Boredom always seems to find me. Anything I do, even if it’s something I love, is ruined by boredom before long.
I’ve found it’s best for me to entertain myself by cycling through several different projects at once. I write for twenty minutes, then read for twenty minutes, then watch a YouTube clip for twenty minutes, and then return back to writing. It’s taken me my lifetime to uncover this process for myself, and I have to apply to most anything I work on.
But it’s not just about getting work done; boredom also infiltrates my every day entertainment.
Reading bores me, even if it is a great story I am experiencing. I love hiking, but even the great outdoors is not enough to wow me for an extended period of time. So why not combine the two?
I’ve never been interested in audiobooks until I published my own. I signed up for audible and received a couple of free downloads, so I thought I should check it out.
I’ve now gone hiking along the hills near my home nearly every day this last month, and I’ve finished listening to several novels as well. I haven’t enjoyed my free time this much in a long while!
This be them there hills.
The combination is great. I can intently listen to the narrator for a few minutes, and when I get bored of that I can switch my attention to the beautiful scenery around me, all the while still letting the story sink into the fine line between the conscious and unconscious of my brain. When I tire of the scenery, I can focus again on my earbuds and get wrapped up back into the story.
Important details of the story or the nature trail are not missed (at least I don’t think so) while I’m swapping the focus of my attention. I often am concerned with not having enough time to do everything I want to do, and then I end up sitting around and doing nothing because of it. Now I get in my exercise and a good story in at the same time, and it’s wonderful!
Right now I’m listening to The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. The narrator is superb, which is very important to me. The good thing about audible is that you can listen to a lengthy sample of most books before you purchase. I can’t handle listening to a bad storyteller.
Try this out if you need to change things up a bit. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
