Humans turned explorers because we combined slack with curiosity.

We created art and continue to create art because we combined slack with curiosity.

We discover new things, new thoughts, new habits because we combine slack with curiosity.

Over the years, I've oscillated on the topic of slack, going from packing my calendar with no slack time at all to penciling in ample amounts of slack time during the week and back and forth. 

I still feel doing it in bursts of intense schedules interspersed with times of slack is the best way to do it. 

In the past, I had only seen the benefits of it empirically, having experimented and tried such schedules myself. 

But, now I have a hypothesis on the theory behind it. 

And that lies in curiosity. 

Routine is the nemesis of curiosity. If I'm following a predictable routine with little change to it, even if it has slack baked into it, I don't really get the benefit of slack beyond rest. 

When I do it in a slightly unpredictable way, I allow curiosity to seep in and not take things for granted.

Slack alone has it's benefits for sure. But slack combined with curiosity is an order of magnitude better.