The kids are back at school, so the house is blissfully devoid of the phrase,
“I'm bored!”
Or is it? This phrase might not be being vocalised now that half term is over, but what if these two words, knocking around inside our skulls, lie at the root of procrastination, distraction and even disorders of attention?
Ever since I first read a chapter of Richard Carlson's book Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, called Allow Yourself To Be Bored, I've had a much better relationship with boredom. I think the hook for me came at the very end of the chapter when he recommends responding to a child's complaint about being bored, by answering,
“Great, be bored for a while. It's good for you.”
For some reason, that really caught my interest!
😂🤣
But when we examine our own behaviours, isn't it the mind complaining “I'm bored!” that has us doomscrolling, reaching for the remote, or shifting focus quickly from one thing, to another, to another, to another…
As Richard says,
“Much of our anxiety and inner struggle stems from our busy, overactive minds always needing something to entertain them, something to focus on, and always wondering, ‘What's next?’
“While we're eating dinner, we wonder what's for dessert. While eating dessert, we ponder what we should do afterward. After that evening, it's ‘What should we do this weekend?’
“It's almost as if we're frightened at the thought of not having something to do, even for a minute.”
It's ‘I'll be happy when…’ in another guise, isn't it?
It's the mind, incapable of having a fruitful relationship with the present moment, only because it's not needed, there.
Time-wasting
As an antidote, I recently spotted something online, about distraction and procrastination, that really jibes with the more sciencey aspects of the Innate Health understanding.
The premise is that we'll often catch ourselves saying things like “I wasted the whole morning and did nothing” 😫 (this was me, just yesterday!) and of course it's not true.
We did do something, even if it was just sitting there watching the proverbial paint dry. It's just that it wasn't what we wanted, or felt like we should (🚩) be doing, or what we're actually getting paid to do. Instead:
“We were constantly stimulating our brain with short bursts of dopamine. Scrolling, checking notifications, jumping between apps, watching ‘just one more’ video.”
We've all been there, don't pretend otherwise.
And why? Because we've innocently programmed our brains to do it – rewarded it for its ‘bad’ behaviour.
“Your brain learns quickly. If it can lie in bed, half-awake, and still get rewarded with novelty, it will do that forever. Why would it choose something effortful when it can stay still and still be entertained?”
You probably won't try this
And once you're a bit wise to what's going on, it's going to make less and less sense to keep on reinforcing these behaviours.
So what does the opposite look like? How do we de-train the mind from procrastination, avoidance and distraction?
By boring it.
“Try this experiment: sit somewhere for an hour with your phone beside you and don't touch it. No music, no background noise. Just silence.”
😳
When the urges come, notice them. And if it's an urge that's taking you away from work that needs doing (remember: procrastination is a solution, not a problem!) then the author recommends this practice:
“Instead of forcing myself to work right now, I started using a different rule:
“‘Fine, we don't have to work yet. But if we aren't working, then we are doing absolutely nothing that gives us stimulation.’
“Not scrolling. Not watching educational videos disguised as productivity. Not listening to a podcast to feel productive. Just stillness or boring tasks like washing dishes in silence.
“Eventually, the brain gets bored enough that work actually becomes the most stimulating option.”
Somebody please try this out and report back your findings in the comments – I'm almost too scared to try!
😆
Giles
There's a simple way to combat the productivity-wrecking effects of distractive urges (that doesn't involve going cold turkey like this) and it's much closer than you'd think.
Over in the Premium Membership 🔖 we look at a “Distraction: Solution” because insight into the nature of distractions changes everything ✨
Includes:
✒️ Magazine-calibre article
🎙️ Audio narrated version.