Boredom

Sometimes we think that "boring" means something negative—something to avoid or change.

Yet this mindset is limited and likely prevents us from developing skills, qualities, and a certain taste that can only be built by doing boring things.

You train at the gym and feel bored after repeating the same movements for weeks. Yet progress only happens when you repeat the same movements many times over many weeks. But you associate boredom with something to avoid, resist, run away from.

So you start something else—something exciting—only to find that learning anything and developing skills requires repeating the same basics over and over, preferably with a clear feedback mechanism to allow for adjustments and progression.

By the same token, boredom can become a safe blanket used for hiding and preventing change.

You do the same things for a long time, treating the boredom as inherent to them and as something to blindly live with. They become "routines," things to do mindlessly in boredom because that’s life.

This belief is just as limiting. You allow the mundane to take over your ability to stay engaged, interested, and to flow with change.

There is a time to practice boredom and a time to practice its opposite. The ability to exist within both is an important human skill.