Successful people don’t seem boring at first glance, and that’s because you’re looking at the end results. The products of their efforts are interesting and exciting, and it makes that successful person attractive to the observer. However, what most fail to discern when observing successful people is all the work behind the success, the hours and hours of effort and practice that goes into creating those end results.

What many fail to realize is that all that time put into achieving the results is actually incredibly boring. Now, what we classify as boring is subjective. What may seem like hours of boring work to the average person could be incredibly exciting to the person doing the work. The cultural mindset is tinted when it comes to the subjects of boredom and excitement.

Nobody can debate the fact that Elon Musk is successful. He has billions of dollars and could be the world’s ultimate consumer if he wanted to, but he came into that wealth by being one of the world’s best producers of value. Many people think his life is all excitement. They probably think he’s got it made, can buy whatever he wants, so he must be living an extremely interesting life, and he is, but it’s not in the way you might think and it’s probably boring most of the time.

Many people don’t know how much Elon works. He puts in nearly 90-hour workweeks on a regular basis, and sleeps at the office. Most people would think that would be beyond boring, hell-like, actually. Do you think he became a technical expert by chasing excitement? No, he did a lot of research and learning. Excitement to him isn’t having billions of dollars, it’s seeing his rockets launch after countless hours of trial and error and work and research, all the “boring’ things other people aren’t willing to do.

The cultural mindset of excitement is the same as the consumer mindset. The average person thinks that excitement is spending money on whatever catches their fancy, or going on exotic trips, parties and other forms of indulgence. Any activity that delays the gratification of the consumer mindset is categorized as boring.

The average person sees the successful person consuming and thinks that the consumption itself is the goal, and perhaps it was the goal for some of those successful people, but the ability to consume is only a byproduct of the success, and the excitement that comes with the consumption is only made possible by the number of boring days of dedicated effort, and those boring days vastly outnumber the days of consumer excitement.

The successful become achievers by producing, not consuming. Their production of value is what gives them the ability to consume the way they desire. The average person is unwilling to do the boring things on a consistent basis and wrongfully assume that sacrifices don’t need to be made and that life should be centered upon indulging in excitement.

Do you think the successful athlete is constantly engaged in gratifying activities? No, they work hard, they deal with challenge on a daily basis, and they eat healthy and go to sleep early. If an athlete goes out and to parties all the time, their performance will start to suffer and their success in the athletic world will suffer.

People look at top level athletes and see them party or see them with beautiful women and see how they spend their money on new cars and think that the life of an athlete is nothing but excitement. They fail to see the hours and hours of practice, the time in the gym, the discipline and dedication it takes to be healthy and can’t see past the end results.

The process of becoming successful is boring, the fruits of success are exciting. I recently ran into this problem in my relationship. I recently started dating a woman and she found me interesting, and she thought that the things I had done were exciting and that I was exciting.

I am doing well financially; I have a good gym routine and I am becoming healthier and stronger. I am writing and making more and more art and it wasn’t because I was always doing exciting things. In fact, my friends at work call me the “old man” because I never want to go out and drink with them or because I don’t want to leave my house most of the time to go do consumer things with them.

What they don’t understand is that I don’t want to do those things because if I did, I would be acting contrary to my goals. I don’t go out and drink with them because its unhealthy and expensive and my goal is to be strong and healthy and rich. They think of me as boring, but what I want to do is make art and write and be healthy and the things it takes to attain those things is boring. I want to dedicate my time and energy to what I think is important, and most of the time those things are relatively boring.

Now, I’m not a total hermit. Sometimes I will go out, but not often, and when I do, I have interesting things to talk about and I can show people what I’ve accomplished, but they only see the end result. They don’t see that I was only able to get what I have by living a simple and apparently boring lifestyle. They may see it as boring, and sometimes it can be, but to me there is nothing more exciting than seeing that goal being accomplished or seeing myself one step closer or thinking back on how much I’ve grown.

Coming back to my girlfriend, I used to only see her about once a week or so and I didn’t mind going out to dinner and drinks with her because I had isolated myself for so long, and I liked her enough to not feel too guilty about it, and during the rest of my week I was back to my grind.

However, I started to see her more often and go out more often and drink more often and I started to see my results suffer. I had to recenter and dedicate more of my time and effort back to my goals and doing the boring things again. Those things that made me attractive to her might be lost if I continued this trend, but I didn’t want to spend less time with her or seem boring to her.

I came to realize that if I didn’t do the boring things to be successful, I would become unattractive to her anyways, and that if we couldn’t be content and bored together, then it wouldn’t work out anyways. The same principle that goes for being successful in business or creative efforts goes for your relationships too.

Relationships aren’t just about excitement; the boring parts can be even more important. The boring things are taking care of yourself so you can be healthy and physically attractive, and doing the boring things to succeed at your endeavors is what makes you interesting. If the boring moments are what breaks your relationship, then maybe one or both of you weren’t mature enough for it in the first place.

If you want to be successful, be friends with boredom. Don’t let the herd of consumer mindset average people have break your determination. You will still win in the end and when they chase the next dopamine hit and never accomplish anything substantial, you will reach the top of the mountain and be the person they wish they could be.

If you can be content with boredom, you have won the battle. The average person cannot sit still for more than five minutes without having an anxiety attack that they have to distract themselves from.

If you find yourself in the consumer “excitement culture” type of mindset, then it’s time to start playing mind games with yourself and shifting your way of thinking so that you view the “boring” things as exciting and train yourself to be a producer. Be excited to sit in silence for hours and work on that project. Be excited to go to the gym and cook that healthy meal and enjoy going to bed early. Instead of thinking you’re missing out by not going out and drinking, be excited that you have the discipline to say no because you care about your money and your goals and your health.

No mature person will look down on you for being “boring” and focusing on your goals and on what is important to you. When you stay in when your friends go out so you can work on that art project and you wake up with a painting that you can be proud of because you stayed in and were “boring” and your peers wake up and have nothing but hangovers and less money in their bank accounts or even worse, who do you think is winning?

You have to leave the consumer mindset and be friends with boring if you want to be successful. Treat yourself to some consumer excitement once you have hit a milestone or accomplished the mission. In the meantime, be boring; you have work to do.