The Cure for Being Bored Both Kids and Adults Will Love to Hate
Being bored is basically the opposite of having fun, and being stuck at home all day for weeks isn’t fun. It’s only a matter of time before all the boredom memes start going viral on social media. The reality of boredom is that there is only one way to overcome it, might I say even cure it. Before I can explain this cure, first you must understand that boredom is the same thing as pain.
I’ve previously written a lot about pain and how to build an athlete’s pain tolerance. The subject of pain is important because the level of conditioning an athlete needs for elite success requires pushing past pain. Similarly, this also applies to boredom.
In fact, according to the research of author Geoff Colvin overcoming boredom is one of the keys to success. In his book Talent is Overrated, he provides example after example of why this is true. Simply stated, the only way to perform at an elite level is to practice boring, repetitive tasks day after day no matter how boring it gets.
Furthermore, just like building pain tolerance the only way to build a tolerance for boredom is by facing boredom more often. When it comes to pain, this is called positive training pain. Positive training pain is training to intentionally create non-threatening pain to build an athlete’s pain tolerance. So for boredom, using this idea would require positive training boredom.
Both kids and adults hate to hear that more boredom is the cure for boredom. However, it’s a fact that not having anything fun to do is good practice. Don’t sleep away your boredom. Take advantage of the opportunity boredom presents. Sit still, visualize the future you want, then do something to move one step closer to that future.