How to harness the power of boredom

💡 Today’s tip: If you’re bored with something, stop doing it.

Say you’re working on something that is boring you to tears. What do you do? Push through anyway? Philosopher Eve Bigaj writes on Medium that we should actually listen to our boredom, noting that boredom can be a guide. As Bigaj writes, when we’re bored with something, whether that’s a creative project or something we’re reading or an assignment at work, that boredom is trying to tell us something. “It’s almost a moral compass. It’s what tells me that I have lost my ‘why.’ Removing it would mean crawling patiently in the wrong direction.”

Bigaj writes about getting bored with a landscape painting she was making and then adding a wild splash of pink, and finding that she was interested in the painting again. Did the splash of pink totally make sense? Not really. Did she finish the painting? Yes, she did.

So listen to your boredom. It might be telling you that something needs some adjusting.

🍲 More from Forge on boredom:

The Urgent Case for Boredom
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Quarantine Could Fix Our Broken Brains
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The New Boredom
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