Howdy Reader!

I've been noodling on a quote I heard from a productivity guru I follow recently.

He said… "You're not burnt out, you're bored."

For some reason, this has been bouncing around in my head for the past week or so. It's like when you get a song stuck in your brain and can't get rid of it. (It's a world of laughter, A world of tears… See what I did there? 😂)

I think as creators, we all throw around the phrase "I'm burnt out" like AI throws out em-dashes. But what if that saying is true, and we're actually just becoming bored with what we're doing day in and day out?

That influencer went on to talk about how we need to rediscover our passion to fight the boredom of our daily work tasks.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think people CAN get to dangerous levels of burnout and may even need to seek professional help. Mental health is no joke, and if you're struggling, please reach out to someone.

But I wonder if we sometimes misdiagnose our creative slumps. Of course, saying you're "bored" makes it sound like you're in 3rd grade and don't really want to work on your multiplication tables. Not exactly the professional image we're going for, right?

Anyways, it's got me thinking about when I do get those feelings of "burnout" which usually lead to procrastination (hello, YouTube and Pinterest!). How can I reframe it in my mind? Am I just feeling bored with the task at hand, and how can I reprogram my brain to fight off the boredom?

One of the hacks I've started using is this: if I have multiple tasks to get done that are about the same level of priority, I number the tasks, then roll a dice to figure out what I'm going to work on next.

It gamifies my task list and gets me moving on to accomplish something. It's like tricking my inner child with some mind candy to do the work my adult self knows needs to get done!

What about you? Do you think that we're misdiagnosing being burnt out with boredom? And how do you hack your productivity when motivation is running low?

Hit reply and let me know. I genuinely read every response!

See ya around the interwebs,

-Jeff

P.S. If you have a productivity hack that works for you, I'd love to hear about it. Maybe I'll feature some of the best ones in an upcoming newsletter!