Being excited by many different things has a corollary effect of experiencing insane boredom when you’re not doing the things you feel passionate about. But while you can fill up your time with varied and interesting projects, there will always be times when you are stuck doing something you don’t want to do. People who get very passionately excited also tend to get very frustratingly bored if being held back from what they want to do.

So, what do you do if you are itching to do something fun, but you just have to get this boring thing done because your boss, your coworkers, your family, your friends, your lecturers or a committee you volunteered to help are relying on you? It is not worth being antagonistic, you simply need to get the thing done.

Personally I react very badly to boredom so I know exactly where you’re coming from! As a result I have developed a number of coping mechanisms for getting things done so that I can go back to having fun. I apply these skills to job seeking, homework, downtime at work and the dreaded cleaning sprees.

1) Set yourself a specific task to complete with a reward at the end. Once you are clear about what the task entails, put all your energy into the boring task immediately and do not stop until the task is finished. As soon as you are finished enjoy your reward without any guilt or distraction.

2) Reduce the number of boring tasks you have to do in the first place by delegating them to someone else. You might not be able to get rid of everything that is boring, but if you give delegating a go you might be surprised at what you can let go. When it comes to personal tasks like ironing and cleaning you will need to pay someone, but at work you might even find some willing takers, and your good delegation skills could end up getting you a promotion!

3) Ask a friend to help or just to keep you company. Recently I was moving house and I found packing to be a really boring task. A friend offered to come visit a couple of times while I was packing. It was great! I think I packed more things during the time she was visiting than I did on my own for the whole rest of the week.

4) Split your tasks up into milestones so that you know how much you have done and how much work there is left. If you have to make twenty sales calls then logical milestones might be every forth or fifth phone call. You can feel good every time you hit a milestone.

5) Turn the task into part of an imaginative drama or storyline so that you can amuse yourself silly. Pretend your task is part of a lead-up to an exciting adventure! (This idea is from Barbara Sher in Refuse to Choose).

6) Crank up the music. When you’re doing something boring music can turn it from being a drag to being a disco! Experiment with different styles of music to see what works best in your circumstances. If you need to write, best to keep to non-vocal music.

7) Double up. Have two boring tasks to do and the first one is taking you long enough already? Alternate them. The alternating of the two tasks might add enough variety to pick things up a bit.

Alternate the boring task with an interesting one. This was the only way I could get myself to clean my room as a kid. I would set myself the goal of picking up and putting away 10 items, and in return I would allow myself to read just one page of whatever book I was into at the time. Even these days I sometimes alternate doing my paid work with reading the news.

9) Get a stopwatch and make it a challenge for yourself. How quickly can you write that 2000 word essay? Turn on the stopwatch and find out! Then next time see if you can beat your own personal record

10) Use a timer to section off short sprints. Set the timer for 5, 10 or 15 minutes and work as fast as you can during that time. Plan your day so that you can space out enough short sprints to get the whole task done. When I was at university I took a part-time job as a market research interviewer due to the flexible working arrangements, but I got really bored making all the calls as it would take sometimes a hundred calls to get one interview. The work was about 2 hours per day at any time I chose. Instead of doing it all at once which would have driven me crazy, I set up a twenty minute sprint every two hours around my uni homework.

At Petra Smirnoff .com I have more information about living with Scanner/ Renaissance Soul Personality (multiple interests). I also share tips about Personal development.

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