What Do You Do When You Get Bored?

If you’re anything like me you have a long list of things you’d like to do and you’re always busy working on things you enjoy. But then what happens when you’re stuck doing something you don’t want to do? People who get very passionately excited also tend to get very frustratingly bored if being held back from what they want to do.

So how do you deal with the fact that there are so many fun things to do but you just have to get this boring task done. You can’t just ditch it because your boss, your coworkers, your family, your friends, your lecturers or a committee you volunteered to help are relying on you. You can’t find anyone else to do it and its just got to be done now!

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) Do two or more different boring tasks at the same time. The alternating of the two boring tasks might add enough variety to make you feel more interested than if you did only one task at a time.
Alternate the boring task with an interesting one. This was the only way I could get myself to clean my room as a kid. I would set myself the goal of picking up and putting away 10 items, and in return I would allow myself to read just one page of whatever book I was into at the time. Even these days I sometimes alternate doing my paid work with reading the news.

9) Time yourself with a stopwatch to see how long you take to get the job done. Then next time the same job comes around, make it a game – work hard to beat your personal best speed. Soon you’ll be getting it done in a flash.

10) Use a timer to section off short sprints as though you were interval training. Set the timer for 5, 10 or 15 minutes and work as fast as you can during that time. Plan your day so that you can space out enough short sprints to get the task done. I used this method when I took a job as a work-from-home telephone market researcher during my university studies. I had about two hours per day of calls to do, but I could handle only 20 minutes at a time. I spaced the phonecalls at intervals during my day around my uni homework and that kept me on track.

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 Personal development.

Points You Did Not Know About Speed Reading Exercises

Speed reading exercises aim to increase the rate of reading without affecting retention or comprehension of the text. There are many different methods for speed reading but the essential is that they all focus on a balance between speed and comprehension. Another thing; they all necessitate a certain amount of practice.

Speed readers may use different techniques like not sounding-out all words, recognizing words without focusing on each letter and generally skimming over the text. Some methods may come more naturally to the reader and these will be defined with practice and exercises. In general, the idea is to get your eyes to move faster and recognize words at a glance.

Skimming is the process by which a reader visually searches through the text for clues to the meaning of the article. Generally, this is not the best method for dense informational texts because comprehension rate is usually lower. On the other hand, it allows for a quick overview of the text and its essential meaning.

Meta guiding is another method, perhaps the most widely taught, that speeds up the reading process. It consists of guiding the eye along the lines of text using another pointer like a finger or a pen. This method speeds up the movement of the eye and subdues subvocalization.

A first speed reading exercise to start with consists of using a pointer like your finger to make your eyes follow it across the paragraph to go faster. Moving the finger faster and faster will force the eyes to recognize the words faster and make reading a faster process.

Another exercise to try to attempt to learn a speed reading technique consists of quickly scanning through the material to look for key words attached to the essential meaning of the sentences. In essence, this is reading in blocks and is also done in other exercises which can become more complicated.

This next exercise requires a little more preparation time and index cards. The index cards need to be prepared with blocks of words, phrases or sentence fragments. This exercise will consist of reading directly from the index cards instead of using a full text. For a few minutes, flip through the cards and try to quickly recognize the group of words that figure on every card. Effectively, this works word recognition mechanisms to accelerate the rate at which fragments of sentences are read.

Each and every one of these speed reading exercises requires some time to be invested in order to actually work. For optimal conditions, the reader should have plenty of rest and optimal level of concentration while practicing these exercises. It takes time and a lot of practice before a reader will really increase his speed. Reading really fast is possible while keeping a good level of retention and comprehension.

Speed reading is a great asset to have in the academic and professional world. It is rather easy to teach and learn and is absolutely free. A little patience and some determination are all that are needed along with the key speed reading exercises.

John E Laing is an speed Reading expert. John has over 5 years experience teaching and testing new methods to help people learn to read better and faster and to read more efficiently. You can learn more about speed reading at speed reading center. For more amazing exercises check the speed reading exercises article.

Learn To Be A Dynamic Student

BE DYNAMIC THROUGH SPEED READING is an amazing course that you teach to yourself. It comes with audios, software, and course manuals to teach you to build reading speed, comprehension, concentration and focus. And also stimulate long-term memory.

The other factor is eidetic (or photographic), or auditory (or tape-recorder) type memories. You have the potential to remember everything you have ever seen or heard, even if you weren\’t paying attention to what was said. Your brain/mind, like a computer, stores all memories.

As you start to learn the various methods used in the BE DYNAMIC THROUGH SPEED READING, you\’ll notice learning skills improving quickly! It is techniques repeated over and over, with visualization and various other added methods that will help you achieve the results you desire and be the best you can possibly be.

You\’ll become a better student, employee, communicator, and decision maker in your life. And only one of your benefits will be that you will cut reading time on reports, memos, correspondence, newspapers, novels, non-fiction, magazine, etc. You will save time, and more time to enjoy life.

If you didn\’t know this, let me clue you in to the reality that writers get paid by the word in articles and by % of gross sales (royalties) in book publishing; usually the thicker the book the higher the price and the higher the royalty. Writers are unnecessary verbose. What this means is there are many words within sentences that are just there as fillers; what you have to learn to do, through the Be Dynamic Through Speed Reading program, is only read the words that are essential.

Dr. Jay Polmar and his team wrote the \”Be Dynamic Through Speed Reading\” program to share these valuable tools with students to help them get the most out of their reading experience. In the past two years he has worked with other educators to bring students the Perfect Learning System (www.perfectlearningsystems.com) which includes Be Dynamic, mind mapping comprehension and memory supports, plus special speed reading software developed to match the Perfect Learning System.

Get straight A\’s with Be Dynamic and learn to Be Dynamic through Speed Reading This and other unique content \’speed reading\’ articles are available with free reprint rights.

categories: speed reading,speedreading,faster reading,study methods,self-development,college