The Real Enemy Isn't Failure, It's the Mundane
It's not about finding passion. It's about building stamina
It’s Sunday night, around 9 p.m. The good part of the weekend is over, and the reality of the week ahead begins to set in.
You know that feeling!
It’s not necessarily dread about a big project or a difficult conversation.
It's the mental checklist of a thousand tiny obligations starting to form in your mind.
The same commute.
The same reports.
The same cycle of emails that never, ever stops.
The dishes in the sink that will just be replaced by more dishes. The laundry.
The logins. The small, repetitive tasks that make up most of our lives.
We're often taught to fear the big, dramatic failures—the dragons we have to fight.
But I’ve learned that those moments are rare, and strangely, almost exciting.
The real enemy, the one that grinds you down slowly and silently, isn't the dragon.
It's the road itself.
It's the ongoing, unending maintenance of being a person.
Sound familiar?
The Guilt of Being Bored
We all do this.
We beat ourselves up for not feeling more motivated.
We scroll through social media and see people who seem so passionate about their meal prep or their color-coded spreadsheets, and a little voice in our head asks, What’s wrong with me?
Why can’t I just be more disciplined?
Why do I feel so drained by things that should be easy?
Well, it turns out there’s nothing wrong with you at all.
Our brains are fundamentally novelty-seeking machines. For thousands of years, our survival depended on noticing what was new and different, a new predator, a new food source, a change in the weather.
Our brains reward us with a little hit of dopamine when we experience something new and exciting.
It’s the brain’s way of saying, “Yes! Pay attention to this!”
The mundane, by its very definition, has no novelty.
Doing the dishes for the five-thousandth time offers zero new information. And so, our brain provides no reward.
We get no jolt of satisfaction. We just get a clean dish.
So when we feel bored, restless, or uninspired by our routines, we’re not failing. Our brain is simply doing exactly what it was designed to do.
The problem is, we then layer a thick coating of guilt on top of that natural boredom.
We feel like we should be more engaged, and the gap between that “should” and our reality is where our emotional energy goes to die.
From Endurance to Practice
What I’ve come to realize, slowly and often through frustrating trial and error, is that the goal isn’t to find a magical source of passion for doing the laundry.
It will never be exciting. The goal isn’t to escape the mundane, because no one can.
The goal is to change our relationship with it.
The solution is to stop trying to make these tasks exciting and start using them as a place to build our emotional stamina.
We can transform them from energy drains, leaving us feeling empty, into quiet, private moments of practice.
It's not about what you're doing, but how you're being while you're doing it.
Here are a couple of things to think about:
Anchor the Task
Before you start a boring but necessary task, the instinct is to just rush through it to get it over with.
What if you tried the opposite?
Pause for just ten seconds. Take a breath, and consciously connect the task to a deeper value.
Don’t just “answer the emails.” Stop and think, “I am bringing order to my work so I can be helpful and effective.”
Don't just “do the dishes.” Think, “I am creating a calm and orderly space for myself and my family.”
This isn't about lying to yourself or pretending you love it. It's about anchoring a mundane act in a meaningful “why.”
It connects the small, boring thing to a large, important value. It gives the task a quiet dignity.
You’re not just a machine executing a function; you are a person reinforcing what you care about.
That is REAL work.
Bookend the Chore
The feeling of being on a relentless treadmill comes from one mundane task bleeding directly into the next, with no space in between.
From emails, to a meeting, to another report, to paying a bill, to making dinner. It’s a seamless loop of obligation.
The way to break that loop is to create intentional “bookends.”
After you finish a block of work, say, you finally clear out your inbox, don’t immediately jump to the next thing.
Stop.
Deliberately create a 60-second moment of silence. Push your chair back, stand up, stretch, and look out the window.
Take several slow breaths.
This tiny act is a HUGE win. It creates a clear boundary.
It says, “That task is over.”
It stops the momentum of the treadmill and gives your brain a moment to reset before the next thing begins. It’s you, taking back control of the rhythm of your day.
The mundane will never go away. The road will always be long.
But it doesn’t have to be a place where our spirit gets ground down.
What if, instead, it was a training ground?
What if every boring, repetitive, and necessary task wasn’t an obstacle to our happiness, but a chance to practice being the kind of person we want to be?
A person who is grounded, intentional, and capable of bringing meaning to even the smallest corners of their life.