Practical steps to replace distraction with deliberate action
First things first: boredom isn’t the enemy. It is the opposite. You have just been ignoring the boredom voice for so long that you missed what it said: it’s your inner self sounding the alarm, whispering: “You are wasting your potential.”
1. Feel the boredom in your bones!
You’re tired of looking at the same old walls every day, wasted weekends, feeling stuck, as if life is just passing you by. That’s a good thing.
You really are bored. So don’t resist that feeling. Don’t numb yourself down with easy pleasures. Don’t succumb to the dopamine hits. Because you are just trying to silence the boredom alert, not the feeling – because the feeling will come back to you as soon as you stop doing the dopamine stuff.
It’s like waking up from a dream and immediately remembering all the problems you had yesterday. So you chase that high again so you can forget for that moment.
But you just end up destroying your life in the process of ignoring the boredom alert.
So instead, let the boredom pain be felt. Feel it deeply, and don’t do anything easy to distract you from that boredom.
Let that pain reveal what’s really going on in your life and why you feel bored.
Use the discomfort to your favor. Think about all the ideas you had, and the things you wanted to try and pursue, or the wishes you had.
Everyone has an ideal vision of their potential. Think about the ideal self you could become if you were rich and had every resource to do what you wanted. What would you like to do – something that would be meaningful and fulfilling to you, that would bring meaning to your life again?
Action examples: Write down 5 outcomes you want for your life.
Broad examples:
- Skills to master
- Environments to fix (home, job)
- Behaviors and habits to upgrade
Examples:
- Learn a technical or creative skill (guitar, pencil drawing, watercolor painting, crafts, coding, languages, fishing, calisthenics, swimming, cycling, woodworking, hunting, sprinting, running, dancing, singing, reading books, etc.)
- Improve your environment (fix your home, car, devices)
- Drop bad behaviors that are slowly killing you (end toxic addictions/relationships, build healthier habits: change sleep routines, remove items from your grocery list, reduce phone time, etc.)
- Optimize routines (replace passive downtime with active, positive routines: walks, workouts, skill practice, etc.)
Ignoring boredom will lead to regret in the future. Boredom can be propelled into real transformation, if you let yourself feel it, and get angry and upset with yourself for wasting time.
2. Time will pass, with or without your permission
You have 24 hours. The world has 24 hours. So the real question is: what are you doing with those hours. Are you building something that is fulfilling? Are you being a positive contribution to the world, in any sense of the word?
Because default living, aka bingeing, scrolling, gaming, equals default life, which equals regret. Our culture has normalized wasting life.
But if you are here, chances are you want to change something about your situation.
So here are several reminders:
- You don’t need permission from anyone but yourself.
- You don’t need approval from anyone.
- You don’t need the “perfect moment” or “motivation”.
- You don’t need to know what you are doing to start learning and doing and learn along the way.
- You only need the will to start.
It’s not like you can only become great at something if you started when you were a child. That’s not true. The same logic applies: you don’t have to have been a sporty person all your life to become a super lean and strong person and ultimately do things you’ve never imagined possible later in your adulthood.
The focus here is: you don’t need your parents’ or anybody’s approval to start something new you’ve never done before.
Waiting for life to change on its own is a guaranteed way to waste it.
3. Reject external validation
Waiting for the approval of others is shooting yourself in the foot and saying “Oh on, now I can’t do anything!”.
Your mind is trapped because it was programmed to look for validation everywhere: from parents, friends, society – you name it. So let’s break this loop.
You are not here to be liked by others. You are here to do something with your life that has meaning. You have to figure out for yourself what skills you have and what strengths you can use in a way that will benefit yourself and ultimately others.
Improve, build, evolve, and ultimately, share it with others.
One of the worst things stopping you is the thought that you need someone else’s approval or some kind of “seal” that says, “Now you can go, child, we trust you, you’ll do great”.
Your thoughts are literally the only thing stopping you from changing your life.
The programming you’ve received your entire life has sculpted your way of seeing and acting in the world. Your mind is your only enemy. But it can also be your greatest ally.
4. Forget your past self
Because identity is dynamic, you must constantly evolve, reinvent yourself, and grow.
Your idea of “you” is not static or set in stone. You are not a fixed figure who can’t change likes, fashion sense, foods, music, daily routines, people, friends, etc.
5. You are not a trend
Don’t limit yourself to an outdated, static version of who you think you are, who you were, or who others think you are/were, because your interests, habits, and circles are meant to evolve.
You are not a frozen, pretty Instagram feed.
Growth literally demands killing your old self-image to make room for a new version.
Expansion demands removing yourself from old expectations; otherwise, you’ll stay the same, forever. And that leads to boredom, regret, disappointment, addictions, depression.
Why? Because if you close your identity to specific things you “should do” or are “known for,” you will be ashamed of trying anything different or changing your “image”. That fear is the real danger, and it keeps you stuck.
Then you look back and think:
“I can’t start a new life.”
“I can’t remove these toxic people.”
“That’s just not who I am…”
That is the real issue.
If you box yourself into excuses and reasons not to do things differently from what you have been doing, you guarantee stagnation – aka the same life you have now.
6. When bored, re-engineer your life
Boredom is the alarm. Just listen to it and act. Ask yourself:
- What did I once dream of doing?
- Why am I not doing it now?
- What can I do with the hours I usually waste?
Direct your attention to the dreams you abandoned or the ideas you had, and start reviving them, one step at a time.
Look back at the kid inside you – the one who wished and dreamed.
Think about why you stopped trying. Then start over.
7. How true progress works
You won’t become a master overnight, or over the weekend. Learning or trying new things will be hard and feel wrong at the beginning. It always does, and that is why most people quit things – because it’s hard.
So you must stay consistent and do the new things anyway. You will doubt yourself and your skills, and that’s a good thing – it means you’re moving, not wasting time.
Mastery is like a staircase: you must go one step at a time, and you can’t jump entire floors. But you can out-climb everyone who stands still.
So track your available time, even if it’s not much:
- 1 hour a day = 30 hours a month.
30 hours a month = change and new beginnings happening day by day.
8. Reclaim your direction
Ask the questions most people choose to avoid:
- Am I satisfied with my life?
- If I died today, what would I have built or become?
- Have I lived with intention, or passivity and reaction?
Because boredom can be the last warning sign before a life wasted, or a stupid decision away after too much regret.
So here’s an action plan:
- Audit your routines. Cut distractions. Remove useless notifications. Block numbers if you have to. Silence your phone during specific hours of the day and don’t let anyone disturb you.
- Reallocate time toward progress: make a list of things you want to do and the weekly practical time/schedule you can dedicate to them.
- Decide what you want to have more in your life vs. what must be eliminated to make room for it.
- Start building with what you have, starting this week. Don’t wait to buy things. Start the journey right now with what you have already. Build the momentum, because we are focusing on the first days of building a habit.
- Don’t try to be perfect right from the start. Just be consistent. Do 10% on bad days, and you’re still going to be consistent and keeping the habit instead of quitting and returning to the numbness.
- Start simple, start small, start slowly, step by step, one at a time.
If you follow these steps, I guarantee that in a few months you’ll know so much more and feel so much more confident about the things that felt impossible at the beginning, that you will become a different person.
The key question really is about using time or accumulating regret.
We can’t go back to not knowing, so we can’t waste our precious time. The time is to act now.
Ask yourself the hard questions:
- What do I actually want? (make a list if you need)
- How many hours am I wasting every week on useless things?
- What changes can I implement right away to start my routine to achieve the changes I want in my life?
Reminder: You build a new life one hour at a time, one decision at a time.
You just have to be willing to try, every week, without skipping more than a week (as that will remove the chances of continuing further, especially in the beginning months).
Think about this: What would you do if you had two days to do absolutely anything you wanted, without anyone bothering you?
What changes would you implement in your life?
Putting your life on the track you want will take time, but it’s completely possible. And now you already have a plan to start.
This way you can guarantee that you won’t be like many older people who have many regrets about their lives, because you’ve decided to act and introspect earlier.
Hopefully, there will be fever people saying:
- “Why didn’t I think about this before?”
- “Why didn’t I quit my job sooner and did what I truly enjoyed?”
- “Why did I put up with this abusive person for so long?”
- “Why did I even talk to those people if they weren’t my true friends?”
- “I made this decision without thinking straight.”
