Your ability to be bored determines your success

You know that friend who always has a new "thing."

Last month, it was starting a podcast. Before that, it was learning Spanish on Duolingo or building an online course. Then it was a new morning routine, a side business, or finally getting serious about fitness.

Each new thing, they're genuinely excited. They have solid reasons for starting and talk about it with the enthusiasm of someone who's finally figured it out.

And each time, when you check in a few weeks later, they say: "Oh, I moved on from that. It wasn't really working for me. I'm doing a new thing now."

I was that friend for a long time, and I still am in some aspects of life.

But over the years, as I've reflected on that tendency of mine, I've realized something unsettling.

Every time I said 'it wasn't working,' I was lying to myself.

Not intentionally—I genuinely believed my new thing was the right thing for me. But I wasn't making strategic decisions.

I was running from boredom and using my intelligence to justify the escape.

Success isn't about finding the perfect strategy—it's about your ability to stick with the boring parts of a good strategy long enough to make it work.

Every successful person you know has mastered this one skill: tolerating boredom.

Your ability to be bored is the number one determinant of your success.

Your brain is running 300,000-year-old software in a modern world.

For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors lived in "immediate return environments."

Find food today, survive another day. Spot danger now, avoid death immediately. Every action had clear, instant consequences.

But today, almost everything worthwhile requires "delayed return environments."

In essence, the podcast episode you record today won't build an audience for months. The Spanish you study today won't make you conversational for a year. The content you create today won't bring opportunities until you've been doing it consistently for months.

This creates "evolutionary mismatch." Your brain is scanning for immediate threats and rewards that no longer exist. Struggling to value future outcomes that would've been irrelevant to your ancestors' survival.

So when you're three weeks into your podcast and the download numbers are still embarrassing, your brain doesn't think "I'm building long-term success." It thinks, "I'm wasting precious time and energy on something that isn't working."

The boredom isn't just uncomfortable—it feels like a survival threat.

The smarter you are, the better you become at creating logical reasons to abandon good strategies.

When you commit to podcasting consistently for six months, it feels completely reasonable in planning mode.

Future success seems valuable. Daily work seems manageable. Your rational brain calculates: "Six months of effort = long-term audience growth."

But three weeks in, when you're experiencing the daily grind with minimal results, something happens in your brain.

It's called "temporal discounting." Essentially, your brain doesn't value future rewards rationally—it follows a "hyperbolic curve."

Let me ask you a question to demonstrate this:

What would you pick?

Many people would probably take the $100 today.

Now let me ask. What would you pick in this scenario?

In this case, most people decide to wait the extra week for the bonus.

The time difference is identical—one week. But your brain treats that week completely differently depending on whether it's now or later.

You become a different person with different preferences as time passes.

So when you're planning your podcast strategy, your future-focused brain can easily commit to six months. But then, three weeks in, when boredom hits, your brain recalculates everything. The six-month reward gets heavily discounted while the immediate pain of boring work gets maximum weight.

But it goes deeper than that.

When your brain realizes continuing feels irrational, it doesn't just make you want to quit. It creates a story to explain why quitting makes more sense.

"The growth is too slow. Other podcasters got traction faster. Maybe I need better equipment. Maybe I should try video instead. Maybe the market is oversaturated."

You think you're making a data-driven strategic pivot. But you're just running from boredom and using your intelligence to create the perfect cover story.

To escape this cycle of starting, stopping, and restarting, you need to commit. You need to follow the "3-Month Rule":

Try something you think you'd like, do it religiously for 3 months, then reevaluate. If you still like it, continue. If not, choose something else and repeat.

Committing to 3 months exploits the way temporal discounting functions.

Your brain most heavily discounts future rewards in the first 6-8 weeks of starting a new thing. By the time you get to month 3, you're past the danger zone. Your brain stops calculating "immediate pain vs. distant reward" and starts calculating "continue existing routine vs. starting over from zero."

The 3-month commitment gives you permission to change, removing the psychological pressure that makes quitting feel like an escape. You're not trapped—you're experimenting with a clear end date.

But most importantly, by month 3, you start getting results. Not just external results, but internal ones. You prove to yourself that you're someone who follows through. You start building the evidence of a new identity.

The next time you start to have creeping thoughts about a new strategy in your life "not working," remember your friend with the new thing. Remember, your brain evolved to keep you alive in a world of immediate consequences, not help you build long-term success in our modern-day delayed-reward environment.

1) Recognize the pattern.

When you catch yourself thinking "this isn't working", pause. Ask yourself: "Am I making this assessment based on logical analysis, or am I just bored and looking for immediate relief?" Be honest. Most of the time, it's boredom wearing a costume to disguise itself as a good strategy.

2) Commit to the 3-month rule.

Give yourself permission to change course after three months, but not before. Outsmart temporal discounting. Allow yourself to stick with something long enough to see it out.

3) Connect to identity, not outcomes.

Instead of focusing on external results, connect your daily actions to who you want to become. You're not just "recording podcasts"—you're "becoming someone who creates value consistently." Every day you do the thing, you get instant proof of the identity you're building.

When you commit to something for three months, you need a reason strong enough to fight your biology. Not just "I want to grow my business," but something that connects to your core identity and values.

Connect your why to the type of person you would need to become to accomplish your goal. Who you become is the real reward.

Your friend with the new thing isn't uncommitted or scattered. They're just experiencing normal human psychology in a world that requires abnormal patience.

You don't find your passion by jumping from strategy to strategy, chasing the dopamine hit of novelty and possibility. You make your passion by doing something consistently enough to get good at it, see results, and build an identity around it.

The most sophisticated transformation strategy isn't complex—it's simple: find one approach, commit to it for three months, and let everything else emerge from that consistency.

Your caveman brain will fight you. It will create logical-sounding reasons to quit. It will whisper that something else would work better.

On the other side of boredom is everything you've been working toward.

Until next time,

Johnathan