The enemy of great is boredom

When it comes to being great, and achieving our full potential, there is an elephant in the room that is not talked about enough. This elephant is about the correlation between sticking with good habits and with boredom.

Until I read Atomic Habits by James Clear, there had never been a book that I had read or heard about, that so clearly and specifically communicated how boredom gets in the way of developing good habits and principles.

“The greatest threat to success is not failure, but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty. Perhaps this is why we get caught up in a never-ending cycle, jumping from one workout to the next, one diet to the next, one business idea to the next. As soon as we experience the slightest dip in motivation, we begin seeking a new strategy — even if the old one was still working. As Machiavelli noted, ‘Men desire novelty to such an extent that those who are doing well wish for a change as much as those who are doing badly.’ We crave new things, and it is only the very rare individual that can stick with a workout, a business idea, a diet, or a challenging habit long enough to see great results.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits

In order to achieve great results, we must develop good habits and principles. The journey to learn something new and become great at something is very non-linear and it includes a wide range of emotions and cycles. It is fun, exciting, scary, hard, confusing, boring, and so much more. All of those elements seem to be well documented and regularly discussed across sports, academics, life, and business. I would confidently say that I have the appetite and ability for all of them. Except for one…

I have had zero appetite for boredom.

But here is the sinister twist to my own journey… and I have been guilty of this my entire life. Since I can remember, I have been proud of the truth behind this statement, “I never get bored, and I always have something to keep me interested and occupied.”

This has been my truth. Yet if you look at my business track record (as an example for the purpose of this article), it is a combination of small lifestyle businesses, short 1–2 year episodes at venture-backed startups, and a few failed moonshots. While I have enjoyed the process, learned a ton, had a few small exits and honestly felt proud of the life that I have built, I still have not achieved the level of personal success that I have envisioned for myself.

I have genuinely worked very hard for this success over the past 15 years. Yet I kept falling short of where I deeply knew I could get to. For me personally, it has never been about money or fame (while those are nice), it has been about creating value and making a noticeable impact. I feel like I have only scratched the surface when it comes to that. And it is honestly hard to put into words.

In early 2020, as the world shut down, I began to reflect a lot more on this. What I realized is that I have been relying too heavily on my natural talents, ability to work hard, and past experiences. But in reality, I have been mentally lazy.

I realize now that I have been optimizing for enjoyment in the moment, and assumed that my talents and my hard work would pay off. Incrementally they have, and perhaps to others looking in on my life, they would say I have built something to be very grateful for. I am very thankful for what I have, and I feel truly blessed to even be in a position to be thinking about this and exploring ways to improve my abilities to succeed. But at 40 years old, I still do not have any significant security or money saved for retirement. I have been an entrepreneur most of my adult life, because it played to my strengths of building, creating, taking chances, and bringing other talented people together to solve problems. I have also valued freedom and time above everything else. Yet there is no greater security than knowing that no matter what risks you take, you have a business, or enough cash in the bank, to pay for your livelihood. My mental laziness got in the way of me building this type of security.

I was proud of not being bored and always having exciting things to do, so I did not develop the habits to stick with something long enough, and fall in love with being bored.

My mental laziness got in the way of me building better principles and habits to not just work hard, but work smart. Instead, I was consistently moving away from boredom to ensure that I was living a great story. A story that was fun and exciting to me, and to others. Maybe I cared too much about what others thought of me.

I never realized that leaning into boredom, and building stronger principles, and mental models, were some of the core ingredients that I was missing. In mid-2020, I started working on developing better habits and principles. I started sticking with reading every day, new workout habits that were about long-term gains, and new mental models… even when it was uncomfortable. I started training myself to be in love with the process and be comfortable with delayed rewards.

Then I read James Clear’s book. And it all clicked for me. The only way to be excellent is to actually fall in love with boredom.

Businesses usually do not die, they just fade away. Meaning that it gets too hard, or it no longer aligns with your life, or you just get tired of working on the same things every day, or talking about the same ideas, or spending time in the trenches trying to solve the same problems. It always blew my mind that a musician could spend their entire career playing the same “top hits”… even with an outlandish payday.

So it really comes down to who can handle doing the same thing over and over and over again. Before James Clear’s book, I had never heard it framed this way. We usually talk about it like this; “you have to put in the reps”, or “it is about staying motivated”, or “it all comes down to passion”, or “you have to really want it.”

The reality is, really successful people also get bored. But they find a way to show up and keep doing the same thing. Mastery takes practice. But the more we do something, the more boring it gets. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. So we seek out new activities, new businesses, new people. This is what I have done my entire life.

So now I am learning how to fall in love with boredom. As James Clear points out, there are two primary ways to accomplish this:

1. Increase your proficiency at the task. Fall in love with the small incremental wins that you have, and keep finding small things about the process to enjoy. It’s much easier to fall in love with doing something over and over again if you can look forward to making progress.
2. Fall in love with a result of the task rather than the task itself. Some things just suck to do, but you have to do them. In these situations, it is much more effective to shift your focus away from the actual task and toward a result. Find an app, a friend, or some other way to hold yourself accountable and get hooked on keeping the streak alive.

Also… let’s be super realistic. You can not fall in love with something that you hate. And you can not fall in love with something that you do not have a fighting chance at being good at. So make sure that you select the right places of focus.

Focus on things that both excite you and match your skills (and if you do not know what these are, then a good place to start is one of the personality and strength tests like StrengthFinder). This enables you to position yourself where the odds are in your favor. This is critically important. Remember that the work that hurts you less than it hurts others, is the work you are meant to do. Find these areas and focus on these areas.

In some ways, I am very late to the game, but I have a ton of great life ahead of me. So now I am doubling down on the areas that I know I can stick within the hard times and, most importantly for me, stick within the boring times. I never thought that leaning into being bored and having patience with that boredom needed to be a strength. Somehow I missed that lesson. But now I know, and I hope this can be helpful for one other person out there.

Optimize for your personal flow state and you will find the greatest returns. And remember that the real enemy of great is boredom.

All the best,

— Rustin Sage Coburn