By: Benjamin Spall
When you’re bored, even thinking of what to do can be difficult.
Whether we’re at home, work, in class, or out with friends, when we’re bored our mind begins to draw a blank, and we start to feel lazy for not knowing what we should be doing.
Feeling lazy and feeling bored go hand in hand. Learning how to overcome laziness is one of the best things you can do to stop being bored, as once you no longer enjoy being lazy you realize just how many things there are out there for you to do, and your time starts to become much more precious to you.
When I was a kid I was often bored. This was no fault of my parents, who took me and my brothers out to enjoy different activities often—but kids get bored more easily than adults if they’re not being entertained 24/7.
Nowadays, I rarely suffer from boredom. While there shouldn’t be prizes for being busy all of the time (humans need rest and downtime in order to function at the height of their potential, after all), it’s been a long time since I can honestly claim I’ve been bored.
There are many articles online that are designed to give you ideas of things to do when you’re bored, but many of these articles spout the same ideas without considering why we’re feeling bored in the first place. In this article, instead of looking into what to do when you’re bored, I’m going to look at the root cause of your boredom, and discover how working to overcome boredom is essential to have a long and fulfilled life.
What is Boredom?
Boredom is as a feeling of restlessness that has a number of causes, most notably a feeling that we have nothing to do in the moment, or a feeling of disinterest in what we’re currently doing.
It’s common to feel bored at times, especially when you’re young. According to the Mayo Clinic, “boredom can be normal, and is only an indicator of underlying disease when feelings become excessive, all-consuming, and interfere with daily living.”
How to Overcome Boredom for Good?
While I can’t help you overcome boredom when you’re sat in a long lecture at school or company meeting at work, I can show you how you can overcome boredom outside of work and school, in your day-to-day life.
You see, knowing what to do when you’re bored is less about looking toward a list of ideas for inspiration, and more about knowing deep down inside how you want to spend your time.
Reading one list after another telling you what to do when you’re bored won’t help you if they don’t get down to the root cause of why you’re feeling bored in the first place. Rather than researching things to do when you’re bored, you should research what it is you really want to do.
Mark Twain famously wrote “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” This is as true of our full-time professions than it is of our hobbies and anything else we choose to do outside of work. In other words, “Find something you enjoy doing, and you will never be bored again.”…,Source: benjaminspall.com
