Sometimes it might feel like you have to complete ordinary, frustrating and seemingly useless tasks. These tasks have a way of demoralizing and discouraging you and this can keep you from finding enjoyment or fulfillment in your work.
Jumia Travel, the leading online travel agency shares 6 ways to make these boring tasks more interesting.
Change Your Mindset
Don’t give up and start dwelling on the erroneous fact that you are stuck in a rut and will never be able to find interest in or actually enjoy these tasks. Get rid of that thought completely.
Understand that everything in life is a choice. You might not be able to change what you are doing, but you might as well find a way to make it bearable until you are able to make a change. Take the reins, take control and make completing that task a choice to enjoy as opposed to a depressing non-negotiable commitment.
Stimulate Yourself and Your Environment
Try to make your surroundings interesting. If your present environment is dull, move to one that’s livelier for you, one that brightens your mood and makes completing the task more interesting; however, ensure you’re still able to concentrate on your work. If you can’t change your environment or if a change of environment will be too distracting, play some music, listen to a vlog or listen to an audiobook while you work. Basically, liven up your environment in a way that will not disturb your concentration.
Find the Bright Side
There’s always something to learn from these boring tasks. Discover things you can learn from completing such tasks. Find out how these tasks can benefit you or find ways to make these tasks beneficial to you.
For example, writing a business report might be boring but the research you do in the process adds to your knowledge pool and teaches you important skills like how to communicate clearly, fact checking and how to organize important documents. The knowledge added and skills gained can help to prepare you for other opportunities and push you forward in your career.
Break the Duration of the Task into Manageable Periods
It can further worsen your feeling of discouragement and dissatisfaction, when you have to work on boring tasks with little or no break. It’s easier on you if you manage your time and split the completion of the task into manageable periods so you can dabble into one or two other things in the process. It helps to keep you energized and focused. If your task is one you can split into periods, then please do so.
Reward Yourself
If there’s no one to appreciate and encourage you, then by all means please do so yourself. Self-love and appreciation is the best form of love and appreciation. To make completing boring tasks more interesting, give yourself a treat when you are done with it.
It can be daily, weekly or monthly, it’s your choice. The treat can be as simple as watching a movie when you are done or if you want to be a bit more elaborate splurging on something nice after weeks or months of successfully completing the task.
Count Your Blessings
This mainly helps you keep things in perspective and keep the right frame of mind while performing a boring task. Sit for a moment and think of how much worse it could be and the fact that someone somewhere in the world or even as close as in your neighborhood is living through that worst case scenario. You’ll feel a little more appreciative and completing the task will be easier to bear (at least until you are able to get something better).
source: modernghana.com