A system that can’t tolerate occasional coasting is a system that can’t tolerate creative bursts. The trick is detecting “I secretly lost hope but my stream of income is very comfortable” when paying a costly salary; which would be mitigated somewhat by switching the tenure benefit of either pay enough to afford, or outright gift of, a single-family home (looks pointedly at Stanford) to a variation of residence halls, where the salary gift can be much less in exchange for benefits due creativity: reserved whiteboards, option for neighboring private rooms (table/bed/bath/shower) and research office, a couple of quiet floors, 120/240 and ether/fiber in every room, presentation rooms with ‘lives next door’ IT support, etc.

Hell, I’d take that IT job. Keeping projectors working for a bunch of impatient creative types in exchange for getting to listen in on their presentations and earn their confidence enough to discuss their research as an interested peer while I repair their computers? Eating good food in a mess hall as I listen to quantum physics in one ear and mathematical networks in the other?! Onto the dream jobs list it goes, impossible as it might be in today’s academia.

Agree with this. Occasional coasting is great. Sometimes you need to recharge. Sometimes it's when you'll get inspiration or find time to do that experiment that feels like leisure because it's fun but ends up paying off massively.

Slack is important.

But so much so that you become a magnet for people who intend to do nothing, or somewhere where people who have fallen into doing nothing aren't noticed and dig their heels in and never leave quickly becomes a problem...

Way back MBARI was looking for a role that in part included keeping the servers on their research ships going. That was my dream job. Only interview I completely failed because I wanted it so much and froze. Imagine eating Phils when it was still a hole in the wall, chilling in Moss Landing. Decades later I still daydream about that job.