Ingrid Wickelgren in Scientific American:
Every so often, we face a job we dread because it seems exceedingly dull. As a child, I felt that way about household chores—scrubbing a toilet, sweeping a floor, wiping a countertop, weeding. I remember one day my grandmother was visiting and announced that she would sweep the floor for me, because she liked sweeping. What? She explained something about the little piles that I really tried to appreciate—because I wanted to like sweeping too—but alas, could not. Recently, however, I’ve been given a new reason to like sweeping, and other somewhat tiresome tasks. It is not because the tasks themselves can be made more intellectually invigorating, but because they generally cannot. When the mind is not fully engaged, it can wander—and that’s often when insights arrive.
More here.