crucial experience for us?

More on that shortly.

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