Boredom is disappearing. Not as the result of a deliberate policy, but through the accumulation of everyday micro-gestures: the hand reaching for the phone while waiting in line, the thumb scrolling through a feed during a commute, the screen lighting up the moment a second of emptiness appears. This disappearance may seem trivial. It is not. Because boredom, as neuroscience has documented over the past fifteen years, is not a sterile void. It is an active, functional cognitive state, and research shows that it constitutes one of the most robust conditions for human creativity.

This article puts forward a precise hypothesis: by systematically replacing boredom with scrolling, our societies are eroding the neurobiological foundations of innovation. The title pays tribute to Dany Laferrière, who in 2014 published L'art presque perdu de ne rien faire, a praise of suspended time. Neuroscience today confirms his intuition with a precision he likely did not imagine himself. But we must go beyond literary intuition: the causal chain linking boredom to innovation can be formulated, tested, and its intermediate links identified.