Links to other parts of this miniseries:
New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 1
New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 2
New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 3
New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 4
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 56 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 5
— From Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
So far, in this miniseries we’ve been learning how to make new habits stick. Yet one of the things we haven’t talked about is how to stay focused on achieving your goals when you get bored.
James Clear, the author, recalls meeting an elite sports coach and asking him, “What’s the difference between the best athletes and everyone else? What do the really successful people do that most don’t?”
Clear remembers the coach answering first with the things you might expect: “genetics, luck, talent…” but then he said, “At some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day, doing the same lifts over and over and over.”
The coach’s answer surprised Clear, who had at that moment a shift in perspective:
“Mastery requires practice. But the more you practice something, the more boring and routine it becomes. […]
People talk about getting ‘amped up’ to work on their goals. Whether it’s business or sports or art, you hear people say things like, ‘It all comes down to passion.’ Or, ‘You have to really want it.’ As a result, many of us get depressed when we lose focus or motivation because we think that successful people have some bottomless reserve of passion. But this coach was saying that really successful people feel the same lack of motivation as everyone else. The difference is that they still find a way to show up despite the feelings of boredom. […]
The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty. […] As soon as we experience the slightest dip in motivation, we begin seeking a new strategy—even if the old one was still working.”
So, what to do about boredom then?
You have to anticipate that it will happen and, when it does, accept it and welcome it into your life. Clear says, “You have to fall in love with boredom.”
There will be days when you don’t feel like doing your habit. And many others when you’ll think of not showing up, or not finishing, or quitting altogether, but “if you only do the work when it’s convenient or exciting, then you’ll never be consistent enough to achieve remarkable results.”
ACTION
TODAY: What habit are you bored with? How can you fall in love with that boredom? Go through a mental list of the immense benefits of sticking to it—despite the boredom—vs. quitting. Find that point where your mind shifts and you “fall in love with boredom,” that is, fall in love with the results. Perhaps instead of thinking “This is a great habit, BUT…” you can exchange the BUT for an AND to accept and welcome the boredom and the long-term results that sticking to the habit will bring.
FUTURE: With any habit, anticipate that boredom will occur. It’s not a matter of if, but when. Knowing what to expect will enable you to think of a plan and set up a rule to handle it. Take a look at this recent post from this miniseries on setting rules for guiding future behavior, and create your own: “When boredom strikes and I don’t feel like doing [YOUR HABIT], then I will [YOUR RULE].”
Know someone who is about to quit due to boredom? Please share this post with them via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!