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How To Delete Irritating Work And Upgrade Your Focus To What You Find Fascinating
Doing meaningful work isn’t about doing more.
It’s about doing less. A lot less.
Checking off the never-ending task list sucks you into a vortex of low motivation, frustration, with no progress on what matters the most.
“Tightly scheduled entrepreneurs can’t innovate” when they’re trying to do everything, says Dan Sullivan. “You need some slack in your system to transform yourself, to be able to step back and actually look at what you’re doing. You can’t be focused on working non-stop.”
To be inspired and work on the right things, you have to push yourself to work on things you find fascinating.
Dan calls it The ABC Model:
A: The Irritating Tasks
Nobody likes working on irritating tasks, which is different for everyone.
The first step is telling the truth about what you find irritating. What drains you? What makes you irritated even thinking about having to do it?
For me, irritating is damn near everything repetitive and administrative.
Irritated people are hard to be around. Their irritation affects every area of their life.
Start to eliminate everything irritating.
B: The Okay Tasks
Okay is neutral.
It’s not irritating, but it sure isn’t exciting. It’s blah.
You have two options with okay tasks.
Delegate
Delegate and go higher.
Ask yourself, “who can help me achieve this?” But before you delegate, make sure you optimize the handoff.
“Every okay activity can be handed over to someone who loves doing it and is better skilled at it.”
Automation
“Automation is a form of delegation where you have something that’s so predictable and repetitive, you can put it into technological form.”
See if you can find a piece of software that will eliminate the task out of your life forever.
