If you get excited easily about doing lots of interesting things, you probably also experience the side-effect of getting very bored when you’re not able to do what you love. But while you can fill up most of your time with varied and interesting things to do, there will always be some times when you have to complete a task that you just don’t feel like doing.

So what do you do when you absolutely have to knuckle down because your boss, your coworkers, your family, your friends, your lecturers or a committee you volunteered to help are relying on you and you’re about to miss the deadline if you leave it any longer. Its not worth being a rebel, you’ve just got to get it done.

Here are a number of ideas that you can use to get past your next bout of boredom. I personally hate being bored so I use one or a combination of these things all the time.

1) Set yourself a task-based goal with a personal project as the reward. Put all your energy into your boring task immediately and do not stop until the task is finished. As soon as you are finished the boring task indulge in your personal project to your heart’s content.

2) Reduce the number of boring tasks you have to do in the first place by delegating them to someone else. You might not be able to get rid of everything that is boring, but if you give delegating a go you might be surprised at what you can let go. When it comes to personal tasks like ironing and cleaning you will need to pay someone, but at work you might even find some willing takers, and your good delegation skills could end up getting you a promotion!

3) Ask a friend to help or just keep you company. Recently I was moving house and a friend offered to come visit while I was packing. Well that was the best idea ever! I think I packed more things during the couple of hours on the two nights that she visited than I did on my own for the whole rest of the week.

4) Split your task up into milestones so that you can measure your percentage complete. If you know that you have to make twenty sales calls, or write a three thousand word essay, you have numbers that you can measure against. If feels good to make four calls and know that you’re 20% done, or hit word count after writing a couple more paragraphs.

5) Here’s an idea from Barbara Sher in Refuse to Choose. She suggests you can turn your task into part of an imaginary drama or storyline and amuse yourself silly with it! Pretend your task is part of a lead-up to an exciting adventure or mystery!

6) Listen to, or even sing along to music. Fast, loud pop is great for tedious physical tasks, whereas classical might be better if you have to concentrate. I don’t like music at all for focused tasks that I enjoy, but it is a welcome relief when I’m bored.

7) Double up. Have two boring tasks to do and the first one is taking you long enough already? Alternate them. The alternating of the two tasks might add enough variety to pick things up a bit.
Alternate the boring task with an interesting one. As a kid, this was the only way I could get myself to clean my bedroom. I made a pact with myself that if I picked up and put away 10 items I would allow myself to read one page of my book. Then once I had read one page I would have to go and pick up another 10 items before getting to read the next page. It worked! I still do this today when it comes to tidying the house.

9) Get a stopwatch and make it a challenge for yourself. How quickly can you write that 2000 word essay? Turn on the stopwatch and find out! Then next time see if you can beat your own personal record

10) Athletes use interval training to do short bursts of high energy activity. You can use it to do short bursts of getting boring things done! Just setup a timer for 5, 10 or 15 minutes and work as fast as you can during that time. Work out how long the total task will take you and slot the sprints in around your other activities. I use to do that when I worked from home as a telephone researcher when I was at uni. I would do six sprints a day of 20 minutes each whenever it was most convenient for me. I never had to put up with two-hour blocks of tedious phone calling, but still got the work done.

11) Instead of wasting your time doing the same task repeatedly, see if you can find a way to set up an automated system for getting the task done. This is particularly the case with anything done on the computer. For example, when I started my career in IT I took a job as a software tester, but then I realised that I hated testing because I found the step-by-step regression tests to be particularly tedious. To make the task better, I learned how to use an automated testing software package and wrote some scripts that would do the specific mouse clicks for me. I topped it off by writing an instruction manual to teach the other members on my team how to do it too.

At Petra Smirnoff .com I have more information about living with Scanner/ Renaissance Soul Personality (multiple interests). I also share tips about Getting things done.

We all have good intentions of spending more time with our families, but it sometimes just doesn’t work like that. This story should really get you thinking.

Instead of the hug he was expecting at the end of a long day, his son asked him a question; “How much do you earn every hour dad?”

This wasn’t quite the welcome home he had expected, but he answered his son honestly “I get $20 an hour”.

He was still wondering why his son has asked then when another question came forth; “So can I please have $10 from you?”

This really upset the guy as he thought that maybe his son had been taking an interest in his work, when in fact he had only been after a handout. Money was tight and he couldn’t just give it away!

He told his son this and expressed his disappointment at how his son had asked him for money. Things were already tight financially, and asking for such a thing would only make things more difficult.

His father’s reaction greatly upset the boy and he left the room with a very heavy heart. Something was clearly amiss here, but what was wrong?

As he was putting the boy to bed that night, he felt really bad about what had occurred earlier on and had a change of heart. He handed the boy a $10 bill from his wallet.

A smile spread across the boys face and he dived under his pillow and pulled out ten $1 bills. His dad got really upset then and asked why he had asked him for money when he already had some.

Taking a deep breath and looking his dad straight in he eye, the child replied “I’m buying an hour of your time dad with this $20……”

What do you think your children would pay for an hour of your time?

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No one really likes the idea of going to the airport and then waiting for a flight. Airports are dirty and the entire experience often wears us down.

Every little thing turns into an ordeal. Between visiting the pharmacy to buy travel sized toiletries, paying for a ride to the airport, making sure our luggage bag will close, and more, everything can be really stressful to any traveler.

No matter how we try to remedy the situation, there are certain things that we may find to be time consuming and tedious no matter what. On the other hand, a few extra measures taken in advance can make everything far less painful and even pleasant at times.

I’m going to share two ideas that I believe you’ll benefit from as long as you make a few preparations in advance. The goal is to limit the number of headaches associated with air travel, and these two measures will help.

One of the biggest headaches with many people comes with checking luggage. I’m the kind of traveler who always likes to travel with my bags, and I benefit greatly from this. Sure, you might need to pack a smaller bag, but you’ll save a lot of time in the process.

The baggage check can add an extra half hour or more to your overall experience, and you obviously want to avoid this if you can. Not only is there the time factor, but airlines are beginning to charge extra money for checking bags too.

I would also recommend buying a few snacks to bring with you onto the flight. The sad thing about travel these days is that meals are limited and often cost money when they’re available.

Whether you’re getting a few things inside the airport or bringing them with you from your house before you arrive at the airport, it’s key to have a few things to satisfy any hunger cravings while you’re flying. You never know how long you might be stuck on a plane for with delays and all, so some smart planning can help to make the best of this situation in the event that you’re hungry.

This author additionally regularly writes on platform bedroom sets and canopy bedroom sets.

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