>its good to have the brain be bored and doing nothing. While you are being curious you aren’t thinking or contemplating or creating or imagining, just consuming that dopamine sink.

Those 2 sentences are based on 2 misconceptions/assumptions that need to be clarified.

1) That being bored is better than ingesting information. There seems to be a bias that self-dialogue and introspection is "superior" to external information. That depends on the person and so it's not always true. For some, when left to their own thoughts, they get into negative loops replaying past mistakes, or anguish about upcoming dilemmas ("Should I quit my job?", "Should I put mom in a nursing home?" etc) to which they don't have answers for. This is what some call "getting stuck in a rut" or "beating yourself up". It's inflicting self-harm. You can try to tell people "just don't think of negative thoughts and just sit there thinking of nothing". That doesn't work because it's like the joke of instructing people, "Don't think of an elephant!" -- which causes people to immediately think of an elephant. Instead of destructive loops, maybe a steady diet of external voices can help reframe things or just give the mind other ideas that are more productive and healthier to think about. To improve the quality of introspection, maybe look for quality external ideas.

2) My comment gave the impression I do nothing else but listen to podcasts and have no silent contemplative time. That's not what happens. For the first ~8 hours after I wake up, that's when my mind is most alert and mentally sharp. I do not "waste" this energy on listening to podcasts at all. That's when I do my contemplations, coding, etc. However, after the morning when my mind starts to drag... that's when it's ok to listen to audiobooks. Since I have to go outside to spread several cubic yards of mulch (mindless unpleasant housework), I queue up several podcasts to feed the mind while the work gets done. At that later point in the day, the brain is too fried to have deep introspection but it can still handle a lightweight podcast talking about trends in AI. Hopefully pick up some new ideas to bounce around the next morning's contemplative session. It's optimizing the schedule of activities to match the ups and downs in mental energy throughout the day. For neighbors who observe me, they just see that "he has headphones on all the time". Yes, because they don't shadow me at my desk in the morning when I don't.

I think there are some in this thread that assume the audiobooks/podcasts are "junk food" and the silent introspection is the "good and pure nourishment". That's not necessarily true. The opposite may be the case.