Falling in Love with the Boredom of Habit
And make your habit sticks
I’m proud to say that I’m an avid reader, but there are days when I lack the motivation to finish the book I’m currently read. I barely managed to finish one page. Sometimes even the things that you love doing are boresome and you lack the spirit to finished it. The same thing could be said about doing a habit, especially a new habit you started doing. At first, you full of excitement whenever you are doing it, but, inevitably, you will get bored of doing it. Probably when the result you hoping for is nowhere to be seen. As the result, you could skip a day or worse you could stop doing it altogether.
To be able to move past the boredom is the ability that we have to master. We all have dreams that we would like to achieve, but it doesn’t matter what you are trying to achieve or become better at, if you only do the work when it’s exciting or always ready to quit when it getting boresome, then you will never be persistent enough to achieve great results. I know how hard it is sometimes to finish one chapter or finish one more lap of running, but stepping up and not quit when it’s draining to do so is what you should do.
James Clear in his book, Atomic Habit, describes the choice of quitting or moving past the boredom as the difference between a professional and an amateur. He said professional know what is important and work toward it by sticking to the schedule, but amateur gets pulled off course by the urgencies of life and let life get in the way.
Clear advice to conquer the boredom of doing a habit is to follow the Goldilocks Rule; this rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities, not too easy, not too hard.
When you’re starting a new habit, you have the excitement of doing something new to manage said habit as your companion. But once a habit has been established, it is undeniable and important to continue to advance in small ways so it keeps being exciting. These little improvements will keep you engaged in your habit. If you hit the Goldilocks Zone just right, Clear said, you can achieve the experience of being “in the zone” and fully immersed in an activity called the flow state. For maintaining motivation working on challenges that are just right and on the perimeter of your ability is crucial.
For example, if you have a little running competition with five years old, you will quickly become bored, it’s too easy. You will win. However, if you run against Usain Bolt, an eight-time Olympic gold medalist, because the match is too difficult you will quickly lose motivation. In contrast, if you run against someone who is your equal, you might be leading in a few meters or lose a few, you have a good chance of winning if you really try. You are in deep focus, distractions fade away, and you are fully invested in the task at hand. This is a prime example of the manageable difficulty of the Goldilocks Rule.
In Clear words, improvement requires a delicate balance, you need to periodically search for challenges that drive you to the edge while continuing to make enough progress to remain inspired.
Habits need to remain novel for them to stay attractive and exciting, if not we will get bored. And boredom is maybe the greatest enemy for self-improvement.
