The Mindless Task Party
We’ve all been there — being faced with manual, mindless tasks that require us to repeat the same steps for tens if not thousands of times and have procrastinated as a result. It might be changing up the font on a PowerPoint presentation, moving project management from one software to another, or changing over to a new phone.
Many mindless tasks can be automated but there are some that aren’t a fit. These might be mindless tasks that only need to be performed as one set. For me right now, it’s converting my Medium stories from “metered” to “unmetered”.
There’s a Keynesian economic position to outsource this work to someone who is lowered paid that us, like through Fiverr. However, this might not be possible either because the systems have limited access or because setting up the project to do the task might take more time and be more work to manage than doing the task itself.
So we’re left with facing down the mindless task and just doing it. How should we approach it?
As a party! Get the music blaring, set a tomato timer, and try to focus on the task with fun things or videos planned for the breaks. You can get through it!
Of course, I’m writing this to psyche myself up for my own mindless task ahead.
