Founder boreout is a bigger problem than founder
burnout
Burnout is well understood, but boreout — caused by long-term understimulation — deserves more attention. Here's how to fix it.
A lot of people talk about founder burnout. But I rarely hear anyone talk about founder boreout, i.e. feeling unhappy or even a little distressed by your work because of chronic understimulation.
I’m not claiming boreout is a bigger problem than burnout overall. I haven’t run the studies, and honestly I’m not even sure I’d personally agree with that statement. But after talking with hundreds of founders and observing my own patterns, I do think the following:
Boreout is far more important than the amount of attention we give it
Burnout is far less important than the attention we give it
Boreout happens regularly, in a quiet and often invisible way
Burnout tends to show up in loud ways after we push ourselves to breaking points
Worse for solo indie hackers
These points are especially true for solo indie hackers:
When you’re running solo or with a very small team, you have to wear all the hats. Even the ones that bore you and drain your energy. For me, these are admin tasks (e.g. keeping up with my email) and managerial tasks.
When people speak of the benefits of hiring and delegating work, they almost always focus on the growth benefits: doing more, doing it faster, generating more revenue, etc.
But there's another benefit that's simpler and a little more human: you can do less of what you hate.
Of course, that's not an option for everyone. So founders cope. Usually by "resisting":
The resistance cope
By "resistance," I mean that founders come up with various ways to hold the tasks at arm's length, which tends to make things worse long term.
An obvious way to do this is to procrastinate and put the task off till later. But an even sneakier strategy is to do the task while simultaneously doing other, more stimulating activities — Slack, social media, YouTube, podcasts — under the guise of "multitasking."
There are plenty of studies on how continuous partial attention destroys our productivity, but the real problem with approaches like this is that they reinforce the dread you feel about boring tasks. It's like a small kid holding his nose and screwing up his face to eat Brussels sprouts. He's just strengthening his negative emotional association with the activity.
A better approach
A better long-term solution to tasks that make you say "Ugh" is, paradoxically, to do the opposite of holding them at arm's length: Make a game out of doing them as well as you possibly can. I've seen a lot of highly intelligent people do this to make "dumb" tasks more stimulating.
I'll give three quick examples, starting with one that's dead simple:
Speedrun the task
Make a game to try to do the task as quickly as possible. Seriously:
Set a timer (and a goal for how fast you want to do the task).
Race through and try to finish the task as soon as possible.
Record how long it took you to do it and try to beat this PR the next time you do the task.
Create an optimized approach to doing the task
Here's Scott Adams from his book Reframe Your Brain:
I do something similar with straightening up the house. Instead of picking up one item at a time or maybe a few and putting them back in the rooms where they belong, I survey the space and calculate the shortest distance to each item. Then I scoop them up and put them at the exit points to their destinations. But I don’t deliver them to their destination until I have a reason to be walking in that direction for some other reason. By bedtime, all the little piles have been redistributed to their homes, and I feel a dopamine release associated with my pride of minor competence.
I'm such a fan of little optimizations like this that I document them in standard operating procedures.
Change the task itself so it can be done more efficiently
Toward the end of an essay I wrote on how innovation works, I argued that people can get a lot of mileage out of creating "micro innovations" — small, incremental improvements to the tools you use in your everyday life.
I mainly had boring (and inefficient) tasks in mind when I wrote that.
My favorite high-profile example of this is Richard Feynman. Before he became the brilliant physicist known for his work in quantum electrodynamics and the Manhattan Project, he was just a clever kid who had to work normal day jobs.
Instead of letting dull, boring tasks remain dull and boring, he used his ingenuity to spice them up. And hilarity ensued. Here's one example from his autobiography Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman:
I used to cut vegetables in the kitchen. String beans had to be cut into one-inch pieces. The way you were supposed to do it was: You hold two beans in one hand, the knife in the other, and you press the knife against the beans and your thumb, almost cutting yourself. It was a slow process. So I put my mind to it, and I got a pretty good idea. I sat down at the wooden table outside the kitchen, put a bowl in my lap, and stuck a very sharp knife into the table at a forty-five-degree angle away from me. Then I put a pile of the string beans on each side, and I’d pick out a bean, one in each hand, and bring it towards me with enough speed that it would slice, and the pieces would slide into the bowl that was in my lap.
So I’m slicing beans one after the other — chig, chig, chig, chig, chig — and everybody’s giving me the beans, and I’m going like sixty when the boss comes by and says, “What are you doing?”
I say, “Look at the way I have of cutting beans!” — and just at that moment I put a finger through instead of a bean. Blood came out and went on the beans, and there was a big excitement: “Look at how many beans you spoiled! What a stupid way to do things!” and so on. So I was never able to make any improvement, which would have been easy — with a guard, or something — but no, there was no chance for improvement.
I hope it goes without saying that I'm not suggesting founders should turn all of their tasks into fun little games. Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and slog through unpleasant work.
The point is: for tasks that are particularly unpleasant and particularly recurring, there are tools that you can reach for. And counterintuitively, they usually involve zooming in instead of zooming out.
This hits hard. Boreout feels invisible because it doesn’t explode like burnout — it just quietly drains you until you stop enjoying what you’re building. I’ve definitely felt this when my work becomes too repetitive or admin-heavy.
What helped me most was reframing those “ugh” tasks like the post suggests — making a challenge out of them or automating tiny parts just to feel some progress again. Even small optimizations can bring back that sense of curiosity and flow that made us start building in the first place.
Totally agree that boreout deserves more attention, especially among solo founders. The hustle culture glorifies overwork, but chronic understimulation can be just as dangerous for creativity.
Very interesting and insightful look at something I definitely feel, but hadn't put a name to. For me, the key to overcoming this stuff is to keep my inner child happy. As a founder, you're working around the clock, doing a million different jobs, and while it's exciting in one way, it's a grind. Feynman's example (I adore Richard Feynman) and speed running, etc. are examples of this.
Imagine that you're taking yourself, as a kid, to work today. You have to work. But kid you is going to get bored. So you make your normally boring tasks into little games, and little kid you has fun.
When your inner child is happy, they are a fountain of energy. When they are not happy, adulting is powered only by sheer willpower.
Great read. Thank you for the topic!
Nice, you're actually connecting dots here for me.
The article was super insightful for 1.
Next, the way I counter the boreout is with micro-dosing movement.
whenever I
want to boost energy/productivity,
am bored,
need to think or
kill stress.
I get up and move my body in 100 hundred different ways.
Works like a charm. Even building an app to help others do it too!
Anyway, when you said it was about the inner child, it hit that that was who I was doing it for. Good call
Yes! discovering little challenges and treating it like a game, leveling up, getting to boss level can make mundane things, fun!
Thasnk for your ideas , I agree with you!
Love this idea. Really useful way of framing things. Especially since psychologists know how useful it is to approach things with a spirit of play — yet work culture for adults is usually very anti-play.
Really resonated with this. Burnout gets all the attention, but boreout is often what slowly erodes motivation and creativity. I like how you framed the “resistance cope”, it’s so true that procrastination often hides behind busyness. The idea of gamifying boring tasks as a way to reclaim momentum is super practical. Thanks for putting a name to something many of us feel but rarely talk about.
Boreout sneaks in when there’s no feedback loop , no signals, no noise, just that weird stillness.
Sometimes it’s not about pushing harder, but shifting focus reconnecting with why you started, even if the “how” is blurry right now.
Small steps, small wins, and talking to real people (not just dashboards) helped me.
Momentum doesn't have to be loud to be real.
You’re not alone in this.
well said. If I can speak to my experience, it feels like being stuck behind a desk all day is compounding with the "alone" factor of WFH/remote work. I'm still goign at it 10+ hours a day, and something is accumulating.
I guess that working in a vacuum = the no feedback loop and weird stillness you described.
Anyway. I've got something close to a fix.
I micro-dose movement.
Mini movement breaks whenever I:
want to boost energy/productivity,
am bored,
need to think or
kill stress.
This is a really good and subtle insight. I notice a huge difference between tasks involving fast feedback loops (like coding) vs tasks with slow/no feedback loops (like taxes). I might go so far as to suggest that gamification is essentially just the process of adding artificial feedback loops to projects that don't have enough of them.
Building a Business requires effort, even for tasks that are not so exciting. I agree, for me it's repetitive work, like doing the same task over and over again ... You understand what I'm getting at.
These are the moments when I find the best innovations to reduce the time spent on repetitive work. If it's something that requires or can be optimized with a computer, I start programming or use a product/tool that's already made. If it is something that is analog, I find ways to optimize the process.
There is always a solution to a problem, some say throw money at it, others say it's about thinking outside the box. You decide!
I internalized this a long time ago. So these days I kind of take it for granted. But I shouldn't! Lots and lots of people — especially those who don't have much experience with engineering or entrepreneurship — hit walls in how they do things and don't really explore ways to innovate around the walls. I love meeting these people and helping them expand their sense of agency.
True words. We are all equipped with biological supercomputers that can solve very complex problems: our brain. Some need a little push to realize their true potential, I have seen it with my own eyes. It's wonderful!
I respect and appreciate people who support each other to grow together.
I tend to be happier during the day if I do these taks right away. Like the minute I get them (if possible).
Really appreciated this post — boreout is such an overlooked issue for founders. That feeling of being stuck, unmotivated, or disconnected from your own startup can be just as draining as burnout.
Thanks for highlighting this! It’s a great reminder to build in a way that keeps us inspired, not just busy. 👏
love the speed-running idea, and changing the task to do it more efficiently.
Same!
I've been having this same problem recently but didn't know the word for it! Thank you for writing this out, i've tried implementing the Speedrunning method and it's helped me so far.
I'll be staying tuned to what you post next.
Thanks for reading! More to come.
Great post — I like how you frame boreout as the “quiet” problem. The idea of turning boring tasks into games or optimizations is a simple but powerful mindset shift.
THAT part about “resistance cope.” I run a home health agency, and while burnout gets talked about all the time (rightfully), boreout is this quieter, more corrosive thing that creeps in , especially during those repetitive admin grinds that no one warns you about.
For me, it used to show up when I’d be buried in documentation audits or chasing missed signatures. The tasks weren’t hard, just so… low-stim, over and over again. I didn’t realize how much mental drag it created until I finally switched to software that took that friction out of the equation.
We ended up moving everything to Alora which helped simplify documentation, flagged issues in real time, and honestly helped clear some of the fog. It didn’t “fix” my boreout entirely, but it definitely gave me fewer excuses to procrastinate the stuff that used to drain me. That alone felt like getting hours back.
I love the idea of gamifying these dull tasks. I might even challenge my office team to a “note audit speedrun” tomorrow 😂. Appreciate you writing this... it put words to something I’ve been feeling but didn’t name.
This hits harder than most people realize. We talk a lot about burnout from overwork, but the lack of challenge, clarity, or momentum can be just as draining — maybe even worse because it creeps in quietly. Thanks for putting this into words. Would love to hear how others have reignited their spark when stuck in this phase.
"Boreout happens regularly, in a quiet and often invisible way"
This line just punched me in the gut.
Spent 18 months "perfecting" a product while avoiding the boring stuff - customer interviews, sales calls, basic marketing. Told myself I was being "strategic."
Reality: I was bored and scared. Boreout was my excuse for not doing the hard, uncomfortable work that actually moves the needle.
The Feynman approach works, but here's the darker truth - sometimes we gamify the wrong things. I got really good at optimizing my development workflow while my potential customers forgot I existed.
Now I force myself to do one "boring but crucial" task before any "fun" work. Email first, then code. Sales call before feature planning.
What's your "boring but crucial" task that you keep avoiding?
right said
This usually happens to me at towards the end of a project. Usually a project interests me because I'm learning something from it, and towards the end of any project I'm already looking to the next one and what I can learn and gain from that. So the next 'hat' I have to put on - usually marketing - is a real pain point.
Absolutely agree. Boreout often creeps in quietly—when there's a lack of challenge or purpose after the initial hustle. It’s just as draining as burnout, but harder to spot. Staying aligned with your "why" is key.
Absolutely true. Each of us is equipped with a powerful biological supercomputer — our brain — capable of solving incredibly complex problems. Sometimes, all it takes is a little encouragement to unlock that potential, and I’ve witnessed it firsthand. It’s truly inspiring.
Totally get this! I feel like the problem is that there’s just so much to do that isn’t what we truly enjoy as founders. We fall into this routine full of tasks that drain us — not because they’re hard, but because they feel meaningless. And suddenly, being a founder doesn’t feel anything like what we imagined.
What about delegating these borong tasks to AI or a virtual assistant?
Was going through something similar. This post helps a lot.
Love the simple yet brilliant suggestions like speedrunning tasks and optimizing your approach. It's all about making those "ugh" moments less dreadful. Great insights!
Absolutely, the reality of solo or small-team entrepreneurship is juggling everything—even the tasks that drain you. Admin and managerial duties can feel like a necessary evil, but streamlining them can make a huge difference in your energy levels.
Have you tried leveraging automation tools for emails and scheduling? Something like Superhuman or an AI-powered assistant can help keep your inbox under control. For managerial tasks, setting up simple workflows, using project management tools (Trello, Notion, ClickUp), or even delegating where possible can lighten the load.
If these tasks are becoming a serious bottleneck, it might be worth considering a virtual assistant or fractional hire to take some of the weight off. What’s been the most frustrating part for you?
This level of honesty is so refreshing — thank you for sharing it so openly.
I recently launched a small open-source project and I'm just starting to show up across platforms. It’s wild how much of this journey is mindset, not just code or design.
Working solo on my project, I've hit that weird mix of boredom and guilt more than I'd like to admit. It's way more draining than straight-up burnout because it creeps in quietly.
Hey man, same. Try micro-dosing movement. Like build a YT Shorts playlist of moves that are good for you and pull one out at random when you need it.
Trying to build an app for that as we speak
Changing the routine tasks to automating it is is still an option.
Finding alternative solutions is also the way to grow and renew ourselves up , too.
Brazilian jiu jitsu helps me a lot with ‘boredom tolerance’. I think the fact that I’m in a room being forced to learn a complex and difficult technique that’s only going to help get .01% better makes it easier to do boring tasks that will actually help me grow big time
This is a child of bullshit jobs, bullshit procedures
It's funny that we create IA to do boring jobs and we teach it to do creative tasks
A little over a year ago Mark Manson wrote about this in his newsletter:
"The older I get, the more I realize that success at most things isn’t about finding the one trick or secret nobody knows about.
It’s consistently doing the boring, mundane things everyone knows about but is too unfocused/undisciplined to do.
Get good at boring."
When you reframe it as a challenge--doing what others can't--it surely helps.
Wow, this resonates a lot more than I expected. Everyone talks about burnout like it's the ultimate founder challenge, but boreout — that slow, creeping lack of purpose — can be just as dangerous. It's wild how doing "nothing wrong" can still feel like you're drifting. Sometimes the hardest part isn’t the hustle, it’s the waiting.
Thanks for putting this into words — needed to hear it today.
oh damn right spot on.
Thanks for the thoughtful piece, Channing — I really enjoyed reading it. I agree that boreout is under-discussed, especially in the indie founder scene. But if I reflect on my own experience building OskarOS, I’d argue that the core challenge isn’t chronic understimulation — it’s navigating the messy, emotional terrain between the initial idea and meaningful traction.
When you're building something complex and long-term (in my case, a SaaS for service-based businesses), you’re rarely bored. You're overwhelmed. You're deep in the weeds, juggling a hundred micro-decisions, never quite sure if what you’re doing today will matter three months from now.
For me, the danger zone wasn’t the tasks being too boring — it was the emotional toll of executing consistently without external validation. Not knowing if users will come. Not knowing if the design will convert. Not knowing if your tenth cold DM this week will land. That’s what quietly wears you down. And because you're "in motion", it often masquerades as momentum — until you wake up one day and realize you're exhausted and emotionally disconnected from what you’re building.
What helped me wasn’t gamifying tasks (although that can be helpful). It was (1) radically narrowing focus, (2) setting shorter feedback loops to generate micro-wins, and (3) being honest about when I was just busy vs. when I was truly moving forward.
So while boreout is real, I’d say for many solo founders, what we’re seeing more often is a quiet burnout-through-uncertainty. It doesn’t look dramatic, but it slowly erodes your energy and conviction.
Thanks again for opening up this conversation — it’s important that we put more language to the in-between states of building.
This essay really resonated with me. The distinction between burnout and boreout is subtle yet significant, and it's enlightening to see it articulated so clearly.
I appreciate the practical strategies you've shared, especially the concept of "speedrunning" tasks. Turning mundane activities into challenges not only makes them more engaging but also adds a layer of satisfaction upon completion.
thats honestly crazy
Learn to handle boreouts, become a real professional like an athlete or a sportsman does the same boring routine almost daily.
Learn to control burnouts, become successful like a few athlete/sportsmen in the world.
Note: You may bring your own examples to understand this.
Makes perfect sense. For most people "professional athlete" has a totally different meaning than other forms of "professionals," e.g. entrepreneuer, engineer, salesperson, writer, etc. I think this is generally a mistake.
Work is so much more fulfilling when it brings you to your zone of proximal development, and the easiest way to get there is to take your job as seriously as if you were a professional athlete.
Thanks for the meaningful input and pointing out the ZPD.
Challenging for many of solo founders
great read - this is ALL too common, yet rarely spoken of.
that's why we help out founders with on-demand accounting + finance to take some of the boreout load off