He was so bored that wherever he was standing became a hub of dull activities. Previously it wasn’t like that. He felt joy in what he did but after working the same job for 10 years, things slowly but steadily became boring. He lost hope and the creative spark that was previously fueling his day vanished. Although committing suicide sounded like the best applicable option, he decided to search for another way to handle the chronic boredom overtaking his life.
See, no matter how successful or famous you are, at a certain point in your existence, a feeling of weary and impatience will find its way inside your life. No matter how many Instagram followers you have, YouTube subscribers, a lack of interest in all of your current activities will surely happen at some point. Turning your life into a nightmare. In agony.1
Think I’m exaggerating? I’m just starting. There is more:
A lot of people relate boredom with the dull feeling we get when we’re waiting in a long line to get donuts and the battery of our phone has died. In such situations, we’re so irritated with not having what to do that we’re ready to smash the face of everyone around. But that’s just a fraction of what boredom really does to us. Monotony is one of the main reasons so many people get addicted to sex, alcohol, narcotics, video games, food, and other not-so healthy habits. With an intention to add a dose of excitement in our rather apathetic life, we take doses, have casual sex, buy stuff we don’t need, spend a large portion of our time online, looking for, whatever.
As we get older, things get even worse. The job that was initially enthralling turns into a drag and we feel like the world is coming to an end.
Why You Need To Learn How To Handle Chronic Boredom?
Despite the fact that you might die from an overdose because you can’t find any joy in your current activities and the only thing bringing you joy is synthetic drugs, there is one additional reason that’s kind of important: There is no way to escape boredom. Even if you’re Elon Musk, and you do land on Mars, at some point, the exploration of this foreign planet will feel annoying.
What I want to say is that boredom is as certain as death. We all know that we’re going to die, but we don’t know when. Well, the feeling of daily frustration is the same. It will surely come at some point, we simply don’t know exactly when.
Boredom is not something negative per se, the way we try to avoid this feeling is what’s bad. With the intention to bring joy back in our seemingly dull lives, we start thinking about doing things that are not so rationale: “I’m bored, let’s rob a bank”; “I’m bored, let’s light a fire in the forest.”
People, young people, regularly commit crimes because they have nothing to do and nowhere to go.2 These same young people involve themselves in activities that bring no future value in their lives. For instance, routine drinking is often caused by having nothing else to do. It was the same exact case with me. When I was young, and when school was over, me and my friends regularly went to the store to purchase alcohol. We drank because it excited us. It brought a spark of joy in our rather dull lives. We did this for a few years, it’s surprising we still have a fully functioning liver.
The worse thing about it all, is that such activities turn into habits, fast. The activities that cloud our thinking while bringing us immediate pleasure, things like social media notifications, sex, drugs, shopping, are easily accepted by the human system. Mostly because these tasks are fun, easy to execute and we see the results immediately.
Basically, you want to learn how to handle boredom for several reasons:
- If you don’t, you’ll be looking at your phone every time you’re waiting in line or there is a commercial on the TV. This behavior will become a habit and you’ll continue to do it even when you’re working.
- If you’re not occupied with activities that interest you, you might do some stupid shit, leading to some proper jail time.
- The popular mechanism we have for dealing with boredom
don’t lead to anything productive. The major platforms we use to fight boredoms are television and social media. These two are huge time wasters.
After we covered the main reasons we need to understand how to protect our livelihood from dull activities, let’s see why life tends to get boring:
Why Life Tends To Get Boring?
The modern job market gives us no option but to specialize. If you want a high-paying job, you need to master a specific field. Otherwise, you’ll end up cleaning the floors of the local mall for the rest of your life.
Why is that? Well, let’s elaborate a bit:
Тhe distribution of labor massively increases the collective productivity. The issue with everyone doing
If you’re obligated to design your own shoes you’ll have not one, but thousands of issues: What should be the design?; From where should I buy materials?; How are shoelaces produced?; How to actually come up with a design? And that’s only the beginning. While planning your new J’z, you’ll also have to knit a sweater and plant the crofts for your much-needed dinner.3
At some point, our ancestors decided to give up on diversity and to start specializing. They did the math and saw that it’s better to have 5 good craftsmen than 20 mediocre.
When someone devotes his time on doing one particular task, he becomes faster at the job at hand and also his skills increase, allowing him to produce a product both faster and better.
Although our overall well-being was steadily increasing, we sacrificed our level of excitement and ability to explore different fields. After all, our time on this planet is limited and we can’t become an astronaut, a lawyer and a lead singer of a heavy metal band, we need to pick only one profession.
The above sets the scene for the next section:
How Boredom Influences Our Income?
If your position as an accountant in the local supermarket suddenly doesn’t bring any fulfillment in your life, you’ll most certainly look for another job. Something cooler. Something better. A job with a
So, we start at the new firm and the new job brings us joy for a while. New colleagues. New environment and probably better coffee machine. The work itself is kind of the same, but the initial uncertainties around our new colleagues are thrilling. Over time, as you can imagine, things start to feel the same. Our new boss is not so different than our previous one. The morning coffee is tasteless. And the rumors that were initially interesting now feel like a Turkish soap opera – childish and chippy.
With the intention to fix this, we prepare yet another change in companies. We make
Accepted or not, things will be the same as before – after the initial thrill, things will get again boring. That’s the truth. Yet, people don’t want to believe in it. At some point, no matter what you do, you’ll get bored from doing the same thing, over and over again. When this time arrives, don’t sink in the abyss of social media groups and fake online friendships. You’ll simply waste your life.
If you continuously search for new ventures and never commit in a particular job, your income will suffer. Yes, you might get a higher salary in the new company, but in the long run, you’ll be getting less money. Mainly, because you’ll never be really good at something, thus when you’re older it will be hard for you to find a new company to pay you for things that everyone can do.
Steps To Overcome Chronic Boredom
- Step 1: There is no way to not feel boredom. Don’t fight it. Simply accept it. No matter what kind of job or work you do, a feeling of dullness will possess your body at some point.
- Step 2: Plan your future well in advance. Think about it, like seriously, what do you want to do? If you’re working at the local grocery store as a packaging boy, but you want to become a doctor and save lives, use your time outside of your work hours to improve your skills and learn the material needed to get accepted in medical school. The same applies for everything else. Want to learn how to code? Read coding books and attend online courses.
- Step 3: Choose a hobby that’s practical. We consider hobbies as activities that are fun and don’t make us feel like we’re working. Well, you can surely choose such type of diversion. But do that at your own peril, as people say. For instance, a lot of people point out listening to music and hanging out with friends as their favorite, outside-work activities. It’s good to participate in such
events, if you’re a 5-year-old. As we grow up, it’s only wise if we can choose an activity outside of work that can someday become our main income stream. Or a side income stream. Both will be beneficial. The chance of becoming a professional Facebook picture-uploader or licensed music listener are slim. But creating your own studio for vintage furniture might work. - Step 4: Avoid falling into the “modern” trap. Few people will say that they’re feeling bored, because few are actually experiencing this type of impatient. They always have what to do. Their lives include activities like: checking their social media accounts, replying to comments, watching television, chatting about the latest fashion trends, playing video games, browsing Amazon for something new to buy. If even for a moment they don’t have anything parricular to do, they’ll simply switch to the other social platform to comment on statuses sum mo.
- Step 5: Improve your body. Jogging and working out it’s not an activity reserved only for professional athletes. We can all benefit from this form of movement. Roll out your yoga mat and stretch that body.
- Step 7: Visit a local meetup. As we grow older, we tend to communicate less with people face to face. Maybe that’s why everything starts to feel like it has no meaning in the first place.4
- Step 8: Read books. Instead of watching tv series that have one goal: to waste your time. You might consider educating yourself on a particular subject. The benefits of reading are more than one. But to give you something, I’ll say this: A book summarizes the essential wisdom on a particular topic. It takes years for some books to be published and reading them can take only a few days. It’s a shame to not benefit from this curated information.
Final Thoughts
If nothing of the above relates to your sophisticated persona, simply make something. Make a treehouse for your kids. Write something. Paint something. Take pictures of your surroundings.
The idea is to use your free time to create stuff instead to consume such.
The best way to fight the inevitable boredom that will visit your life at some point is to keep yourself busy. But not busy in terms of “I’ll sit down, watch funny videos online and eat
Create. Not for the money. Not for the fame. Not for the recognition. But for the pure joy of creating something and sharing it.” Ernest Barbaric
Footnotes:
- According to the Insider, YouTubers – the best profession by my standards – also suffer. They also get bored, which leads to burnout.
- There are thousands of criminal acts committed due to a lack of other, more pleasant, according to the person committed them, activities. Source: LINK.
- The short abbreviation J’s stands for any type of Air Jordans.
- You can use this platform to find local meetups in different subjects: meetup.com.
