Surviving repetitive, mundane tasks.

Many of us have them.

Those tasks where we repeat the same action multiple times with little to no variation. Again and again and again.

Repetitive task depression is not a WHO recognised affliction. Yet.

They crush your soul. They destroy your will to live. But when you’re finished, someone gives you money.

If you’ve ever been sitting on your sofa, desperately trying to drag yourself to your computer, you’ll know the feeling of dread I’m talking about.

And the worst part of all is that the longer you leave things, the worse that dread gets. The task becomes a black hole which hoovers up all the light in the world with its star-sucking gravity. The mental strain of having unfinished tasks looms over us and probably takes as much energy as doing the task in the first place.

Praying will not help you in repetitive task hell

The eventual money reward feels as distant as the next galaxy. Or, and this is the worst, you’ve already been paid and it’s up to you to complete the job with no trophy at the finish line.

If you’re like most people, the job gets done right near the deadline in a final fraught burst which leaves you feeling exhausted.

And that is the feeling you’ll be left with. You’ll promise yourself that never again will you take on such a task. But then someone offers you some more money to do exactly the same thing. And you say yes.

So how do we deal with this?

Conventional wisdom would say to get organised, do it early and get it out of the way. And that’s the right approach. But it’s easier said than done.

Here’s a little trick I learnt recently when faced with one such challenge. The task involved small bits of text that followed a format but couldn’t quite be copy-pasted. Each small bit of text was one part of about ten that made up one of many webpages.

Hours of mind-numbing boredom beckoned, but I couldn’t switch off as details had to be checked. It was repetitive but not automatic.

I used a little trick I found in “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. In the book, Clear tells the story of a young bank worker who had to make multiple sales calls - day in, day out. Not a pleasurable experience, I’m sure.

So the young clerk placed two jars on his desk – one empty, the other containing 120 paper clips. After each call, the clerk would transfer a paper clip to the empty jar. When all 120 paperclips had been transferred, he was done with calls for the day.

Real paper with a real pencil.

Now, this taps into the time-honored method of tracking our progress of a desired action. A 'to-do' list gets a tick after each completed task. The savings accounts gets the increased balance with every new deposit etc.

The difference is, this method is close to you and changes in real time.

So I tried this with paper clips – it could be marbles or small coins. It doesn’t matter what. Just something small that can be transferred from one place to another and provides a visual representation of how far you have come.

The reason, I think, why such a simple trick works is that rather than thinking of the boring task at hand, instead your brain goes, “I’m just going to move one paperclip from the ‘to-do’ pile into the ‘done’ pile.

Little bits of metal salvation

And the really good part of this is that, as the ‘done’ jar gets bigger and the ‘to-do’ jar gets smaller, you actually speed up and enjoy each individual success.

You might plan to only do five paperclips in one sitting, but end up doing 10 instead.

Not only are you getting closer to your goal – you can actually see it in real time, right there on your desk.

Most of us work on computers with no tangible product, and this physical representation of progress is a great little boost to get the job done, regardless of how boring or uninspiring it is.

We live so much of our working lives on screens now that many of us have lost touch with the physicality of the real world – something, I believe, our brains need.

So, the next time you’re stuck doing one of those jobs you hate, try this simple trick. You’ll probably make better progress and you might even enjoy the process a little more.

If not, you can always say no.