Meltropolis

How to Beat Boredom

Everyone has these moments where you have nothing to do, all the free time in the world for hours, you could do anything you wanted… But you just can’t think of anything.

So you sit there, feeling bored, and the more you think about it, the more horrible all of your potentially fun options seem to get. Getting over this type of boredom can be one of the things you’re too bored to do, so that means you’re stuck, right?

Maybe even something as simple as reading this article can seem like too much work.

I’ve had plenty of these moments, and it either devolves into sitting there and whining like a little bitch about how there’s nothing to do and alienating everyone around you…

“There’s nothing to do!”

“So go play WoW.”

“Don’t feel like it.”

“Then go draw something.”

“Don’t feel like it.”

“Go clean your room.”

“Don’t feel like it.”

“Fine, suit yourself.”

Either that or I end up doing something absolutely useless like reading old chatlogs. All damn day.

So what can you do about this?

Well it takes some work, and a little bit of discipline, but at least it gives you something to do.

Figure out when the boredom period will have to end, for example when you have to leave for work, when you’re going to sleep, when you’re meeting a friend… Basically the maximum duration of the boredom.

Then make a little list of stuff you should do, like homework, chores, the kind of stuff you tend to put off. Stuff you should do, but don’t want to. Put a nice little divider under it.

Then add the stuff you could do, but don’t feel like. Playing a game, practicing a hobby, reading a book, whatever. Even if you don’t want to do it, because you don’t have the time or the materials, write it down.

Take a look at the list, and pick the five or so things that you want to do the most. If you’re that bored, there’s probably nothing that you really want to do, so in that case “want to do the most” becomes “hate the least”. If there’s anything in the 4 or 5 things you picked that comes from the top half, the homework-and-chores list, do that. Otherwise, it’s your choice. If you still can’t choose, keep eliminating the one you want to do least, and eventually you’ll end up with just one option.

Do that. No whining. You can’t think of anything better anyway, can you? If you can, do that.

Continue until maximum boredom duration is reached or until no longer bored.

An added effect of this approach is that you now have a list of all your obligations and the things that you probably usually waste time with. With this list in hand you can get started on becoming more efficient and getting more things done in a day.

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Finishing What You Start

If you’re anything like me, and the fact that you’re reading this tells me that you might be, you occasionally have trouble finishing what you start. In fact, if you are me, you can count the for-fun projects you actually finished in your life on one hand.
Let’s see.
I have finished two stories. I finished one website (not this one), but I don’t think it counts because it was actually a school project that got out of hand. I levelled two World of Warcraft characters to 70. Yeah, that’s about it.
If I were to tell you all the projects I started and still intend to finish ’some day’, this list would go on and on forever, but I’ll mention a few. Learn how to play the guitar, paint my Warhammer army, finish the 3 stories I still have interest in, learn how to cook, start a journal, level all my other World of Warcraft characters to 70 before the next expansion hits (I have 7 more to go, most around level 40), etcetera. Apart from that there’s the projects I really need to finish sometime in the future, moving out, getting my degree, etc.
These are only the current projects. Everywhere I go I leave in my wake a graveyard of ideas and half-fulfilled ambitions. But after finishing the most recent story I figured out how to get myself to consistently finish projects – there is a side-effect though that makes me be careful what projects I use it on, mostly school assignments so far.

• Set yourself a deadline.

• Keep reminding yourself.

• Have a clear indication of what counts as ‘done’.

• Promise yourself a reward.

• And (very important for those with low self-discipline) tell everybody.

Seriously.
Announce it to your friends, your parents, random strangers, someone you respect. Promise them. Let them know the deadline, too.
“I’m going to write a book. It’s going to have at least 50,000 words and it will have a start and a finish. I will do this before the end of the month. I will polish it later, but the 50,000 words will be there before the 1st of December.”
Let them laugh at you if they are so inclined. Give them status updates anyway. Watch them gawk when they see you are on the right track. Once that happens, you won’t want to let them down. If you fail and they laugh at you, that’s what you deserve. That’s what worked for me. Treat yourself at the end, you’ve been good.

Another thing that helps is to have a post-it or something right in the middle of your monitor, or put the file in the middle of your desktop, set a reminder as a screensaver or desktop background, leave notes in your lunchbox, just make sure you see the message a couple of times a day. While this is not as powerful an incentive as the first tip, it will keep the idea in your mind. Get involved in the community, if that’s applicable. Want to learn a skill? Join a forum, join a class, tell them about your deadline as well.

Have a clear progress schedule. Something where you can see just how far you’ve come, and when you are done. This can be a complicated excel spreadsheet with graphs and estimates, or it could be a simple printed document where you write out the tasks you need done, and cross out the ones youo’ve completed. Make it look official. If you want, give copies to your friends every once in a while so they can check up on your progress. It may seem silly, but if you want to get things done, sometimes you need to get drastic.

The problem with this approach is that, by the end of the month in the example I used, I was full well sick of the book I wrote. I was about to trash it, but was somehow able to stop myself. I couldn’t even look at it till April, and I still can’t work on polishing it for more than about an hour at a time.

The fun part is, though… when I was ready to give up during week 2 of the challenge, I was about 20,000 words in, not at all stuck, just sick of my stupid book. I had a few days where I wrote maybe 500 words instead of the 1600-something needed to get to the deadline in time. But I never stopped entirely. Not only had I gotten into the habit of working on this project every day, even if I didn’t enjoy it, I didn’t want to show up at the end of the month and not be able to tell everyone that I hadn’t finished. Or worse, forget about it completely and wait until sometime next year for someone to finally remember and ask “how did that go anyway?” and having to tell them that I’d forgotten.

Because I really didn’t like the story after I was done with it, for months on end, I have tried not to apply this to any other stories or hobby-related matters. After all, I do that for fun, right? But it works wonders on work or school projects, or a list of chores for example.

Try it out, see if it works for you. If you want, you can tell me your project and your deadline and I will badger you about it.

- Mel

Posted in Goals, Self-discipline, Writing | No Comments »