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What to do when bored wheel

Six things you would actually do, one spin, and the afternoon has started. Repeats stay on and nothing is weighted — the wheel is not recommending anything, it is closing a question that has been open too long.

Photo by Arcaion on Pixabay

Photo by Arcaion on Pixabay

This wheel is already set up for the job. Open it in the editor to change the list, the machine or the odds.

Every spin draws from your browser’s cryptographic random source. How a draw is made sets out the method and its limits.

Open this wheel in the editor

Why is choosing harder than doing when you are bored?

Because boredom is not a shortage of options. More things are available to a bored person on a Sunday than at any point in history, and that is the problem: every option costs a comparison, comparisons cost energy you do not have, and the cheapest thing to do with the question is leave it open. Scrolling is not a failure to choose — it is choosing to choose later.

Once anything is chosen, the difficulty mostly disappears. Nobody is bored ten minutes into a walk. The wheel is aimed at the thirty seconds before that, and it works by turning an open question into a closed one, which is the only part that was ever stuck.

What belongs on the list, and what quietly ruins it?

Nothing goes on the wheel that takes longer to start than to do. “Go for a walk” is shoes and a door. “Learn to code” is a decision about which course, which language and whether today is the day, and it puts the original problem back on the rim wearing a new coat.

One entry ruins the whole method, and it is “watch something”. It is the lowest-effort option on any list, so it is accepted the moment it is drawn, and after two or three spins it is the only thing the wheel has ever usefully produced. Leave it off. What belongs on the wheel is what you are glad about afterwards, not what you are glad about during.

How do you build a wheel you will still use next Sunday?

Keep two, and split them by what makes the choice hard rather than by category: one for indoors and bad weather, one for outdoors and daylight. A wheel that offers a walk to somebody watching rain gets overruled, and a wheel overruled twice stops being opened.

Then prune. Anything you have skipped three times is not something you are going to do; it is something you like the idea of, and it is diluting the five that work. Six entries with a real chance of happening beat a list of thirty that reads like a resolution.

What else is this wheel good for?

It is the plain picker wheel with a short list on it. When the question is not what but whether — go out at all, or stay in — the yes or no wheel is two segments and one press.

If the empty afternoon is going to be spent drawing, the what to draw wheel narrows it to a subject. If it is going to end in a film either way, put the shortlist on a film night wheel.

Questions about boredom wheels

Six to eight. Below four the wheel is barely deciding anything and you will overrule it; past a dozen you are reading a list again, which is the thing you were trying to stop doing. The number matters less than the rule that every entry is something you would genuinely be willing to do this afternoon.

Turn elimination on and each entry is drawn once, then removed, so a run of six spins is six different afternoons. That is the setting for a whole week of them rather than for one day. Left as it is, the wheel can offer the same walk twice in a row, and often should.

Save one of each and switch between them. Saved wheels stay in this browser when you are signed out and follow your account when you are signed in, so the indoor wheel is on the phone as well as the laptop. Most people also end up with one for a whole free day and one for twenty spare minutes.

Yes, after the first visit. Nothing about the draw needs a server, so the wheel works on a train, in a tent and on a phone with no data left. What it cannot do offline is know anything about your afternoon — it draws the list you wrote, and nothing else.