What’s the difference between the best and the average?
If you’re someone looking to succeed in life, you’ve probably encountered this question countless times; stumped on what solution might hide behind the confusion.
You may have thought about the simple and expected factors: genetics, luck, talent. Although these factors play a role in the path to success, there is no way around the one hybrid factor that every successful person has gone through: boredom.
You may be surprised to find out that most Olympians, large company owners, and great actors don’t have a bottomless pit of motivation.
Today we will be diving deep into what the path to success really looks like and how our goals are inevitably achieved through boredom.
How Boredom Plays into Success
Back to the question: what is the difference between the best and the average? People will say things like “It all comes down to passion” or “You have to really want it to get it.”
With this on their minds, people tend to lose motivation and eventually give up when they feel like they don’t fit the criteria.
The truth is, all professionals feel the same lack of motivation as everyone else. The actual difference between the best and the average is that the best still find a way to show up, despite feelings of boredom or lack of motivation.
Mastery requires practice; however, the more you practice something the less interesting it becomes. Once the beginner gains have been made, we start to learn what to expect. As a result, our interest fades and boredom begins to take over. This is a lot more common than most think.
All it takes is for someone to hit the gym a couple of days in a row or to publish a few articles on time and suddenly you begin to rationalize a few days off because you’re in a good position. Sound familiar?
The greatest threat to success is not failure, but boredom. We get bored of working toward our goals because we start to learn the outcome.
Going to the gym is no longer exciting because we know what the workout is like. Eating healthy is no longer intriguing because we know what meals we’re gonna eat every day. As the novelty of these activities fades, our consistency and desire diminish with it.
This is why it’s so easy to fall in love with instant gratification or short-term pleasures. Junk food provides us with culinary novelty. Video games provide us with visual novelty. Porn provides us with sexual novelty. Each of these pleasures offers continual new elements of surprise and constant spikes of dopamine. This is what our brains find interesting or, in other words, less boring.
Famous Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner called these elements of surprise variable rewards, which, unfortunately, are very scarce when it comes to repeated activities like hitting the gym. This is why it’s so mentally tiring to keep at a goal. There’s not enough pleasure or novelty involved.
Is there a way to reduce boredom?
Although I may have just diminished your hopes and dreams, you may be happy to hear that there are ways to reduce boredom. Here I will list a few ways and methods that have been shown to help people achieve their goals in a less boring way.
1. Find a Fun Factor
The fun factor is all about replicating the feeling of fun within your workflow.
So what exactly is a fun factor? A fun factor is anything that makes the job less boring, or in other words, something to fuel your motivation deficit.
You could try making work into somewhat of a game, changing up the scenery, or simply completing work with a few good buddies. The goal is to introduce a bit of light into the dark abyss of a dreadful job/activity.
Get creative with it.
2. Change your tone
Even if you don’t enjoy the things you’re doing, you can easily look at things more positively and, in turn, make you happier to do them.
Seth Godin, an author and entrepreneur, provided a way to do this in his daily blog, where instead of saying “I have to do this [activity]”, you should say “I get to do this [activity].” Automatically it sounds like a gift to be able to do said activity.
For example, if I had to get some homework done then I would say “I get to do this homework for next week.” instead of “I have to do this homework by next week.” See the difference?
This simple and easy switch in the mindset will leave you more motivated and even more grateful about this activity that you dread doing.
3. Reward yourself
Our internal nature responds well to knowledge of what’s at the end of the tunnel. Whether it’s good or bad, motivation will drive us to get things done faster if we know what and when the end is.
For example, if I was running a marathon and I suddenly saw the finish line in front of me, I would probably run a little faster. This happens because I know how much longer I have to run until I can be rewarded by stopping and catching my breath.
This can be very motivating, especially when you’ve been working towards something for a while, or in this case running for a while.
This same concept can easily be applied to your daily motivation.
If you knew that you were going to be rewarded with one thousand dollars if you worked out that day, then you would most likely get in your car and drive to the gym. You can reward yourself with many things such as money, a cookie, or even a few episodes of The Kardashians. It really just depends on what personally motivates you.
The Hard Truth
Although there are ways to reduce boredom, it’s important to understand that boredom is inevitable. There will always be days when you don’t feel like it.
If you start a business, there will always be days when you don’t feel like showing up. If you’re at the gym, there will always be times when you don’t feel like finishing your sets. If you begin to write, there will always be days when you don’t feel like typing.
Again, the difference between the best and the average is how the best can handle these bad days. They still step up when it’s annoying or exhausting. They show up to their business. They never miss a rep in the gym. They write on schedule every time.
David Cain, an author and meditation coach, encourages his students to steer clear of becoming “fair-weather meditators,” meaning don’t meditate only when you feel like meditating.
In the same way, you don’t want to be a fair-weather athlete or a fair-weather writer or a fair-weather anything for that matter. The successful build themselves up by putting in the reps even when they aren’t feeling it.
The only way to achieve success is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same repeated things over and over again.
You have to fall in love with boredom.