4 Brilliant Tips To Deal With Tasks You Don’t Feel Like Doing

Have you ever arrived at work, opened your editor, and gazed at the screen? I’ve experienced this too.

You don’t always want to do your job, even if you enjoy it. Many things affect your ability to be enthusiastic at work and work hard all day.

Family issues, breakups, and sick pets might distract you. Work issues might also demotivate. Bad reviews can derail you. If you work hard on a project and your manager doesn’t appear to care, you may question why.

Sometimes you have to do boring or unchallenging work, like writing tons of tests or documentation. Finding motivation can be difficult if your work is boring or you feel underqualified.

Now what? Procrastination delays the inevitable. The work must be done, even if your management supports you.

To succeed, you must always rise to the situation. That means overcoming obstacles and producing outcomes.

1- Set aside time on the calendar for each project.

Set aside time on your calendar to work on a project you can’t seem to get started on. Just like any other appointment, take it seriously. You have to be there and work on the project.

Set aside at least 30 minutes to an hour, which is a good amount of time to make progress.

This is a key strategy for people who are busy and for managers. If you don’t set aside time to do important strategic work, you’ll end up doing more tactical tasks.

What if you don’t want to do the task at the time you’re supposed to?

Start work on time by setting a timer. Set it up for 10 minutes and tell yourself you only have to work until it goes off.

Start taking the small steps you’ve written down on a list: Google something, get your project set up, send one email, and look over one document.

Taking one or two of these small steps will almost always get your brain going, making it easier to keep going.

You’ll do one thing, then cross it off the list and move on to the next. Your 10-minute timer will go off, but you’ll keep working because you’re interested in the project now.

If, after 10 minutes, you’re still not interested (this doesn’t happen to me very often), take a break. But put another chunk of time on your schedule so you can get back to it soon.

2- Bring other people in.

Making yourself answerable to someone else is sometimes the best way to get yourself to do something.

A study by the American Society for Training and Development1 found that people are more likely to reach their goals if they promise to do so to someone else.

This number goes up to 95% if you agree to meet with that person at a certain time to be held accountable.

Our brains are set up so that we don’t want to let other people down.

If someone invests in you by agreeing to help you reach your goal, you will want to do your part to keep that promise.

3- Discuss it.

Putting problems outside of yourself can make it a lot easier to deal with them. We tend to think too much about things, especially when we are worried about them.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told someone how stressed I am about a project like I don’t have any ideas for an article or it’s so hard I don’t know how to solve it, and by the time I’m done talking, I’m full of ideas.

Other times, I’m just so worried about what could go wrong (or what is going wrong) that I quickly feel like I can’t handle it all.

Studies have shown that talking out loud about how we feel makes us feel less stressed and less bad about ourselves.

Brain scans done at UCLA2 showed that the amygdala became more active when a person saw a picture of an angry face.

This part of the brain is in charge of turning on the body’s “alarm” system. It tells you that there is something to be afraid of and gets your body ready to deal with the threat.

When the people in the study were able to name what they saw, however, the activity in their amygdalas went down.

This was because the simple act of putting what they saw into words made the activity in their amygdala go down.

Not only that but the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex for each participant was then turned on.

Other studies have shown that this is the part of the brain that helps us understand our feelings and put them into words.

So, talking about your big project could be just what you need to get going.

Also, if you talk to smart friends or mentors, they might have ideas for how you can start or stories about how they did something similar. You can get smarter and less stressed at the same time.

4- Use “precrastination” to your advantage.

Do you ever find it hard to work from home because there are dishes in the sink that need to be washed or clothes that need to be folded? People have probably told you that you put things off, but you might be the opposite.

I used to be really good at putting things off. I would make up any reason not to go to work or even think about it. I’ve learned over and over again that putting things off is a bad idea. It comes from being afraid to start, so you do things that take your mind off what you need to do to stop yourself from making progress.

But there is something called “precrastination,” and it is very good for you.

Your brain needs breaks while you’re working on a project, not just to refuel but also to make new connections and come up with new ideas.

So, getting up to do things like wash the dishes, fold the laundry, take a shower, go for a walk, or do anything else low-key that lets your mind wander for a while can be really good for your overall productivity.

When you do something that makes you feel good, your brain sends out dopamine, just like when you check something off a list.

So, when you take a break to go for a walk in the middle of work, your brain gets a dose of dopamine.

That dopamine makes the parts of your brain that are responsible for creative work.

Your brain is sending energy to the parts that help you make connections and see things in new ways. This is when you have those magical “aha!” moments.

When you can’t get started on a project you don’t want to do, try doing something you know will make you happy.

When you’re washing the dishes, you might have a great idea that makes you want to run to your computer and start working.