[Question] How to tolerate boredom?

[tryhard1000]

The most noticeable bottleneck in my productivity comes from boredom-induced procrastination. Specifically, my process of doing any task on my plate (e.g. meditation, studying, housework, finances/​paperwork, etc.) often gets delayed as follows:

1. I think about doing the task or begin doing the task.

2. At some point within seconds/​minutes of this, I get bored. This arises as a felt sensation around my abdomen and throat that feels pretty unpleasant and similar to annoyance.

3. Around the same time, a thought arises about an alternative (usually instant digital distraction, e.g. YouTube or games) that pretty instantaneously seems more enjoyable to me. Sometimes I recognize that this has occurred, but even so this desire is indeed much more pleasant than the extremely unpleasant sensation of boredom.

4. I go and engage in the alternative, largely due to the unpleasantness of the boredom.

I’m wondering if anyone has any suggestions regarding the above. I’ve tried meditation/​mindfulness but neither eliminates how intolerable the boredom feels, and website blockers usually just result in me pacing/​tinkering around as an alternative distraction. I’ve also tested negative for ADHD. I’d appreciate any possible input or links to past posts on this topic (I couldn’t find any via the search function; this doesn’t seem to exactly match an ugh field because even when I don’t instantly “flinch” the unpleasantness of the boredom eventually results in my escaping the sensation via distraction).

[Sergii]

I can relate to this.

For me, “pacing/​tinkering around” is also not super pleasant, so I would mainly just return to work or somethinng at least a little more productive if there is no alternative digital distraction.

I agree with another comment that getting less addicted to digital content is the key here. I went cold turkey on all digital entertainment (I only have 1 cheat day per week usually), and am very happy with this decision.

In fact, after few weeks I crave the digital entertainment so much less that I don’t need the cheat day anymore, I’m just not into it anymore.

[cousin_it]

Hmm, not sure that boredom is the underlying problem here. I pretty much never get bored by myself (I really enjoy thinking, daydreaming, or making stuff), but I put off unpleasant tasks probably as much as you do.

So maybe these are two separate problems. For getting less addicted to mindless online content, I think you can pretty easily train yourself to daydream more, or consume “healthier” content (books, music) or create something yourself (intellectual or artistic). These habits really stick. But for unpleasant tasks I’m not sure if making the habit is possible, I’m as stumped as you.

[rsaarelm]

Meditation isn’t supposed to make the pain go away, it’s supposed to train you to suffer less from the pain. So for meditation the idea would just be to make it a game of seeing if you can train to do it longer and better despite the averse feelings, and learn to detach from the feelings. But if your internal motivation is toast, that might be hard to make happen. You might try seeing an actual meditation teacher about this.

The point where you have started the task and then get bored and stop sounds like the key point here. Can you try focusing (maybe in the sense of Gendlin’s focusing) on what goes on in detail with your mind, the task and how you’re conceptualizing working on the task right now and in the future? My experience is that I can procrastinate on starting a task but when I do start it, if it’s something like housework I’ve done it hundreds of times before and can go on autopilot.

I guess it’s mostly housework-like autopilotable stuff for me now. After 20 years of trying I threw in the towel on getting myself to do stuff that’s difficult, I don’t really want to do, and not doing it won’t literally get me killed, which pretty much crashed the whole studying-and-employment pipeline.