Let's say you buy a $10 movie ticket.

But 15 minutes in, you realise this movie isn't what you expected it to be.

However, because you feel like you're supposed to get your money's worth, you decide to watch the rest of the 2 hour movie.

This decision is based on your loss of $10.

But it isn't an optimal one.

A more logical thing to do, would have been to get up and leave after you had realised this movie wasn't what you wanted to watch.

Wouldn't you be better off, had you only wasted $10 and 15 minutes of your time, instead of wasting $10 and 2 hours?

Had you left early, you would've essentially gained 2 hours of extra time.

Those $10 you spent were gone or "sunk" either way. You couldn't get them back, whether you watched the rest of the movie or not.

And that phenomenon is what psychologists and economists call: the sunk cost fallacy.

It's one of the more common cognitive biases that clouds our judgement.

Instead of making a decision based on potential future returns, we make them on our past losses.

I'm sure you experienced this before:

You might have had a breakdown or you might have had an epiphany.

Either way, you had this realisation that you needed to make some sort of a change in your life.

Suddenly you knew what you needed to do, and you even had the motivation to do it.

However, when you woke up the next morning, you didn't wake up as the new person you felt like you were the night before. You woke up as the same old you, with no motivation to make the changes you planned to make.

And in the following days and weeks, no additional exercise was done, there was no progress in your learning, and you still didn't get things done on time.

You have again, fallen back into your set ways, and failed to do what you said you were going to do.

But don't worry. You're not alone in this.

I don't manage to do everything I tell myself I'm going to do, either.

But I have found a way to substantially increase my odds of following through on my desired behaviour.

Instead of relying on motivation, which comes and goes, I started applying what psychologists call: implementation intentions.

Studies mentioned in the video for further reading:

Implementation intentions:

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper...

Meta-analysis of implementation intentions:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...

Coping plans:

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper...

You can get the book mentioned in the video here:

US: https://amzn.to/2XskwND

UK: https://amzn.to/3ghJ9oR

Nowadays everyone is constantly busy with something. But being busy doesn't mean we're using our time efficiently.

It's sad to say this, but most people completely waste their time.

And time is our most valuable resource. We can't make more of it, like we can make more money for example.

So it's wise to use our time in a way that will benefit us.

When we're bored, what do we usually do?

Most of us up end being glued to a phone, TV or a computer screen.

That might ease our boredom in the moment, and we might not even consider that time to be wasted.

But there's an opportunity cost.

That time could've been spent on a different, more valuable activity.

Specifically on something that could actually benefit us greatly in the future.

This is why in this video I'll go over 5 things that will help ease your boredom, and teach you to use your free time more productively.