If you treat every flicker of boredom as an emergency, your brain learns that discomfort must be cured with novelty. Then, when you try to focus, the urge to escape arrives on schedule.
This rule trains the opposite response. Practice staying with mental strain without reaching for a quick hit of stimulation. Set aside periods where you work deeply, and periods where you allow boredom to exist without “fixing” it.
The book pushes a counterintuitive idea: don’t take breaks from focus—take breaks from distraction. If your default state is checking, deep work feels like punishment. If your default state is presence, distraction becomes the exception.
Techniques like structured concentration and “productive meditation” build this capacity. The aim is simple: make your attention reliable when work becomes hard.