have you ever been so bored that you
just cannot work you can't
seem to get anything done because it's
just so
boring that it becomes painful and it
becomes impossible
to choose to continue doing the boring
work
without some kind of stimulation then
anybody who's that had
any kind of addiction can understand
that just that
feeling of boredom and emptiness and
there's just it's just
unbearable to not be stimulated
and it could be a drug addiction or it
could be
playing video games or it could be just
something as simple
as looking at your phone
and getting those little ping
notifications
that give you that little zap of
excitement ooh someone's thinking about
me
ooh there's something novel that is
popping up
stimulation we have this
need for it so to run away from
boredom and to avoid this kind of
empty feeling we look for more
stimulation we look for
anything that can give us that hit of
excitement
as we do this more then
we need it even more it becomes even
harder to get that stimulation the
feeling without it
feels even more empty
so that's when addictions escalate
and we have to do them more and
do more intense things in order to get
that
hit of feeling and stay away from that
unbearable
boredom that is outside it but of course
we are not able to
just feel endless stimulation it just
seems like the way
we work as animals as beings is
that we are always seeking a level so
if we are constantly stimulated
then that becomes the new level that
becomes
the new standard and we don't even
feel it anymore and then anything that
is less stimulating than that level
feels even more boring so the things
that
were boring that we were trying to run
away from by
getting excitement now they become even
more boring
even less tolerable and we have to
run further away from anything boring
and
further into excitement and stimulation
just
to keep ourselves even and this seems to
be at the heart of any addiction
whether drugs to technology to
whatever so by filling ourselves with
stimulation we are raising the threshold
or raising the baseline
of what we consider to be an ordinary
level of stimulation
and yet if we're going to do
meaningful work do difficult work
take steps to improve our lives live
better lives change things
make valuable things and
do good it seems like there's no way to
do that
without going into
sometimes being bored sometimes being
very bored being able to
do things that are difficult
uncomfortable unstimulating
unsatisfying in the moment and they only
become satisfying
later a long time later sometimes
after we're able to make useful work
out of them but when you're accustomed
to the excitement of
a flashing video game or a scrolling
social media feed it's so difficult
to put that aside and
really focus on even just
doing an hour of work where you get
no rewards there's no blinking lights
telling you you've achieved anything
there's no
pinging notification from your
friends with some kind of message
there's no stimulation it's simply you
and your work and the boredom is
unbearable i imagine we've all been in
this situation and
anybody who hasn't has just been
extremely lucky
of being able to work on
something that naturally they find very
stimulating but
this seems like a very rare thing to
have that all the time
in almost any case even if you're
working on
something that you're passionate about
you still have to do
hard boring work for parts of it as part
of doing what you love so we have this
baseline stimulation level
and then we have the level of boring
work the stimulation level
if it's below our baseline then it's
going to feel
painfully boring so i see
two ways to adjust the situation
we can either lower our threshold
of stimulation or we can raise the
stimulation level
of the boring work that we have to do
and choose to do
so our stimulation level our base line
level
is conditioned in us by everything that
we do so if we're accustomed to
feeding ourselves with our addiction
with our stimulation
then we're going to have a high level of
baseline stimulation
so it seems like the only way to bring
that down is the
painful uncomfortable long boring
process
of removing the stimulation stepping
away
either reducing or taking breaks from or
quitting entirely
the things that give us excitement and
stimulation
without adding any useful benefit
to our lives things that keep us
excited and happy in the moment if you
can use the word happy for some kind of
a stimulation
we're entertained we're occupied in the
moment we're
on board for a moment but
things that take away from our ability
to actually
make better lives all these habits that
accustom us
to the high baseline stimulation
that's the slow process of training
ourselves off them
if we do less of them
then we can become
used to having a lower level of
stimulation
as our baseline although it really sucks
to
lose all that great stimulation that
we're filling our lives with
the trade-off is that we can actually
become more capable of doing anything
else anything else in the world
other than the addiction becomes easier
as we have this lower base
stimulation level i mean you just
imagine the extreme of it
like being high on drugs while playing
an exciting video game
and a social media feed buzzing at you
and maybe throw on some tv shows and
videos
you know full sensory overload hyper
stimulation
coming at you all day imagine then it's
time for you to do
some boring work it would be so
difficult
to pull yourself away from that
but taking away those
stimuli one after another cutting down
if you imagine the opposite extreme
sitting
in an empty room and there's nothing
there
maybe you could have nice sun shining
through the window
and just an empty room now
in this completely unstimulating
environment the thought of doing some
kind of boring work
it's a little bit more tolerable so the
extreme activity in this direction
is meditation meditation you have
this com the state of no stimulation i
find one of the most valuable things
about meditation is simply to
remove all stimulation for a few minutes
have nothing new coming in and just let
that be a break
from any new stimulation in my mind
so as you lower this baseline now
wherever your boring work is it's a
little bit
closer to that baseline maybe it can
even
rise above that baseline so that it
doesn't feel quite as boring
i guess the sad way to say it is like
you know your life overall becomes so
boring that boring work is no longer so
boring
which when you put it like that does
sound kind of sad and yet
it does result in being able to do
boring work
which then leads to a whole suite of
good things possible in life and
complementing that
the other way to change the situation is
to
raise the stimulation level of the work
itself
boring work feels meaningless
feels like wasting time
and you just can't wait for it to be
over if we can
connect the work with something that
matters to us make it feel like doing
this
so-called boring work is actually part
of this great project that we really
care about really want to do
then it's no longer quite as boring and
painful to do because now it is
connected to
this game of life to this thing that we
actually
want to do and then even if the activity
itself is still boring
it is connected to something that we
actually care about
right the classic example of a boring
activity
would be filing taxes doing your
accounting okay
it's hard to make this an exciting
activity imagine comparing this
to partying playing a video game
you know it's you you can't compare the
excitement level
tax party no but it seems like it's
possible to
see doing our taxes doing this kind of
basic maintenance
it's part of organizing ourselves
organizing
our business our personal lives
all that as part of the project of
living a good life we want to keep
these finances in order keep our
business and personal life in order
so that we can accomplish what we want
to accomplish in life
still doesn't make doing taxes an
exciting thing
but somehow it's less completely
mind-numbingly boring if we can connect
it to the
larger meaningful goal that's part of so
by
lowering our baseline of excitement and
trying to drop in a little bit of
excitement into
boring tasks we can pull those boring
tasks above
the baseline to the point where we can
actually stand doing them where they're
not
so painfully boring and once we can
start to do
these boring tasks then
the machine starts rolling the ball
starts rolling we start to be able to do
useful things out of that boring work
and then
almost sneaking in out of nowhere
just seems like life starts to get
better as we start to
build in better things