Expand Your Philosophy: Master the Mindset of Making Life Interesting

Learned Wisdom
Written By Chris Read

Short principles for long-term clarity—and occasional epiphanies.

How can I make boring tasks more interesting?

“Making a thing interesting is not about making the boring thing change its nature, it is about approaching it like a shit-stirrer who wants nothing but to make it fun because otherwise they would be bored.'”

Life can serve up boring tasks that can exhaust you through their inevitably, tedium and persistence. This can exist in the intellectual, emotional or physical elements of life – work, chores, and interpersonal interactions. It can cause us to feel drained and stuck in the ruts of everyday life. The ultimate goals of these tasks are to be a functioning part of society or requirements to stay healthy – but what if we could make them more interesting?

The key to motivation with these tasks is finding ways to change your attitude and state so that your interests align with the outcome of the task as much as possible. To be clear, nothing about the mundaneness of the task changes, but the way you frame the task does. Is it a challenge? Is it a game? Is it a soul sucking tasks which will forever drain your life away? How you see these tasks changes how you approach them and despite what you might believe, you have some level of choice about how you view it. Think about the ways you might trick a child into doing something they don’t want to do, like eating their greens or putting away their washing. It almost always is about how you frame it - “eat your greens” v.s. “I bet you can’t beat me at eating every scrap of dinner – I’m so confident I will even give you a head start”.

The core of this idea is an attitude of curiosity, creativity, and a seeking mentality. To best leverage this, you must first understand some things about yourself:

  • Generally, what interests you in life? what do you do with your friends? What do you do when you are home by yourself?

  • What is the reason you like doing the things you love? Pick the top three: Achievement (Mastery), Immersion (Fantasy), Social Connection, Exploration, Creativity, Competition, Relaxation, Power and Control, Discovery

  • What are your strengths? (If you are unsure you can try Strengths Profile or VIA Strengths)

  • Are you detail-oriented or abstract-oriented? - For example do you love handbags and know everything about how they are made (detail-oriented), or do you instead more enjoy how handbags make you look and how it affects those around you (abstract-oriented)?

Understanding these things is important because attempting to “just make something boring, interesting” is not an effective idea. Without finding something you are interested in to anchor to, it becomes like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. The fact that many of these boring tasks are inevitable means that if you are forcing yourself to do them without a dopamine payoff you will likely feel more exhausted and impeded overall thereby ruining your momentum in the day. Instead, by mapping something you already like on top of something you don’t, you can allow for at least some level of alignment between the boring process/outcome and your interest. Sort of like shaving edges off your square peg so it better resembles the round hole.

The key here is to re-theme or re-phrase what you are doing, or to create challenges or games that makes the repetition more interesting. Let me ask you, which seems more interesting: (1) Doing your tax paperwork, because it’s your tax paperwork or (2) Beating your rival, one answer at a time by doing your tax paperwork? I’d hazard to guess the latter. Although the task is exactly the same (doing your taxes) it tastes better after the reposition, especially if the task is unavoidable. The thing about this fabricated interest is that it doesn’t have to be true or even reasonable, simply because the task itself is. You have every power to make things as absurd as you like. It isn’t an excuse to do the task poorly, more an excuse to not spend your energy hating “wasted” time on boring tasks – use smoke screens to empower yourself.

As an example from my life, I had to go through a database and delete all testing emails out of a list of 60,000 emails. I love music (at this time lots of Nu Metal) and saw it as an opportunity to overcome the monotony of hours I would have to spend doing this task. So I decided that it was going to be a game like Dance Dance Revolution (if interested) where I tried to match the beat of my music with my actions of hitting the down arrow and assessing the email. I started slow, and slowly increased my speed. I poised my hands in such a position that I could hit the delete key in time with the music too if needed. Not only did I accomplish the task faster, I hit a flow state, and at the end had effectively completed my tasks such that I stopped worrying about hating it.

So, if bored, find a way to be interested. There is always something to be interested in whether it is exploring course study material like you are an epic explorer, or being the Dishmaster General who gets tested with time trial to put away their dishes. There is always something. By finding how things can be more interesting in your life you realise more and more the power that you hold over the things in front of you. An improved locus of control leads to a more engaged life, and that can only ever be good for your future.  Remember that the world is more interesting than you can ever imagine, why not start experiencing that imagined world to overcome the drudgery of daily life and in the process make everything more curiously fun.

 

Reflection Questions:

  • Imagine if you were trying to sell this task to your child-self in such a way that you would be not only be excited to do this, but would rush to do it as best as you can – how would you frame it?

  • Imagine you were doing this task for the most ridiculous reason you can think of, how might that make the task more interesting?

  • Imagine you were doomed by a malevolent god to do this task for the rest of your life without reprieve (like Sisyphus and his bolder) how would you make it interesting and even make money off it?

Songs That Embody This For Me:

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Chris Read
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