I haven’t been bored since 2007. That was my freshman year of college when I thought taking 12 credit hours was exhausting and I took three naps each afternoon.
I’ve fallen in love with learning over the last few years. I always have something new on my radar to learn. Coding. A new language. A skill to refine. Learning prevents me from accruing multi-nap days and it helps make my life matter.
Below, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite ways to destroy boredom.
If you think learning stops when your formal education ends, you’re wrong. It’s a lifelong process, especially if you want to have a meaningful life that makes an impact on the world.
Over the last six months as we’ve lived abroad in Ljubljana, Slovenia, we’ve stumbled through a few hours of Slovene language class each week with a tutor. It’s not our primary focus while we’re here, but it’s been helpful in understanding the world around us and connecting with students.
Practically everyone in Ljubljana speaks English. Only 2 million people in the world speak Slovene, so it means the world to Slovenes when they discover we’re actually attempting to learn the language. They’re honored that we’d invest time to learn their language–especially since it’s not essential to life here.
In fact, that’s the most difficult thing about learning the language: you don’t have to learn Slovene in order to survive.
It’s inconvenient not knowing what everything means at the store or when you suspect people are talking about you on the bus once they hear your North American accent, but it’s equal to the frustration of not being able to find the remote control and having to get off the couch to turn up the TV volume.
It’s a rare exception when I have to push my Slovene language to the limits to communicate something (in which case I string 12 nouns together and make hand motions to communicate). Since everyone speaks English, once I make a mistake using Slovene, people automatically switch to English to help out the gringos.
But that doesn’t actually help. It keeps me from using the language. It keeps me from actually learning.
That’s how I realized the first step to learning anything.
