5 Ways to be Bored this Weekend
A Friday-Sunday challenge for Profound Minds
If you keep avoiding boredom like it’s the plague, you will never learn this profound secret:
Boredom is not the problem.
You are actually the problem, and boredom is the solution.
If you can’t tolerate your own thoughts, you need more boredom.
If you need to watch a YouTube video while eating every meal, you need more boredom.
If you can’t sit in complete silence for more than 15 minutes staring at a wall, have a guess at what I’m about to say next.
Most people would quiver over this idea:
However long you spend stimulating your mind each day with screens, music, or distraction, you must spend the same amount of time each day doing the exact opposite; nothing.
Boredom.
It’s crazy once you start thinking about it.
Our ancestors could go days travelling from one side of the country to the other. Think about it. Horseback, an open road, and some new experiences along the way. They went days without stimulation. And most of us can’t stand in line for a coffee without reaching for our phones.
Real life is lived offline.
But most people are living life online because they can’t tolerate even the slightest level of discomfort.
And there’s a reason for this.
Your brain has what’s called its default mode network.
This happens when you’re not stimulating or distracting your mind; when your brain doesn’t have a goal, or something to do. And your brain does not like doing nothing. So, it starts throwing thoughts at you in an attempt to combat this.
This is why people get so overwhelmed without stimulation.
They use external noise (screens, music, scrolling) to silence the internal noise (thoughts, emotions, their brain processing thoughts and experiences) - but you need to use boredom to let the overwhelm pass.
Boredom is how you learn to tolerate the discomfort of your own mind.
If you follow these 5 steps this weekend (or any weekend), you will realize that life is actually incredibly peaceful.
I did this protocol last weekend and it fucking changed my life. Seriously. It made me realize that life is actually so peaceful when you turn off external noise - that you have a lot more free time and control over your life when you stop living life online.
Because life is lived and experienced to the fullest offline.
I nearly cried watching the sunrise twice this week; fuck you boredom.
But no, seriously. Go be bored.
This challenge will start on a Friday (as soon as you wake up, or when you come home from work) and finish on Sunday night at 8pm - this is when you can reflect on all this.
You can do this any weekend.
The happiest people in the world don’t need anything. They don’t need to distract their brain with noise. They don’t need to buy things they think they need, with money they don’t have, to impress people they don’t like. They don’t need a thousand things to feel happy. Only one. Just one thing. It’s silence. The happiest people in the world understand that true happiness is profound focus on just one thing. One thought. One activity. One person. One moment. If you can’t stand alone in a room with nothing other than a wall to stare at, and pure silence for 15 minutes - and be ok with doing that daily - I really am sorry. You will never be happy.
(1) How to strengthen your focus
Do this on each day.
I want you to stare at a dot on the wall - just any specific point on a wall that you can focus really hard on - for 30-60 times per day.
60-90 seconds at a time.
Why?
Firstly, your ability to focus is a lot more physical than you think. Learning to lock your eyes and stare at something small, but deliberately and intensely, it’s going to help you rebuild your ability to focus.
Secondly, your focus is always widening or narrowing itself.
Imagine profound focus being like the tip of an arrow head. But most people’s ability to focus is as wide as a fucking horizon.
When you force your mind to concentrate on one dot on a wall, you are physically practicing the art of narrowing your focus - from wide to narrow - like the tip of an arrow. And I want you to do this 30-60 times each day, but spread out across each day.
Because most people can’t sit down for one hour doing nothing for two reasons:
Life is busy and people have responsibilities
60 minutes of doing nothing would destroy most people
We want baby steps.
Do it every 15 minutes or so. Phone off, music off, go outside even, and stare at something small and precise as hard as you can. Train your mind to think about nothing else but the thing you are staring at.
If you struggle, remind yourself - it’s only one minute. You have 60 attempts throughout each day to get better by 1% on each attempt.
Because you can think about just one thing for a minute.
Or at least learn how to do it.
(2) Don’t touch your phone for the first 4 hours of each day
Let’s talk about entropy.
Entropy is a concept in thermodynamics and information theory. It defines the degree to which disorder and chaos is present within a system.
Entropy is lowest in the morning. There is more structure, more predictability in terms of what you’ll do, and few sources of distraction. No open loops running inside your brain from scrolling past 15 information-heavy TikTok reels in less than 10 seconds. No people are awake asking you questions or sending emails. Not much chaos, so order naturally takes over.
You probably don’t need more focus, just less distractions.
As the day passes, entropy naturally increases.
Emails and notifications start flooding in. You have to text and communicate with loved ones. The world wakes up - noise everywhere - and there’s a finer balance between order and chaos.
This is why I don’t want you to touch your phone for the first part of your day. For as long as possible.
I would recommend not touching it for at least four hours after waking.
Focus and boredom has more to do with limiting potential distractions.
If your phone is off and away out of sight, you can go stare at a wall. Go on a walk without any noise. Feel at peace because you’re not screaming at your mind with chaotic information.
Imagine it like this: your brain is starting each morning with a clean slate, so to speak. Reduced stimulation (information) and thus less mental chaos. Therefore, there is less cognitive load, meaning you have more energy to put towards activities you love doing. Imagine carrying a 50kg or a 100 pound bag on your back all day. This is what heavy cognitive load feels like in your brain. And simply taking the bag off your back (processing) is what helps free your body (your mind) to move freely and excitedly to do the things it wants to do.
By not touching your phone, you are the one choosing when and how to bring entropy into your mental system, by not letting it flood and overfill with unwanted noise the second you wake up.
Your phone is a high-entropy source. Social media is literally just unpredictable and chaotic information, and we are numbing our minds from discomfort until we die because we can’t tolerate even slight discomfort.
By delaying your phone use, you allow your mind to operate in a lower-entropy state.
This will free up mental space for profound thinking, creativity, intentional action, and most importantly, inner fucking peace.