Boredom Resistance

Most goals don’t fail at the start, they die quietly in the boring middle.

Setting goals is easy. Planning is easy. Starting is easy. Everything breaks down in the flat middle, when progress depends on doing the same mundane action over and over until results appear. This is where most people fall off, including me. Instead of repeating the work, we rethink strategies, redesign plans, buy better tools, read another book, or watch another video to learn new techniques. Anything except doing the thing one more time.

Repetition feels dead. The hundredth attempt doesn’t excite the brain. It offers no novelty, no stimulation, no dopamine spike. So the body resists. It feels almost physiological.

This is where boredom resistance matters.

We’ve trained our brains to expect constant stimulation. Phones and social media deliver endless, varied dopamine hits. Silence now feels uncomfortable. We can’t wash dishes, drive, or even sit alone without music, podcasts, or a screen. Anything unstimulating feels intolerable.

The ability to sit with low stimulation is becoming rare.

The solution is simple, but not easy - retraining our nervous system. If we reduced daily stimulation, less scrolling, less background noise, less constant novelty, and allowing boredom to exist without immediately escaping it, the initial restlessness would gradually fade. Repetition would start to feel neutral. Mundane work would stop feeling heavy. We could simply do the same task again and keep going.

That’s the real formula.

Consistency over years creates compounding. Staying in the game long enough allows opportunity to intersect with effort. The people who win are often the ones who simply didn’t quit during the boring part.