Boredom is dangerous when you're unemployed.

The mind finds itself on a treadmill, and that really doesn't help, when you need to be doing some real thinking.

The day, if it's organized, can be used for doing whole new things. There are a few things you have to do, and you can find yourself getting pretty sick of doing them. But they don't have to take up the whole day.

If you can possibly avoid it, don't allow the routines to dictate your life. You can probably get them done pretty quickly, if you try, and spend the spare time you create getting out of the rut.

The problem is that a rut, by definition, means you have to get out of it. Whatever's causing the rut isn't helping. It's probably hindering.

Things aren't happening, and you need to start creating opportunities for yourself, because the rut is by definition a result of lack of opportunities and new inputs.

The problem is the same, so the answer is the same… but it isn't. The problem keeps recurring because its cause wasn't actually solved. The logic is the logic of the rut, which is the problem. New ideas are harder to see.

The first thing you'll notice is that your thinking has changed. You're far more interested, and your mind is reacting.

Unemployment is hardly a stimulating experience. The lack of stimulus, combined with the lack of options and repetitive situations, creates inevitable mental ruts.

Problem solving, which can be a trial and error process at best in many cases, is confined to relatively petty things, not big issues.

The definitive solution is Get A Job, but even that only goes so far. It solves a temporary problem, not the big problems of security and quality of life. The rut, which requires short term thinking, has created a short term solution.

People who are bored out of their minds while being worried out of their minds can't afford to stagnate. But stagnation is the situation, and it's enforced by limitations on options and ideas.

If you can create new options for yourself, new perspectives, and new ways of looking at situations, your mental arsenal is a lot stronger. You can deal with more situations, and have the mental stamina and logic to handle them.

If Person A has the sole option getting Job A, and life stops while that process staggers on, what sort of condition is Person A likely to be in?

Bored, frustrated, worried, anxious, irritable, and confronted on a daily basis with only one option, which isn't happening. Stagnation incarnate.

How is that a solution?

If Person A gives themselves a workable chance of Jobs B, C, and D, there's a lot more happening to start with. To do that they may need training, new skills, etc, but the overall situation is improving, simply because of the added depth to possible solutions to the problem.

Person A's actual problem is a severe lack of opportunity, at the heart. That may be because of lack of opportunities earlier in life, lack of education, or lack of the basic resources required for a big positive move forward.

This is an extremely common situation in unemployment.

It's also a very unproductive way of trying to solve problems, if the solution is no better than the problem, or actually simply recreates the original problem, lack of further options.

Under these circumstances, you could set your clock by the fact that if Person A gets Job A, then loses Job A, they're literally back behind the eight ball.

You can see why ruts are so dangerous. The need is to solve the reason for being in the rut, as well as shutting down the rut itself.

Some people have literally spent their lives going from rut to rut. It's not a pretty sight, and it's an avoidable situation.

Give yourself some new options. If you're not getting anywhere with your rut, what have you got to lose? You can at least make sure you're doing something you want to do, and know you're trying to break the cycle.

You have nothing to lose but your boredom.