What Do You Do When You Feel Bored?

If you’re anything like me you have a long list of things you’d like to do and you’re always busy working on things you enjoy. But then what happens when you’re stuck doing something you don’t want to do? People who get very passionately excited also tend to get very frustratingly bored if being held back from what they want to do.

So, what do you do if you are itching to do something fun, but you just have to get this boring thing done because your boss, your coworkers, your family, your friends, your lecturers or a committee you volunteered to help are relying on you? It is not worth being antagonistic, you simply need to get the thing done.

Personally I react very badly to boredom so I know exactly where you’re coming from! As a result I have developed a number of coping mechanisms for getting things done so that I can go back to having fun. I apply these skills to job seeking, homework, downtime at work and the dreaded cleaning sprees.

1) Set yourself a specific task to complete with a reward at the end. Once you are clear about what the task entails, put all your energy into the boring task immediately and do not stop until the task is finished. As soon as you are finished enjoy your reward without any guilt or distraction.

2) Set yourself up to have fewer boring tasks to do in the first place by delegating the things you have to do that you find uninteresting. You might not be able to delegate away all of your boring tasks, but you can certainly make a good dent on them. For example, if you are really itching to work on some creative projects you could delegate your bookkeeping. If you want to spend your home time tracing your genealogy, hire someone else to clean the house.

3) Ask a friend to help or just to keep you company. Recently I was moving house and I found packing to be a really boring task. A friend offered to come visit a couple of times while I was packing. It was great! I think I packed more things during the time she was visiting than I did on my own for the whole rest of the week.

4) Split your task up into milestones so that you can tick off your percentage complete. If you know that you have to make twenty sales calls and you don’t feel like it, then you can feel good about your task being already 20% complete after the first four.

5) Here’s an idea from Barbara Sher in Refuse to Choose. She suggests you can turn your task into part of an imaginary drama or storyline and amuse yourself silly with it! Pretend your task is part of a lead-up to an exciting adventure or mystery!

6) Listen to, or even sing along to music. Fast, loud pop is great for tedious physical tasks, whereas classical might be better if you have to concentrate. I don’t like music at all for focused tasks that I enjoy, but it is a welcome relief when I’m bored.

7) If you have two boring tasks to do one after the other, why not try doing the both at the same time? The switching between the two boring tasks might add enough variety to make the combination interesting.
Alternate the boring task with an interesting one. This was the only way I could get myself to clean my room as a kid. I would set myself the goal of picking up and putting away 10 items, and in return I would allow myself to read just one page of whatever book I was into at the time. Even these days I sometimes alternate doing my paid work with reading the news.

9) Use a stopwatch to time how long you take. How quickly can you write an essay or complete a report? Turn on the stopwatch and find out! Then next time you have to do the same thing, see if you can beat your personal record.

10) Use a timer to section off short sprints. Set the timer for 5, 10 or 15 minutes and work as fast as you can during that time. Plan your day so that you can space out enough short sprints to get the whole task done. When I was at university I took a part-time job as a market research interviewer due to the flexible working arrangements, but I got really bored making all the calls as it would take sometimes a hundred calls to get one interview. The work was about 2 hours per day at any time I chose. Instead of doing it all at once which would have driven me crazy, I set up a twenty minute sprint every two hours around my uni homework.

11) Instead of wasting your time doing the same task repeatedly, see if you can find a way to set up an automated system for getting the task done. This is particularly the case with anything done on the computer. For example, when I started my career in IT I took a job as a software tester, but then I realised that I hated testing because I found the step-by-step regression tests to be particularly tedious. To make the task better, I learned how to use an automated testing software package and wrote some scripts that would do the specific mouse clicks for me. I topped it off by writing an instruction manual to teach the other members on my team how to do it too.

At Petra Smirnoff .com I have reviews and information about Barbara Sher’s Refuse to Choose book. I also share tips about Personal development.

Career Jobs Online:

Job Search Pointers Poster Series; Career & Employment Tips - Set of 6 Laminated Posters. Persistence, Focus, Exploration, Preparation, Attitude, and Networking.The JOB SEARCH Poster Series includes the following 6 laminated posters: Persistence - Failure is the path of least resistance. Focus - Decide what you want and make it your goal. Exploration - Opportunity is found in unexpected places. Preparation - Don't agonize. Organize. Attitude - A good attitude makes a great difference. Networking - Don't go it alone!