Boring Beneficial Repetition

Boring, beautiful repetition is something that I believe we all have to make friends with. From what I have seen and from what I have learned, it is the difference between complete and incomplete, good and better, growth and being stuck, creation and imagination.

I bring this up because there are many instances in life where we all aspire to achieve or create something or to become something. We dream to be fitter, healthier, more financially stable, to be creators who share our art or creativity with the world. Many of us, me included, set out to be, create, do, and more, only for many of us to not see the endeavor through. When we look back on all of our ideas and our life, we see a trail of unfinished things, not necessarily unsuccessful, just unfinished.

Somewhere along the line, we just stopped working on it. Most likely, it was because we lost motivation and inspiration and probably got bored with the process. It’s like the age-old New Year’s resolution to hit the gym and lose weight. Everyone is in the gym January 1st, fueled by the adrenaline and maybe even the competition and possibly the attention one gets from pursuing a New Year’s resolution. For the first few days, everyone is consistent because it’s easy, but as it becomes harder or boring, people stop going to the gym for one reason or another. Another New Year’s resolution down the drain.

What is interesting, too, is how incomplete tasks can often cause other incomplete tasks. One incomplete New Year’s resolution can potentially make it harder for you to complete other New Year’s resolutions. It’s as though all the incompleteness becomes evidence that you can’t complete anything. However, the opposite can be true, too.

So the question then is, how do we complete more of the things we set out to do? Answer: boring, beneficial repetition. We start with the smallest, most repeatable thing we can do and do it over and over until it becomes a habit and until it feels weird or wrong to not do what we set out to do. We do it when there is no motivation, inspiration, or direct drive to do it. We do it because we said we would to ourselves, and we desire to build self-trust.