If you find yourself constantly feeling bored, it’s important to realize that boredom and feeling too busy are the same problem. Both stem from feeling that there is a lack of quality in how you focus your attention. Boredom is feeling that there are too few high-quality ways to spend attention, while busyness is forced boredom where there are high-quality ways to spend attention, but your attention is being stolen before you can use it.

The problem with both of these feelings is quality. Being engaged, neither busy nor bored happens when your attention is focused on high-quality activities. Engaging experiences allow you to enter into an immersive flow state, in which your entire consciousness is devoted to the activity.

So, how do you improve the quality of your experiences and conquer boredom and busyness? Here are some tips to help you:

Externally:

1. Plan Ahead: Schedule your life to ensure there aren’t huge gaps or work overflows later. This can mean scheduling high-quality experiences if you find yourself frequently bored. It can also mean dividing large projects if you find yourself chronically busy. Plan weekend activities for next month now. This not only gives you something to look forward to, but it also forces you to stay productive instead of just busy.

2. Win-Win: If you must perform an activity you think has low quality, find ways to reorganize your life so that jobs, chores, and duties can become interesting, high-quality experiences. Turn mind-numbing chores into opportunities for growth and learning. For example, listen to an audiobook or lecture on the commute to work or while you’re cleaning your house.

3. Prioritize: Get your values straight so that the highest priorities are handled first, and your life doesn’t get overtaken by the unimportant. Set a vision for your life, and determine how everything you do either contributes or detracts from that vision. After you identify low-priority activities, you can try to make them more meaningful, or you can find ways to eliminate them.

4. Put Quality of Experience First: Focus on goals that will give you a greater quality, not just a bigger paycheck or more status to brag about. Set SMART goals that align with your life’s vision.

5. Escape the Motions: Break out of your patterns if they aren’t giving you what you need. Instead of staying in, go out and meet new people on a Friday night. Just do something to get away from doing the same old thing.

Internally:

1. Build an Inner World: If you can’t find quality in your immediate surroundings, you can find it within yourself. Solving internal problems, reviewing knowledge, coming up with new ideas, creating stories, or even planning for the future are all areas you can explore your mind without any external stimuli.

2. Seek Quality in the Now: Seeking quality right now allows you to find it even if your environment is bare or overloaded. Activities like waiting in line can be turned into moments of self-reflection or times to remind yourself of your vision.

3. Don’t Resist: Fully accepting whatever situation you are in and making the most of it is one way to conquer feeling bored. Resistance is something that can’t be done halfway. Either push away and seek quality elsewhere or accept your surroundings and find it here.

4. Unchain Yourself: Realize that you don’t have to do anything, just accept different results. Weigh whether the activity causing your discomfort is essential or expendable. Use a mantra to remind yourself of your freedom.

5. Stop: Interrupt yourself for a few minutes and think more deeply about the problem. Meditate your way out of boredom, or take up a gratitude practice.

In conclusion, it’s important to remember that both boredom and busyness stem from feeling there is a lack of quality in how you focus your attention. The key to overcoming these feelings is to improve the quality of your experiences, and that can be done externally and internally. By incorporating the tips above, you can improve your overall quality of life by engaging in high-quality activities and avoiding the pitfalls of busyness and boredom.