Dear friend,

A practical life philosophy: to live a more fun, joyful, and exciting life, avoid boredom at all costs! #zenoferic

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To clarify, I don’t think avoiding boredom is just playing video games and watching Netflix. I think avoiding boredom is engaging on challenging, interesting, and personally meaningful projects; generally they require effortful and purposeful work from you, on something that you care about.

The psychologist Mihalay C has this concept of “flow”; when we are entranced in this epic, god-like trance of creative flow. This is when we are insanely focused, calm, and elated all at the same time. We forget a sense of time, hunger, ego, and we become totally integrated into the work we do.

Like the Taoist concept of “wu wei”, the work almost gets itself done; its “effortless” (of course it requires your effort, but you don’t force the work; it just flows from within you).

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So the best way to avoid boredom: enter a stage of “flow” as often as possible!

How to enter a state of flow:

1. Put on some good jams (good music that gets you in the zone). Generally music that pumps you up, encourages you to dance, and elevates your energy and mood ⚡🕺
2. Secondly, turn off things which distract you. This might be your phone or the internet. Turn off your phone, turn off wifi (I recommend the “Freedom app”)
3. Third, work on something you’re actually interested, passionate, or enthusiastic about. You cannot fake passion. This activity can be shooting street photography, writing poetry, reading literature, studying great cinema, or blogging, dancing, writing, whatever! Choose a project or something to work on that even if you didn’t show it to anybody else, you would still get great joy working on it.

Have fun,

ERIC