Beware the boredom threshold

Stay on target

You’re working on the most exciting project. It was a brilliant idea to start with and you’ve been hammering away on the keyboard, or scribbling away in a notebook, getting the words down onto the page. This might be The One! You might finally break through that dreaded 20,000 word barrier.

This might even become your first completed manuscript. Maybe it’ll be something you can send off to agents, or a magazine, or self-publish.

Then, a few days later, a completely new idea pops into your head. It’s a good one. You note it down and file it off to one side, while you concentrate on the current project.

But the new idea is shiny. It wears a big sequined hat and is jumping up and down. It’s got a loudhailer and and is waving frantically at you. And let’s be honest: it’s probably a slightly better idea than the one you’re working on.

In fact, you might as well park the current project. You can always come back to it later. Move straight on to the new idea, while you’re still excited by it. Words are sharpest when hot from the forge of your imagination, right? And besides, you were starting to get a bit bored with the old project. It would probably be better if you give it a little break—

OH NO

YOU JUST HIT THE BOREDOM THRESHOLD

Again.

This is something we’re all familiar with, one way or another. I’d never heard the term ‘boredom threshold’ until

Susan Earlam

casually mentioned it in a comment and I’m now entirely enamoured with it.

No matter how good an idea is, at some point it will be dulled by time and become an old idea. There will always be something new and shiny coming down the track to distract us. From a certain point of view this is a good thing: it would be far worse to not have any new ideas, after all. But there’s an inherent problem with always looking to the new thing.

Here’s how it always starts:

The juice is flowing. Your current project is on full burn, ideas are flowing, it’s fun, it’s going to be The One.

Suddenly, an idea for a completely different project pops into your head:

Somewhat distracting, but it’s fine. It’s just a loose idea — you can park it for now and come back to it when Idea #1 is done.

Except, that’s not how human brains work, and it’s definitely not how ideas work. You’re still busily working away on Idea #1, the main project, but, whether you like it or not, this is what’s now happening inside your mind:

It has begun. You’d be able to manage it if it stayed like this, maybe finish Idea #1 before Idea #2 overflows. That’s assuming that it’s a fair exchange, though. What actually happens is this:

Idea #2 is not content with filling up by itself. No, it’s also going to start siphoning enthusiasm directly from Idea #1. Rude. Before you know it, the balance of power has shifted:

Just to make this clear, this is where the Boredom Threshold is:

I should note at this point that all of this is based on rigorous, peer-reviewed science.

Being a serial incompleter

The end result is that our shiny new ideas prevent us from ever actually finishing anything, and that’s no good.

I was stuck in this repeating cycle for decades, from about 1995 to 2015, always dabbling in creativity, always hopping from one project to another, often with multiple simultaneous things on the go. A movie script, then a video game, then a comic, then a novel, then some short stories, then some short films, then an audio drama. It was all lots of fun, but nothing was ever completed.¹

I was all about the next thing. Being multi-disciplinary was a badge of honour and I enjoyed being sort-of-skilled in lots of different creative forms. It makes for interesting conversations down the pub, to say that you’re working on a novel, and a movie script, and to chat excitedly about all these elaborate plans. That nobody ever saw the end results didn’t matter. They’d nod along, never expecting anything to come of it.

Hidden inside all of that stuff there was still a form of progress, in that everything we do is learning. Even failed or incomplete projects teach you something. But it was piecemeal and ultimately a bit of a folly. I had an idea of who I wanted to be, but the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be was enormous, and wasn’t getting any smaller.

My wife pointed this out to me many times, but for years I dismissed it, believing that working on a million things at the same time was the correct approach.

Becoming a serial completer

After my son was born in 2012, I had no choice but to change my creative habits. I had precious little time, snatched during his naps, and I was too tired to have multiple things on the go. I’d also become acutely aware of my own mortality, and the fact that I hadn’t produced anything of note to my name.²

The idea of being involved in complex short film productions was impossible, especially when other members of the crew started to have children as well. Turning to prose fiction made sense, as it didn’t require coordination with anyone else and could be done with minimal fuss.

On a whim I thought I’d try writing a multi-part serial and then publishing it online. I’d discovered a fiction platform called Wattpad, and it became the home for my first serial, A Day of Faces. That was in 2015. It did well, gaining thousands of reads and winning an award, but the main thing is that I completed it. The relief was palpable.

Two things were different. For starters, I observed a strict rule of one project at a time. Keeping to that discipline was made easier by the method of publication, and was the surprise benefit of writing a serial. Each week I’d publish a new chapter, some readers would swing by, a handful would leave comments, and I’d be reinvigorated. It didn’t matter how many — one reader was enough. They were waiting for the next chapter, and I had to deliver.

Those interactions fundamentally changed the game for me:

Even when shiny new ideas were presenting themselves to me, the enthusiasm from readers for Idea #1 kept me focused. I had to keep coming back, no matter what. It was a subtle social pressure that manifested in an entirely positive way, never building up to the point of being stressful but applying just enough force to keep me focused.

I could still consider the shiny new ideas as they came in, but they’d remain at the idea stage. I never drop below the boredom threshold for my current project, because the readers keep me coming back. That’s certainly how it worked on that first book. Over time, writing and publishing serials in this way has built up a habit and I now find it considerably easier to stay focused on a single project at a time. I’ve successfully reprogrammed my creative brain.

For me, the results have been transformative. I’ve completed three projects this way. One of them, No Adults Allowed, I subsequently edited and published as an ebook and paperback. I’m working on my fourth, Tales from the Triverse, via this newsletter, and have been publishing weekly chapters since 2021. I’ve spoken at festivals and on podcasts and on panels about serial writing, none of which would have been possible if I hadn’t actually completed some damned projects.

Everyone works in a different ways, so I’m by no means saying that this is for everyone. Some people, I’m sure, are capable of juggling multiple projects simultaneously and still finishing them. But if you’re like me, always working on several things at once, and you’re struggling to ever complete anything, it might be worth whittling down to a single focus, even if it feels painful at the time. It might even be worth writing a serial, so as to establish that regular cadence and build a habit through that reader feedback loop.

I’d love to know about your own experiences and techniques when it comes to handling the boredom threshold, and managing multiple projects, and the challenge of completing projects.

1. The exception being some short films in the 2000s, but those were collaborative efforts with a cast and crew. The responsibility of finishing them was spread between everyone involved.

2. Other than my son, of course. He’s 11 now, and has completed several comics projects, so he’s doing a lot better than I was at his age.