Go Towards the Boring?
Tyler Cowen has advice about traveling:
"Finally, I have a radical travel suggestion. Perhaps it is not for families or for the frail, but seasoned travelers should consider it. Imagine you have been to many places, and you are wondering where to go next. Select a country (putting aside danger) where you are quite sure you do not want to go, simply because it does not interest you much. Go there.
The point is that your instincts can be quite wrong about places you have not seen. What’s more, if you go with low expectations, there is a high likelihood you will be pleasantly surprised. Under my proposed method, you will not be disappointed."
I wonder if this couldn't be applied to life in general...
We spend so much time worrying about where to go...
What if we just went places that we don't find interesting?
Of course, his idea of going a place that you are sure you don't want to go needs to be qualified.
Just like the advice to "do what scares you".
Sometimes you have very good reasons for not wanting to go some place, or excellent reasons to be scared.
The point is to do things that scare you, unless doing so actually puts you at a high risk of serious harm.
And the point is to head towards what doesn't look interesting from afar.
Doing this could make decisions so much easier, because you only have to filter out the choices that would lead to truly bad outcomes.
And it could lead to some pleasant surprises.
Maybe the path to great outcomes is to just survive and keep moving.
So the modified, qualified idea would be:
Go to places that you haven't been, and seem boring from where you are.
Or, applied to life...
Pursue goals that you have not achieved, and seem uninteresting in your current state.
Might be worth a try.