The Signals of Stillness

There are times when being unproductive, bored, or idle hits hard enough that it spirals into frustration or even more unproductivity. Understanding them rather than avoiding them could yield answers that help in becoming better. "What's this boredom actually telling me?" is one of many questions to start with.

The most probable cause of unproductivity is a lack of planning. I am likely to feel moments of frustration or idleness when I don't clarify my tasks and goals and manage my time well. So the first thing that the boredom is telling me is that I didn't plan and I am unprepared for the moment.

So it struck me hard one time to hear that "the will to win is worthless if you do not have the will to prepare." Words of Thane Host. The art of planning is such an underrated strategy for being productive.

Sometimes I could actually be doing something and perhaps even be productive. The issue could be that I find it boring. It's unexciting, or maybe not as rewarding as expected. At that point, it can become challenging to work effortlessly. What I try to do in such a situation is examine and correct the "why" I am even doing it in the first place. The outcome could be realising that hard things are hard and boring things have to be done anyway. So just do it.

There are days that I don't realise that what I need is more rest. I would feel really low in energy, unable to be as creative or driven as I normally would, or even just feel lazy. I turn to films to watch in such times, scroll through social media, but hardly consider taking time to actually rest. And rest includes sleeping, among other things.

Sleeping doesn't come so naturally to me. A few hours of shut eyes, and I could be up soon enough as long as I feel a little bit energised. But the issue becomes that I'd not have enough energy for the entire day. To help balance things out, I exercise. It always helps my body relax even better from feeling exhausted.

Other things that I engage in to keep myself "alive" and not feeling bored, idle, or generally unproductive are spending time offline to read books and have conversations with people.

You see, I don't mind being all by myself, as long as I have good internet service and power. There's usually one thing or the order for me to do with my devices. Take them away from me, and we might have ourselves a problem.

I realise this isn't healthy to spend so much time online. So rather than doomscroll on social media when I feel so bored or binge-watch films, I would now spend time away from these distractions to learning or being creative in some other ways. Either be between the pages of a book now, learning something new and playing my guitar, or maybe even taking photos and videos and editing them.

Boredom is generally undesirable. I never liked the feeling. Sometimes, however, it's telling me something about myself and the situation, or maybe to assess my energy levels.