Kien Nguyen

Motivation works differently than I thought

Boredom is true motivation #

Vietnamese has this old saying of "boredom breads problems", or "ranh roi sinh nong noi", but I don't think that's true anymore in this mordern world.
In today's world, we are more busy than ever. I even think that we don't ever get bored anymore.
It's the norm in the recent years to just take in more information. Every. Second. Of. The. Day.

We start our day by opening our eyes, jolt to our phone to turn of the alarm ON our phone and start going through every damn app on it.
Continues to do so repeatedly in the toilet, cooking food and eating it, music or podcast while commuting, movie shows/video games/social media when we're supposed to be "DONE" with our day.

... And then we proceed to ask "why don't I have motivation to do anything?"...

To answer that question, we have to understand our "wants".
For people, it's a more beautiful watch, a better house, a nice car, or a closet or beautiful clothes.
For me, I "want" to use my time to have interesting experiences, like competing in sport tournaments, create art, travel,...
And although "having" and "experiencing" are two different aims, the means to achieve them are the same: doing.

We have to "do" better works to get the material things we want. We have to actually plan then go outside and "do" the things we want to experience.
We already know what we want, and we know the steps to get there, but we just can't get ourselves up and do it.
That's when boredom comes into play.

You see, you already know what you want and what you should do, you're just distracted from doing it by thing's that're "seemingly" more interesting.
As humans, we love to see things that interest us, or things that makes us feels in certain ways.
Think of the silly memes that you found yourself giggles when you need to do your work, or the dramas in the TV series you continue to binge whilst you're breaking your fifth promiss to finish that art project.
Consuming these information are NOT what we WANT, but we continue to do so because it's easier and it's actually funny, or interesting, or resonating to watch.
But the difference between consuming information and doing tasks that get us closer to our goals just one thing: WANT.

We WANT to have something, so we set out goals and tasks and do them.
We feels GUILTY after spending countless hours consuming content, even though sometimes information makes us feel good, because we KNOW we're not progressing towards what we want.

All these shiny, intesting things we watch and read distract us from what we really want.
And because of that, I invite you to tryout BOREDOM.
When remove consuming information entirely from our life, we will become bored.
Thinking about all sorts of things will become our default behaviour.
These things we think about are related to our lives, unlike random "interesting" but not related things we see when consuming information.

When stop taking in information, our brain starts producing them.
That's when creativity sparks again, that's when you remind yourself of how much you want to make movies, plays music, or travel to Italy.
For example, this post wouldn't exists if I hasn't stop myself from watching yet another "The Office" episode, or watch yet another Pewdiepie video.

So that's why I'm suggesting you to give boredom a try.
Why? Well be bored to do the things you've always wanted to do. How's that for a reason.
Simple, but not easy, rule to follow: Not taking in information of ALL kinds.
No books, no audiobooks, no music, no movies or shows, no videos, no podcasts.
Batch the things you NEED to do on the internet for your day and access the internet for no more than ONE hour.
Connecting to the internet is like entering black hole that can and will suck ALL of your consious away, be very cautious when doing so.
What to do when not consuming information?
Sit or walk around and THINK, do things your brain tells you to do, do things you've always wanted to do but left it for "tomorrow".
Be bored and see what you can think of and how much you can do.