How to motivate your team (and yourself!) for boring tasks
A friendly take-over of Darja's weekly briefing by Josh, the content designer behind Bunch's leadership tips
Oh hi there,
It’s Josh! I’m designing the daily tips in the Bunch app! Darja’s preparing for an important board meeting this weekend and so I thought why not do a friendly takeover. So here it goes!
Working at an early-stage startup, most of the talk is about creative problem-solving and dealing with ambiguity, but there’s also some repetitive work too. In fact, in producing the tips for our app there’s a lot of asset creation and content management that one could label as “tedious work”.
This week I onboarded a new intern to help us with this work and I’ve been thinking about an interesting challenge - How do you motivate people for boring, but necessary tasks?
Here are some resources and advice I found on the topic:
How to motivate your team (and yourself!) for boring tasks 😴
👉I’m not languishing, I’m dormant by Austin Kleon, best-selling author of “Steal like an artist”
Top takeaway: First of all it’s good to remind ourselves we’re all craving a bit of novelty right now. While Adam Grant calls it languishing, I prefer dormant. We’ve just got to get through this, we’ll flourish later.
👉 Shifting Your Mindset From ‘I Have To’ To ‘I Get To’ by Ryot Studio (Verizon Media’s global creative studio)
Top takeaway: Reframing mundane tasks towards positive outcomes makes them easier to swallow. Instead of “I have to…do the accounting for this month” to “I get to…find opportunities to save money + I get to listen to my favorite music while doing it!”
I’m using this all the time to remind myself, “Yes sometimes the work can be a little dry but think of all the people I get to help!”
👉How To Make The Most Boring Tasks Fun by Dhruv Kapadia
Top takeaway: Gamify the system. Any task holds opportunities that appeal to our sense of adventure and curiosity.
Community advice 👯♂️
Here’s an example from Merissa Silk, Head of Product at fundingport
I try and do those kinds of tasks either first thing in my day while I’m still half asleep or on auto-pilot, or for Fridays when I’m kind of over the week ;) it’s all about scheduling them in at a time where they feel less painful. Also rewarding myself with a more fun task afterwards helps for reeeeeeally bad to-do items 😉
Blast some music and eat candy while doing it 😂 just power through. I’d still try and save it for the end of the week or break it down to spread out the boringness. When I worked in magazines we’d divide up the tasks and race. That was pretty fun.
I loved this from Boris Borisov, Co-Founder of RemoteMore, around hiring right:
The key to repetitive jobs is to hire the right person. There are people who actually prefer stable, predictable environments without heavy cognitive/emotional burdens. You need someone like this.
For one repetitive position we have, we hired one mom that is one of our best hires ever. She needs to be available when her child needs her, both in terms of time and mental space. This job gives her exactly that.
She has flexible working hours, and her job is not too emotionally draining/stressful. She loves her job, and we are super happy that we hired her one year ago!
It reminded me of the importance of transparency in the hiring process. Be honest, and you’ll find someone who wants this work, instead of hiring someone under false pretenses. He also added left good reminder about recognition:
People who have repetitive jobs are typically concerned that they can be easily replaced. Somewhat surprisingly, this is not so much the case. Therefore, remind them on ongoing basis that what they do matters to the company and you appreciate their hard work. Show them the bigger picture, show them what results their work brings for the company.
Tips from the Bunch AI Coach
Check out Dopamine Bribes inspired by Bryan Collins, Senior Content Manager at Sage. Always a good go-to for me!
Have a great week and let us know how you deal with tedious tasks!
Josh