This article describes one of my best productivity hacks where you can effortlessly transform boredom into productivity, or using time that would otherwise be wasted to move a bit closer to your goals. Be entertained and get more done… Double Win!!
On Boredom
Are you ever bored? Stupid question… everyone is bored at one point or another. A better question could be how much of your life have you spent being bored? Most people are sheepish about the answer because it is depressingly large. All emotional serve us in some fashion. Being happy means we should do more of this, being sad means we should avoid that. Anger may arouse us to take immediate action. How does boredom serve us? Why do we even have that feeling? What is the point of it?
When you stop to consider “Boredom” as a mental state, you may notice it is the feeling you get when your mind is disengaged. Both relaxation and boredom are passive states. Where relaxation is a positive passive state, boredom is a negative passive state, like a mild anger. You’re waiting for something to happen, that something isn’t happening, and you are getting annoyed that it isn’t.
Most negative emotions attempt to make your conscious mind aware of something that needs to change. So if boredom is upsetting, what is it trying to tell you? That your mind is unengaged. And why is this bad? Your mind is like a muscle; it has to be active and used regularly. Boredom is to your mind what confinement is to your muscles.
When are we bored? Usually boredom happens when we are forced to wait for a prolonged period. “Waiting” may seem unavoidable, wait for a bus, wait in an emergency ward, wait for an appointment, waiting in line, wait for payday, and wait on a flight layover.
Waiting is a part of life, but there is no rule which says you have to be bored. As soon as you realize that boredom is a state of mind, and you can make choices about your mental states, you can choose to sacrifice “being bored” for “being entertained and productive.”
Productivity in an Unproductive Job
No job is more mind numbingly boring than late night security. The whole point of the job is to sit and wait for someone to illegally enter their site, so they can protect it. Many security guards wait years before such an event happens. A friend of mine had a security job and just to avoid boredom, he wrote his entire PhD thesis in the long hours of waiting. Was he stealing time from his employer? Was he delinquent in his responsibilities? By choosing to use his time in a way that kept his mind active, he became a model security guard. He was more alert than other security guards, as he was one of the fastest to respond to simulated emergencies. He was more diligent on doing his scheduled rounds, and he never slept on the job (which is quite a problem for security companies).
He created a win-win situation. He made steady progress towards his PhD every night, he sacrificed none of his free time and weekend, he wasn’t bored working an otherwise boring job, and the act of keeping his mind busy made him a model employee.
Head in the Sand Planning
Most people resist planning for boredom. They believe that by not acknowledging boredom, it won’t happen. Pretending something doesn’t exist that does is like the ostrich burying its head in the sand. No matter who you are, there will be times when you will have to wait. Boredom isn’t and “if” situation it’s a “when.”
Like everyone else, I get stuck in traffic, have to sit around waiting for a doctor, or have a 7 hour layover at an airport. Unlike normal people who are bored to the point of tears, I have created several activities to amuse myself. These activities have a great degree of variety, and NOT dependant on smart devices (more on this below). Rather I base these activities on how I direct my attention, as a result I am rarely bored.
This is the art of wasting time constructively… or, to twist the phrase, the art of using wasted time to you advantage. Once you are aware of how to control your attention, you can transform boredom into hours upon hours of getting shit done.
How to Create More Time
In earlier chapters, we talked about the myth of “more time.” Procrastinators believe that if only they had a little extra time in the day they could get everything done. Let’s say I were a magic genie and I could grant you a wish for 3 extra hours every day. What would you do with it? What would you accomplish? Would you learn a new skill? Would you further your grand ambition to become a great writer, would you finish that term project that has been dogging you for the last few weeks? The sad fact is if you gave most people 3 extra hours, they would probably use it the same way as the other 24; waste it on more beer or more TV shows.
We all only have 24 hours in the day. It is a fantasy to think that you can create more time in a day. You can’t conjure up more hours, but you can transform the hours you have. Anyone can sacrifice crap time, wasted time, time spent being bored, and transform it into an interesting, productive time. A security guard figured it out. I found I could copy him. You can do it too.
A University on the Bus
I always hated reading on the bus. The text would bounce around, taking a book out and putting it away was a pain in the ass, and it was even more difficult to read if you couldn’t find a seat. Audio-books changed everything. Armed with 30 audiobooks on an MP3 player, I discovered I could listen to 15 minutes as I walked to the bus, another 15 minutes as I waited for the bus, and 45 minutes as I rode the bus to work. Then there was another 10 minutes of walking to the school where I would be teaching. Throughout the day I had a few more 10 minute coffee breaks where I could listen while drinking coffee. On the way home, I had a similar process in reverse. With no more effort than a little planning I discovered I could entertain my mind for a little over 5 hours every day with time that was otherwise dead, unpaid, travel time going to and from work.
5 hours per day quickly adds up. 25 hours per week, over 100 hours per month and about 1300 per year. After a few years, I had I listened to the entire series of Harry Potter from beginning to end 4 times, all the Dune Chronicles by Frank Herbert, the Earth Sea Books by Ursula K. Le Guin. I exposed myself to a wide range of different academic topics from psychology to quantum mechanics. I tried several times to understand Einstein’s Book on Relativity, but no luck yet. I laughed with some of the most noted stand-up comics of the age, educated myself by listening to noteworthy classics of fiction and bestselling contemporary literature from a wide range of genres. I discovered that you need not be a genius to enjoy Plato’s “Republic;” it is no scarier than a group of dudes sitting around drinking wine and chatting about the ideal society. I absorbed the information from dozens of courses on marketing and copyright design and studied the corporate giants that are highly influential in our current society (Amazon, Facebook and Google.)
From the time I discovered education doesn’t have to be exclusively visual, and I could “read” books in audio format it changed my education level and my life. By pressing play before leaving the house, I accumulated thousands of hours of multi-disciplinary training that far outstripped anything I learned in university. My level of education occasionally intimidates others as I can converse with doctors about cutting edge medical techniques, with experts about AI advancement and debate the finer points of theology and philosophy; Taoism being my favorite.
In recounting this, I do not mean to sound like a braggart. What I did was no different than what anyone else could do. I have simply transformed the thousands of hours that everyone else spends commuting and being bored into thousands of hours of audio book time. There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, stopping you or anyone else from making the same choice.
So the next time you are standing in line, waiting for a train, or commuting to work and you notice the feeling of being bored… remember me and remember that making no choice leads to boredom. Then you may ask yourself the following question:
“What Else Can I Do Now?”
When I say, “I don’t ever wait” or “I am never bored” few believe me. They spend so much of their time mired in an intellectual doldrum, they believe everyone else must be the same way. Therefore, I must be exaggerating.
Listening to audio books is a great activity, but it would get boring quickly if it was the only trick in my bag. Sometimes I would scribble down ideas for novel concepts, or do elaborate doodles, or organize ideas for existing projects. The mind is stimulated by variety.
Our culture has become dependent on portable computer technology (I-devices, smart phones, pads). They ease boredom, but what do you do when the batteries run out, WIFI goes down, or when your mind gets tired of staring at the same small screen? The answer to boredom is not found in downloading a new app. Boredom is a state of mind, and can only be changed in how you represent reality to yourself.
When people are in lineups, traffic jams, or waiting for an appointment they go down the line of thinking: “Awwwww fuck this is taking forever…” then get more annoyed with the time that is being lost where they could be doing something else. The way we think is habitual; if you direct your mind to being bored, you will become better at accessing that state.
For me, boredom is a trigger… like pain. Whenever I think, “Wow, this is bloody boring…” my mind automatically follows up with, “What else can I do right here, right now?” Every boring situation becomes an opportunity for my mind to generate a variety of amusing answers. Flirting with little old ladies in government offices, practising origami crane folds by ripping out pages of old magazines in a doctor’s offices, drawing cryptic alien runes near a bus stop seem like good ideas to a dangerously over-active imagination. Even without objects or people to play with, my mind considers the nature of dark matter, or work out possible solutions to global issues. An active imagination is a wellspring of entertainment.
Yet it is sad what others do with their minds; as I contemplate the mysteries of the universe, the person in the seat next to me is stressing out because our bus has just spent the last hour stuck in bridge traffic. I am on the same bus, I am waiting just as long as he; for some reason I am not bored, and he is so bored to tears. I shrug. We all have choices about how we use our minds.
Task: Plan to Wait
Waiting is unavoidable. At some point you will have to renew your licence, you will have to wait for a car sales man to negotiate with their manager, you will have to wait on loan approval, or maybe you’re just waiting for a friend who was delayed. So here is the paradox: Don’t avoid waiting, don’t avoid being bored; simply choose never to wait or be bored. If you set up flexible plans before you are in the “waiting situation” then you will always have something to do. If you have something your busy doing, then (by definition) you aren’t waiting.
Note for the “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” people. Something that a great waiting activity is to make these plans while waiting. Nope. That is the same as starting to learn martial arts after you are in a street brawl. Boredom is the emotion that comes from your mind being constrained by a long wait situation. If you prepare before the situation then your mind won’t have to waste time on being bored. You’ll just go straight into your wait activity and you bypass the experience of being bored altogether.
Step 1) Identify Common Boring Situations
Write down three typical situations in your life where you often find yourself in a bored state. You may have more than three, but you only need a few to get the hang of the technique. In the brackets write down approximately how long these situations usually last for.
Example: Waiting for my terminally late friend to show up for coffee. (30 min to 1 hour)
1____________________________ (___________)
2____________________________ (___________)
3____________________________ (___________)
Step 2) What Can You Do for productivity?
Create a list of potential activities you can do in those three situations. When you’re brainstorming ideas, don’t censor yourself. Some of your ideas will be socially inappropriate, possibly illegal, and bat shit crazy. Write it all down. Give free reign to your creative mind and don’t censor anything. Some of your more ridiculous ideas may only need a few tweaks to become very doable, very creative activities. Once you have a large list (30 to 50 items), considering each activity against the following criteria:
A) Duration
The activity should be something you can complete (or come to a logical save point) in less time than you have to wait for. Meditation may be a good idea but if your wait time is 10 minutes and it takes you 15 minutes to do a full meditation, then you won’t have time to get your ‘ohm mms’ on. The end of the wait will interrupt your activity and make it difficult to enjoy.
In this context, duration means the minimum amount of time to engage in the activity. Some audio books take 14 hours to complete, however you can pause them anytime you want. So how long does it take to engage in the audiobook? For me it is approximately 5 minutes. If something or someone is bugging me every 4 minutes then I really can’t engage in the book, so I turn it off and do something else. Personally, I set listening to an audiobook at a 6 minute activity. If the wait time is longer than 6 minutes than an audiobook is a great activity; if less, then I should do something else. Time estimations are different for different people, also they may change over time. The best sort of wait activities are ones that can be interrupted without annoying you.
B) Mobility
The activity should not depend on large clunky items, or depending on other people to do the activity. It should be something you can carry with you wherever you go. Perhaps you like to play the guitar, but it is impractical to carry a guitar everywhere you go. Mobility means you can easily carry the material requirements with you.
On Cell Phones:
As soon as I said “mobility”… you thought “cell phone.” Our culture is over dependent on cell phones and I-devices for portable entertainment technology. These devices run out of power, or go out of the Wi-Fi service zones, get borrowed by friends or break. So what’s your plan then? This exercise is about stretching your mind and thinking creatively. Your mind, properly used, is far more powerful and far more entertaining than anything you can download from the app store. While brainstorming notice if all your activities depend on mobile technology. If you are too cellphone dominant you may want to challenge your mind to come up with 50 things you can do that don’t depend on a device at all.
Yes, I love my cell phone too. It is my go-to tool for audiobooks. But remember the exercise is to determine the less obvious, more creative solutions.
C) Being Specific vs Being General.
You may wish to write down something very general because it seems like a good activity and it has a wide scope. If you write something like “Thinking (5 min),” imagine a critical friend was standing beside you asking, “WTF does that mean?” What does “thinking” really mean? Can you give 3 concrete examples of what you mean? Is the activity specific enough that you can see yourself doing it?
Yes, I think. Sometimes I run logical debates in my mind when I’m walking from one location to another. While it doesn’t appear (on the outside) that I am doing anything, my mind is on a rant about an injustice or mulling over a passionate way to explain dark matter to a non-scientist. Writing down an activity like “Thinking about stuff…” gives you no idea, whereas “Have a mental debate with George Carlin, Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin on comedy” does. When you are bored your thinking is dull, slow and uncreative. You will not generate good ideas when you feel the onset of boredom. The more specific you are when planning, the easier it is for your mind to get going when the boring situation hits.
D) Three Modes: Stand, Sit, Walk.
In a past iteration of this technique, I planned several writing activities to do on the bus. Unfortunately, it was rush hour, the bus was packed, and I didn’t get a seat. I found it difficult to hold an iPad, type and hold a bar for balance all at the same time. I didn’t manage to get much done, however the experience taught me that waiting activities should be broken down into three categories: Standing, Sitting and Walking. If you are bored, then your mind is running in neutral and your body will be doing one of those three things. So your activity plan should include things that can be done while standing, sitting or walking.
The A List
Write down 3 sitting, 3 standing and 3 walking activities. Think of things that don’t involve your cell phone or portable devices. Stretch your thinking past what you already do and think up some new ideas.
In the first bracket record down what physical requirements you need to do the activity, in the second bracket write down the minimum time required.
Example: Introduce myself and find out about someone I don’t know (another person) (3 min)
Standing:
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
Sitting:
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
Walking:
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
Step 3) What Can You Do… That Matters.
Congratulations, if you stop here you have 3-7 good activities and will never be bored again. The next stage is not just about not being bored, but scaling it up a notch. Let’s turn wasted time into productive time.
At the top of each of these next three lists, write down a goal that will improve your life over the next 5 years. Next, write down two small activities (for each state) which will move you closer toward that goal. Like the previous list, include the physical requirements and the minimum time frames.
The B List
Goal #1: ___________________________________
Standing:
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
Sitting:
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
Walking:
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
Goal #2: ___________________________________
Standing:
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
Sitting:
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
Walking:
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
Goal #3: ___________________________________
Standing:
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
Sitting:
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
Walking:
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
_____________________________________
( ___________ ) ( ________ )
Step 4) Keep your productivity options with You
Print out your activity list from step 2 and step 3. Put them in your wallet or purse and forget about them. The next time you have that “Oh God, I’m going to die from boredom” feeling, take the list out and read it. You don’t have to do any of the things you suggested to yourself, just read the list. Then read it again and read it a third time. Remember you don’t have to do anything; you are free to continue to feel as bored as much and as long as you want. You are under no obligation to do anything you suggested to yourself on the list.
If you find that doing something mentioned on either list is more fun than staying bored, then know you are free to do that too. You may discover something very interesting. Being bored is the lazy choice of a lazy mind. If you choose not to allow your mind to flop into a lazy state, you never need be bored again.
