Ick-a-thon

Do all the pesky stuff at once.

Today I tried something new.

I devoted the entire day to a hideous to-do list.

I’ve been on the phone with the IRS, downloaded and scanned forms, changed car insurance companies, visited the DMV, and sold a family car at the Nissan dealer.

Each one of these items is like gum surgery to me. I’m embarrassingly allergic to the administrivia of life.

Or so I thought.

By doing all of these items in succession, the suckage of it went way down. And I think I’ve figured out why.

It’s not so much these individual tasks I hate, it’s the transition away from creative work that feels punishing. It’s being asked to stop eating ice cream mid-bite and transitioning to broccoli.

And I wonder how much our procrastination is really about transitions. If we can group all the gross stuff together, and keep our brain in a factory line productivity mode, maybe we’d resent it less.

Normally I would assign only one of these tasks per day, thinking I was parsing out the drudgery. But I see now I was interrupting my creative flow multiple times, like painful hiccups.

Lesson learned. And now shared.

Until next time, remember that creativity knows no bounds.