Daily Habits & Routines

Boredom: A Greater threat to Success than Failure

kasiryeashiraf

May 21, 2025

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You are now wondering? How is boredom a threat to success? The reason we sometimes start a new habit like going to the gym, changing the diet or checking on our friends is because of excitement or motivation. When this emotion fades off, boredom comes in and somteimes it affects consitency if not managed with caution.

The greatest percentage of people get affected by this vice without even knowing. In this article we are to discuss the ways boredom shows up and how it kills habits. We are also going to talk about the different techniques that can be applied to achieve our goals even when we get bored.

The Science of Boredom

Traditionally, we are wired to believe that the hinderances to habit formation are setbacks or lack of progress. To a greater extent even boredom can prevent an individual from developing new habits. Even when they know its the best for them. 

Boredom refers to a state of depleted energy levels. The opposite of motivation. Most of the time, when starting new goals or habits, for example, reading a new book or creating that blog we always wanted to start.

Over time after multiple reptitions, the habit becomes dull as the excitement fades away. The other factor that brings about boredom is when the habit becomes so easy, the mind tends to create an aitomated system to reduce energy hence lack of motivation. 

Boredom kills habits when based on will power only i.e, motivation. To create long-lasting habits, you need working systems through the good and bad times.

How to beat Boredom and stick to your Habits

In Atomic Habits, Author James Clear shares a few techniques that we can apply to beat boredom and stick to good habits. Un this article we are going to discuss some strategies and how we can apply them to our advantage.

1. The Goldilocks Rule: Building Lasting Habits

As discussed in one of our articles, the Goldilocks rule emphasized that humans attain peak motivation when working on an activity that is neither too hard nor too easy; just perfect difficulty to keep them engaged while making progress.

How to Apply It

Since one of the causes of boredom is the task gettting so easy with repeated practice, Goldilocks rules emphasizes we increase the difficulty of the habit slowly when it becomes boring. This challenge brings you to Goldilocks zone of productivity.  These are some applications of the rule that can be used to create a difference.

(i) Take it a Step at a Time

Consider a person who wants to prepare for a marathon. This person promises themselves to run 3km each day. With repeated practice, the dopamine levels of the reward drop since the task is now easier. This can cause concious procrastination. To fix this boredom, the runner can decide to increase the distance by a kilometer every week. This increases the difficulty of the route, but without making it so difficult; i.e just enough to keep him engaged as he makes progress. 

(ii) Create simple challenges within your Habits

For some habits, you can utilize the technique of small micro challenges to get the effects of the Goldilocks zone. This helps you keep engaged as you make progress towards the big goal. For the gym buddies, you can add a rep per day; for the writers, you can challenge yourself to write an extra page a day; for new readers, another page a day is a small challenge that compounds heavily over time. It also keeps you motivated while making progress. 

2. Shift in Mental Mindset and Building Discipline

In this strategy, achievers are categorised into two categories; Professionals and Amateurs based on how they respond to boredom and motivation. Do you know what differentiates a professional athlete from an amateur athlete? The answer is how they are able to keep going or stick to the plan even with low levels of motivation. A professional will not skip training just because it is boring but an amateur will since they are functioning on motivation rather than discipline. If not handled carefully, any sort of boredom can make them quit. 

Ways Amateurs Can Build Professional Discipline

The first step in building a professional discipline is a Shift in Mindset. This refers to the things we believe to be true about ourselves. For example; you target is to lose weight. Your new habit is hitting the gym. Instead of referring to yourself as a person who is trying to lose weight; you can re enforce your new identity by saying “I am fit”. This wires your mind to amke decisions alligning with the type of person you are becoming rather than who you were. 

The Second tactic to beating boredom through building professional discipline is never missing twice in a row. This, regardless of the habit you are trying to maintain, allows room for imperfection since we are all human but it emphasizes long term consistency. For example; if you are required to write and post a new article every four days, its okay to skip once but not twice. If you hit the gym everyday, missing once is okay but missing twice is a lack of professionalism. 

The third tactic is accepting that professionalism in any field or while practicing any habit requires doing the work even when it seems boring. This is why professional athletes, wrestlers and footballers keep redoing the drills even when they become boring. 

Application of Visual Journal Stimulation

This technique involves journaling one’s progress by taking pictures or writing down physically. A study at Harvard shows that people who track their progress visually are more likely to beat boredom and stick to their habits. This is because whenever you review your journey, the mind gets stimulated by the visual evidence, hence wanting to repeat the habit. This technique is mainly effective when building habits like fitness habits. This visual evidence of change can take you a step ahead in a mindset shift and how you are positive about your habits. 

In the picture above, visual photography of the trips she takes makes the habit more interesting and stimulating to repeat.

Conclusion

As the title states, Boredom is a greater threat to success than failure. Success is not only rainbows of motivation, it also has the lows, days when we don’t feel like it. But what causes the difference is showing up regardless, be it the next training or writing that next article. 

In the article, we have discussed the science behind boredom and how it kills habit development. Some of the techniques talked about are; embracing a shift in mindset, application of Goldilocks rule and shifting our energy from the results to the processes. If you can keep going when a habit feels boring, statistics show you are ahead of 99 percent people. Share with us in the comment section below the technique that you think you can apply in your own life to beat boredom.