It might not completely alleviate the sense of boredom but it could help change your relationship with it into something more positive. The next time you start thinking that you’re bored, just reframe it as being carefree, with no urgent tasks that you need to attend to, and nothing to worry about. I remember when I was a kid - In the era before smartphones and Kindles - I used to lug around a huge backpack full of books and CDs to avoid getting bored, the fear of boredom sometimes even got me to agree to things that were probably worse than feeling bored.īoredom means you have nothing to do, no tasks, no chores, nothing to worry or preoccupy your mind, shouldn’t that be its own kind of wonderful? It’s usually viewed negatively to be bored, and we sometimes go out of our way to avoid that feeling. The next time you’re about to blame yourself for procrastinating, just reframe it as “ I just feel that the task is important and I want to do it right.” It is a signal from our brains that the task matters to us which just went a little overboard. If we remind ourselves that the reason we procrastinate is usually because we are worried about the outcome of our effort, then procrastination can be reframed as a desire to do the task especially well. The current association might be missed deadlines, or a sense of being disappointed in oneself for wasting time or energy, and for not putting our best effort into getting something done. A while ago I wrote a post about reclaiming the original meaning of powerful words - like Amateur and Courage - which seems to have resonated well with readers, so ever since I have been planning a similar post but this time about words that perhaps have a negative connotation to them, and how it might help to try and reframe them and associate them with a positive meaning.

Negative adjectives that start with a