Dealing with muck
A conversation with students of a school where I do not teach brought out a point — “Sir, in most tasks we have to do, there is a portion which is fun and there are some which are simply boring or undesirable — how does one deal with that?”
I suppose this is true of any type of work we intend performing. Even in the most purposeful of work, there is the drudgery and muck to deal with. I have some ideas around this.
Step 1: Frame the goal as becoming a doer and not as “a done”.
This is often called as fall in love with the process rather than the result. It is not about becoming a writer but about writing. You don’t focus on the 6-pack abs but become that person who does N hours of core muscle development. Similarly, it is not exclusively focusing on the cool presentation but on creating engagement or delivering clarity at each step. For a student, it is not about delivering a great farewell party but about thoughtfully assembling elements to evoke nostalgia and creating opportunities for making memories.
Step 2: Break it down and link it up
Sometimes, you need to break the task or project down to parts that clearly help understand/assess what it will take to get there. It is often in doing that that we identify the “drudgery or the muck”. Breaking it down helps one quantify things — how long is that boring portion really going to be? 2 min? Or what fraction of the entire work is that boring 30 min gruel? 2%? And this lends one perspective and the insight into whether the fretting and sulking is worth it or not. Finally, frame those portions in terms of contributing to the success or the robustness of the process. E.g. 30 mins of standing by the printer waiting for all the printouts to emerge can be framed as “ensuring the personal touch and thoroughness of giving each and every member their own template sheet which is key to making that workshop a success”. This is not an exercise of adding lipstick to a pig’s snout. It is a genuine conversation with your self in understanding why is that phase inevitable and irreplaceable (because if it isn’t, then replace it). This helps build the complete narrative of why you are doing something and how each part plays its key role in the overall thoroughness and goodness of the job. This act helps me especially when having to deal with people who more often are mischief makers than interested in a mission.
Step 3: Visualise, Visualise, Visualise.
Nothing substitutes seeing the altered state of the world once the task is complete or a goal is met. All the drudgery feels worth it. All the muck gets washed away. To continually see that altered state of the world (not a picture of you sipping martinis and checking into the palace suite, but that the book you wrote has moved minds into a better state and a vital perspective about, say, education has taken hold of mainstream discussion) is essential to stay motivated and truly smiling from within. I recall being part of a mission where a lot of the others were merely there to extract money when they can or do some half-hearted piece of work and fly under the radar. While the clean-up was not without its days of headache, the vision of this mission transforming the landscape and communities that it impacted was beautiful and vital enough to deal with those who were acting petty. Some call it “eyes on the prize”.
Step 4: Celebrate the rewards
There are intrinsic rewards (even to standing next to the printer for 30 min — it gives me a quantum of time to meditate) for every action performed mindfully. And there are rewards that one can set for being professional and disciplined and showing up and getting things done without whining. When I walk into a class and wrap up taking attendance in 30 seconds, it is a new record I have set for myself. It also gets me to remember all the names and faces so that I can wrap it quicker. For a lot of teachers (in typically unstructured schools) noting attendance is a rigmarole that they either execute poorly or miss out and cause a lot of confusion. As a student, when I created checklists for periodic tasks, it helped me feel good about noting all the key elements and getting them done in a sequence. Creating checklists for my many kinds of travels also gives me the same feeling — that I can focus on other things because walking through the checklist as a pack will ensure no disappointments when I am on the trip. For many, rolling up their socks or packing their toothbrush is “boring”. I also love telling people “I need just 15 sec” and actually switching off the lights and fans in my room and checking my watch that I indeed wrapped it up in 13 — self high-five! Those who don’t define/recognise these rewards tend to be the ones who walk out of rooms with appliances turned on or the shower knob in the wrong direction or … the list is endless. Don’t be them!
Step 5: Eliminate distractions
Sufficient research into mental processes reveal that fighting temptation takes a lot more energy than not having to deal with them. Move to a place where distractions cannot present themselves. This disallows you to dwell too much on the drudgery of the task fragment (which is typically when messaging your pal or playing one round of a game or just watching a few reels or something like that becomes an acceptable break). Combine this with the rewards and you can be in ascetic mode for the necessary duration and reap benefits.
Step 6: Reflect
Despite all this, you might fail to do what was meant to be done. Reflect on it. Don’t be that person who will transfer the blame to luck or their boss (if only she spoke nicely I would have done the job properly! Puh-lease!) or some other lame excuse. While all of us slip, the professional uses the moments available for reflection to reflect and course correct (rather than to justify and wallow). This might also give you a chance to build the mental toughness to not repeat whatever happened.
These should help in a one-off task or on the road to mastery (also termed by Hayes as the ten years of silence or Gladwell as the 10,000 hour rule or Jones’ shucking 1 million oysters penance as in the movie Burnt). Here’s to the destruction of muck!
