A 12-WEEK EMAIL BOOTCAMP TO SHAKE UP YOUR LIFE
It’s easy to get stuck in a rut, doing the same things, day in, day out.
Familiarity breeds contempt – and boredom.
That’s bad for your heart, and it’s terrible for your brain.
You deserve better.
So I made a course, in the form of a choose-your-adventure newsletter, to get you out your bubble and do something challenging, weird and fun with your free time.
12 weeks. 12 challenges. One great big adventure into the unfamiliar.
Are you up for that?
How It Works
You get one e-mail every week, for the next 12 weeks.
They each contain 10-12 possible challenges you can take – and you pick *one* of them.
You now have SEVEN DAYS to get it done (or at least get it started in a making-significant-progress kind of way). The clock starts ticking from when you open the e-mail.
You will have weekly access to a private Facebook Group, to meet other challenge-takers, compare notes and cheer each other onwards.
A week later, the next e-mail arrives – and away you go again!
Here’s a sample from the first e-mail:
You’re So Not Bored is currently at a special launch rate of $5 for its entire 12-week run.
Click the button below to make payment via PayPal
(you’ll have the chance to finalise payment – and please select USD ($), as it will default to your local currency)
Why I Made This
In 2012, one of my friends complained on Twitter that he was “utterly bored” – and a fuse blew in my brain.
I imagined him sat at home on the couch, his feet up, a sour expression on his face. I imagined him angrily stabbing app after app on his phone, seeking a cure for his apathy. I imagined him saying “meh” a lot.
And in a fit of self-righteous pique, I decided to write back, in the form of a blog post, listing a colossal bunch of things he could do online.
That post went on to become the most popular thing I’ve ever written on my blog – currently clocking in at hundreds of comments, thousands of shares and just under a million visitors to date. (Whew.)
OK, but – why?
At first I thought it was the sarcasm. The internet loves a bit of pointed snark.
Then I concluded that lots of people need to be reminded that boredom is self-indulgent nonsense. This is actually both patronising and wrong, since boredom feeds creative restlessness, and that’s definitely a good thing. Poor effort, Mike.
And then I looked at what I was doing every day on Facebook.
The internet is designed to reinforce habits. We all get stuck doing the things we always do, our behaviour reinforced by other people doing the same thing, and believing what we believe.
In one sense this is smart, because it’s how expertise happens.
But in the other sense, it stunts your ability to be…well, a bit of a hero.
This is Odysseus. You may have heard of him. The ancient Greeks regarded him as perhaps the most excellent man that ever lived (it was almost always men the ancient Greeks revered, sadly).
But he wasn’t excellent because he was the best at anything.
Hercules was stronger than him. Achilles was the finest warrior that ever lived. Orpheus, now better known for his shenanigans in the underworld, was a vastly better musician. And so on.
All were heroes. But Odysseus was the truest embodiment of arete – a state of overall effectiveness or virtue as a human being.
Odysseus was a great fighter – not the best, but really great. He was a fine sailor. He was crafty and cunning. He was strong and tough. He was a thinker, schemer, sympathetic ruler, scrappy survivor, fierce warrior, and all sorts of other qualities that made him a supreme jack-of-all-trades.
He could do a hell of a lot of different things really well – and that made him a pure embodiment of arete.
These days, the world’s running a bit low on arete. We stick to our intellectual neighbourhoods and rarely stray outside them.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s why so many of us feel frustrated, confused and lost. Maybe our lives need shaking up with something entirely new, just a little bit, here and there.
Leo Babauta puts it nicely, over at Lifehacker: “How to find your life’s purpose? Escape your bubble.”
I think that’s why my post did so well and keeps getting hundreds of visitors a day – and now I’m taking the next logical step with it.
Coming along?