Defuse the Boredom-Induced-Impulse-Buying Budget Bomb

Certain people are more prone to freaking-out and doing something stupid when they're bored, just to break the monotony. I'm one of them. For years, I suffered from a perpetual state of "are we there yet?" It led to bad impulses, bad decisions and bad outcomes, often involving money and leaving a trail littered with the bones of broken budgets.

The cure to boredom is engaging the power of curiosity. Get your head deep into something that captures your attention, then the clock vanishes and the whole world almost disappears. Psychology calls it the "flow state" and says there are a lot of benefits to flow, from health to happiness. You'll basically stack the deck towards a longer and happier life the more you tap into flow every day.

I'm not encouraging you to ignore reality or put-off dealing with problems to go geek-out to the ends of the Internet on some subject. On the contrary, FiClub is all about handling what needs to be handled and removing obstacles to taking the next action that moves you toward your goals. We run into a problem when we make poor use of the downtime, especially if we are tired or prone to getting bored, because that's when we get blindsided by a come-on from an advertiser or marketer. Gadgets get sold on the late-night TV circuit that would have no chance in the light of day.

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My recommended approach for preventing boredom is to line up high quality information ahead of time for future reading or viewing. Find subjects that tickle your curiosity and spark your interest, read just a teaser before you have to head out the door or have some other scheduled activity that interrupts the exploration. The subconscious mind hates an open question (see article) so it's almost guaranteed that you will circle back to the topic when you next have downtime. See our post Implementation Intention https://www.ficlub.org/single-post/2017/03/17/Implementation-Intention-separates-strategies-from-pipe-dreams

This page has some great resources for jumping into tons of free information where you can learn to your heart's desire: 43 Websites where the World Learns

It's a shame, and almost fodder for conspiracy theories, that for many of us, the joy and thrill of learning has been stomped out by our childhood school experiences. On the other side, the youth mass-culture stereotype that well-educated people are boring is about as toxic to real human development FOR EVERYONE as thinking that the only valuable education is formal education. Find the area that gets your curiosity going, set-up your bookmarks and consider yourself vaccinated against boredom and the bad impulse decisions that follow it.

Share with us what you find helps keep you out of trouble. What's your topic for passionate exploration?

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