Boredom is the shit

You know those moments when you just cannot be asked to start a task?

Everything feels so damn heavy.

You’re facing a mounting sense of dread and tiredness.

As if you’re up against the wall, forced to feel like shit by the overwhelming sense of tingling, itchy and uncomfortable anxiety.

Just. Because. Of. One. Fucking. Task.

Aaaand as a result, you just can’t be bothered, so you decide to fuck off to watch some YouTube or scroll social media instead.

Been there, done that, and by now developed a series of solutions for it.

But funnily enough?

Even following the best typical advice you hear, like preparing your tasks, planning your entire day to the T, and getting so crystal clear on what you’re trying to accomplish and how you’ll execute, even a disabled monkey could understand what you’re trying to do…

Sometimes it’s still not enough.

Recently I’ve been doing a shit ton of market research, which involves going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole on forums like Reddit or Quora, piecing together the most common problems, obstacles, and solutions on pretty much every topic I like preaching about myself.

And I stumbled across a few (very rare to find) gold nuggets.

Nothing I’ve never heard of before, but there are some fantastic reminders of things I’ve been engraining so subconsciously in my day-to-day, I don’t even realize I’m following specific strategy X.

One of them is a direct solution to the problem I outlined above.

The “I don’t want to start work” thing.

Specifically, what to when you’re already in the middle of a working day, got some tasks done semi-ok, but you’re not reaaaally excited to dive back into the rest.

Aka, you work, you take a break. And then, you’re supposed to work again.

But you’re already fed up.

The friction to start the task is simply too high.

I think you get what I’m digging at here, ey, it’s a common problem.

Often the reason you feel like shit, unmotivated, and discouraged af to start the next batch of tasks isn’t because of the task itself, the preparation for it, or in fact, ANYTHING related to work in particular.

It’s simply because you take the wrong breaks.

Scrolling.

Consuming content.

Quickly checking emails and all sorts of notifications that you don’t actually care about.

There’s literally no situation where you’re gonna scream, “I DONT WANT TO DO THIS” more than after you’ve just spent the last 30 minutes scrolling your favorite social media app.

Who’d want to get into work after overstimulating their dopamine receptors?

Common sense right.

We’re all pleasure-seeking creatures after all.

But that gives you a decisive advantage over, well, your own overstimulated brain, over yourself, over your tendency to start procrastinating once again.

Disclaimer: This is easier said than done, but in theory it’s quite simple.

Make your breaks more boring than your tasks.

Hear me out.

Sometimes, this happens automatically.

When you simply can’t wait to dive into your next line of coding, finish a piece of text you’ve enjoyed working on forever, or for me, write an email once I have at least a half-decent idea.

But most often, work is quite boring, uncomfortable, or painful to the point that even thinking about it gives you headaches.

Now, what if your breaks were even more boring than work itself?

If all you could do is stare at a boring ass wall in 3 meters distance, and letting your racing thoughts just calm down for a second?

Trust me.

The most extreme version of this would literally be sitting in a white room with no other option but to look at a wall.

If you’re a generally overstimulated person, I mean I guess we all are to some extent, this will be EXCRUCIATINGLY painful.

After 5 minutes, you’ll want to start running into that wall head-first.

Making getting back to your work the only logical option to save yourself from some severs brain damage.

Of course, you’re not surrounded by 4 walls in a perfectly arranged cubicle. At least I hope you’re not.

And ffs, please don’t take it that far. But what you can do is get rid of all “cheap dopamine” in any short break you take.

That means no phone. No notifications. No opening a single new tab besides the work you’re supposed to work on.

Do more boring shit instead.

Meditation. A short walk. Some light exercise.

You’ll get back to your desk refreshed, with a slight hunger for doing something more interesting than nothing, even if that’s a quite dreading task.

Pretty simple. Damn effective.

I’ve been doing this for ages, but forgot about the importance of this simple trick.

So thanks reddit for the email idea.

And thank you for reading.

See you soon,

Henri

P.S. What’s your favorite activity to do when taking a short break from work?