BORING TASKS, how to deal with them?

Summary

Today’s episode is an update episode, where me, Emil Ekvardt and my good friend Erik Bergman, explore the very real challenges and problems that come up when building Great.com.

A company that gives away 100% of its profit to protect the environment.

This is an opportunity for you to get a behind the scenes look, of what it feels like to build a company – and also get an update on our progress.

What we learn here is not something you will read in a book. It’s the real story of how Great.com gets built.

In this episode, we are exploring our new project in Great.com, a charity podcast. Emil has been swamped in admin work and boring tasks and feels both frustrated and overwhelmed.

When he brings this up with the team he feels like a bad team player and worries that he will let everyone else down. He feels that he is just supposed to suck it up and do the tasks, that’s what everyone else does.

We are exploring the importance of creating an environment where concerns like this are being raised. What are the effects on the team? How can this be good for the team? What can we learn about how to make boring tasks more fun?

Transcript

[00:00:03] Hi and welcome to the becoming great dot com podcast. This is a podcast. For people who want to make the world or their own lives better through entrepreneurship and personal development. And if you’re new here, this is an update episode, meaning that in these episodes we are focusing on our journey building the company great dot com. A company that would give away 100 percent of its profits to charity and today. And as always, I’m here with the founder of Great Erik. Erik, how are you doing today?

[00:00:45] I’m doing well, thank you very much. I got caught up in your rephrasing about what this podcast is about. When you said want to make the world a better place or your own life, that through entrepreneurship. I like that. I like that thing.

[00:01:00] That’s something we’re going back to. I liked it, too.

[00:01:04] My intention with the introduction was to stick to the script. The opposite.

[00:01:09] I’m not good at sticking to things, which is Candida team of this episode as well, I guess. And so you need to stick to me introducing uverse.

[00:01:20] Oh, right. OK. But we’re getting there. We’re getting there. We’re practicing. OK. And I’m here with dum dum dum dum e-mail yetbut.

[00:01:30] But my brilliant friends, who was the first one joining me into this endeavor of great dot com and is the host of this podcast. How are you doing today?

[00:01:40] I’m enjoying and I’m being entertained by not doing the same introduction as always. I like this little bit of chitchat. So and it’s good that I do, because the topic of today is how do you deal with boring things? I do if you have to do boring things working in a company or with a company, or if you are owning a company and you want to encourage, let’s say, your employees to do boring things.

[00:02:13] Yeah, cause a lot of things is boring right now.

[00:02:17] What’s it to do? Tell me, how did we end that? How did we end up with this topic for this episode?

[00:02:24] So we are starting a new project with great. That is. Podcast. Actually, that is going to interview a lot of different kind of charity organizations around the world.

[00:02:39] Yeah, and that’s I’m actually very excited about this project because I think that this is what we will be doing, is that we will interview a lot of charity organizations and we will teach about how what they’re doing and how people can help them. And at the same time, we will hopefully get the name of great dot com out there and become an authority in charities there, as well as helping building our rankings in Google in various ways. And I’m just really excited about those parts and I’m really excited about you being in charge of a project, because that’s that’s something I’m always the one in charge of everything and great. And I’m just excited of not being in charge. How does it feel to be in charge of something?

[00:03:26] Well, I don’t feel like I’m in charge. We are three people running the project. And who’s in charge? My feet, huh? Who’s in charge? I would say batteries or spirit. I would say I’m proud of the least in charge and this little credo. OK. Anyhoo. What I am excited about, about the project is.

[00:03:49] I really feel when I speak to this different shadow organizations that first I think there are listeners for the podcast. It’s a 20 minute podcast that it’s an introduction to the organization. The cost they’re dealing with, the challenges they’re facing. So I really like the 20 minute format and.

[00:04:07] I also like that.

[00:04:12] We can show things that are not seen on an organization’s website. So when a wizard of AB site, we see what they do and information, but we don’t see the people behind it. We don’t see the passion that is being put into. Creating these organizations.

[00:04:30] Like that, we don’t see the passion. We actually get to know a person behind it in a way. It would be really hard otherwise these people, ain’t you? Have they? Are they in a lot of other podcasts? See? Is this something that’s new to them?

[00:04:46] I don’t think so. I think some of them are. And I think for some of them, it’s Canada first or one of their first experiences to get the limelight in this way. So some of them really prepared to plead their luck. I watched all of your podcast. I prepared like what questions are you going to ask? And some of them seem a bit more comfortable. But they have in common, I think, is that they truly believe in the cause that they are trying to change and they really want to put something positive into this world. It’s super inspiring to speak with them.

[00:05:19] I really like what you said. This is a way to get to feel their passion because that’s it’s really hard to communicate passion with a website. It’s always just text. And we’re also so. I think that we’re pretty numbed to texts due to all the advertising out there, due to how many exclamation points people use on Instagram and whatnot or headlines, that it doesn’t really matter how exciting a text article sounds. It’s hard to take it seriously. But I think that if you’re talking to someone, it’s it’s so much easier to feel their passion and their enthusiasm for something that they genuinely care about this. You hear their voice. You hear what their choice of words and there are things that you in text is pretty easy to fake. So we’re reduced to that. It’s being faked in headlines and whatnot. But it’s not in in the kind of podcast context that makes sense.

[00:06:17] I feel exactly the same. I feel like I really get to know what is behind their Web site and the text and also gives an opportunity for some undistracted time, at least me. I can read in a book, but if I’m reading in a browser, I’m really struggling because there are so many distractions coming in from WhatsApp or whatever that is taking me out of that experience. And also, I think and rightly so. What many of these organizations are going for is to appear trustworthy. Yeah. Which comes out of there. Yes. They have to make a tradeoff between showing passion and enthusiasm sometimes and the trustworthiness.

[00:07:00] That’s a good point as well. You can’t really use headline language on a Web site without losing credibility. Even if you’re feeling Headline excited, you can’t really use it.

[00:07:10] Exactly. Yeah.

[00:07:12] Okay. So the topic of the podcasts of today is still boredom. What is it about this project that you don’t enjoy then?

[00:07:20] Well, that was the fun part of creating the.

[00:07:27] The interview in itself. I love meeting new people, like the most fun I know is to go to a party where I don’t know anyone and just start talking. Get to know people.

[00:07:36] Be like ridiculously curious and start to understand things about someone that maybe they haven’t shared anyone before. There’s nothing I like more. Well, at least that’s my extroverted side. And I’m quite, I would say quite creative as a person, which means that my bias is towards finding things I haven’t thought of before. Now, what I found myself in with this podcast is that for about every 30 minutes of talking with someone, that is what I enjoy. There’s about three hours of adamant minimum. I would say it might be even more because after this we’re gonna publish it on all platforms. We’re gonna create an article out of it. We got to find these people. We’ve got a plan to podcast. We’re gonna set it up. We’re going to teach them about the tech and how to do. And afterwards we’re gonna talk with them about how we’re gonna publish this. And it’s just.

[00:08:28] A storm of admen that. It’s not creative. It’s very repetitive. Since we’re want to do one podcast per day and I have not yet found a way to enjoy this.

[00:08:41] So what what feelings do you get in your body thinking about all the admin?

[00:08:48] I feel bored. I feel overwhelmed cause. I feel like it’s taken up.

[00:08:56] All of my time with great. And I also feel so I’m working part of 50 percent with great outcome right now, and I feel like there’s people mailing me and reaching out to me all days per week. So I’m. It feels like there’s constantly something that I should be doing and I’m feeling overwhelmed because of it. And this is a new project, of course, so I yet haven’t found such good structures to deal with this.

[00:09:23] Overwhelming for me, overwhelmed. Is this that word? Whenever someone uses this is this big red flag to me. Because I think that overwhelmed is. It’s the killer of joy, in a sense, and it’s what takes us to being burned out one way or another.

[00:09:44] And it’s to me it’s just a very negative word. And I think it comes from my past when I’ve been feeling overwhelmed myself and it’s very paralyzing to feel overwhelmed.

[00:09:58] Is that your relationship to overwhelm this as well?

[00:10:01] For sure. And also, it puts me into a state of mind where I’m doing the tasks. Wait. Where?

[00:10:08] The only thing I want is to have an completed. I don’t take myself and a time to enjoy that process. For example, if I’m writing an article about an interview that I did, I could take the time to say, OK, how can I put joy in this?

[00:10:24] How can I put creativity in this? How can I learn to maybe be a better writer from creating this article? That could be a mindset. But now I feel like I don’t have time for that. I just want to get this over and done with some putting the minimum amount of effort to get an outcome. And I feel like I have that mindset throughout all of these admin tasks.

[00:10:47] It takes me into a thing I listen to an old speech the other day on some m_p_ three that a friend to me, this book about involvement and what he meant by that was that the more involved we are with the task, the more we enjoy the task and we’re involved. He meant the less we’re thinking about other things, the more we are in the moment. And he took the example of a dancing that if you are dancing, but you’re constantly thinking about other things, you’re worrying what people think about you. You’re worrying about all kinds of stuff. Does this look good? Does not look good. You’re gonna have a very hard time enjoying the dance. But if you’re completely caught up in it and you’re just in there in the moment, you’re not thinking about anything else. It’s you’re gonna love what you’re doing. And that’s like how you measure involvement, that if you’re thinking about things all the time and things and you have a hard time engaging yourself in something, it’s also really hard to enjoy it. And he said that you could apply this to pretty much anything in life, that the more you are involved with something, the more you enjoy something. And it sounds to me like you’re struggling to feel involved with these tasks. If that makes sense.

[00:12:09] That makes sense. Yeah, yeah. I think that’s an an interesting way of thinking about involvement.

[00:12:16] He spoke about how involved you’re in something and how invested your in something and invested was the kind of the opposite that it means how much it’s the same kind of growth that you tie your feelings to the outcome. So let’s say you can be very involved in a dance and have a lot of fun with it. But if you’re very invested in the dance, it means that he needs to look very good. The outcome needs to be very good. What other people think about it needs to be very good. So if you’re high on investment means that you’re investing a lot of your emotions in the outcome, not necessarily the experience. So if you’re low invested in the outcome, you have a lot easier to enjoy it as well. And I can imagine here doing a new project, you want this to come out as really good. You don’t want to publish something that you’re not proud of. It means that you’re likely to be quite high in investment in this task because of that as well.

[00:13:17] Yes, I would say that is correct.

[00:13:21] I think this is like the way of thinking of involvement and investment, because then the higher your investment is in something, the harder it is to enjoy it and the higher your involvement isn’t something, the easier it is to enjoy it. And you can look at these. He takes the example of people who who complains a lot. And he says that if you have very low involvement in something, that very high investment in something that’s basically a sports supporter, someone looking at sports, screaming at the TV, they’re not running at the ball themselves and not doing anything. You’re just complaining when their team loses, they’re not involved at all, but they’re very invested because they’re not gonna be happy unless their team wins or they score or whatever. And I think it’s to me, I heard this just a couple of weeks ago, haven’t in any way really integrated in my my mindset. But I think it helps to think about when there’s something boring and what could I do than to increase my involvement or decrease my investment.

[00:14:22] So if you take the situation that I’m in, then as an example, how could you use this key concept to help me move forward in a productive way here?

[00:14:36] Good question. I wish I would have thought this through a lot more before I started talking about involved in the investment. I think just thinking about it as involvement that if you if you get into the mindset that the more I engage with us, the more I will enjoy it, that the purpose of engaging is to enjoy it. I think that is something that I’ve changed my own mindset in a way that I can sometimes identify with. This is so boring and I kind of keep telling myself that this is boring. So I engage less with it because it’s boring. But just thinking about if I engage myself more, I will enjoy it more. So I’m not necessarily engaging myself more for a certain outcome, more for the sake of someone else or whatever. It’s more that if I try to be more engaged, I will have more fun.

[00:15:27] Does that make sense?

[00:15:29] Yes. So what would your approach be to be more engaged in a task like this? We’re in a situation like this.

[00:15:36] Just thinking about that mindset, like, OK, I want to be enjoying this and see if that’s possible. If you were asking yourself if you wanted to enjoy this task, what could you think about?

[00:15:54] So.

[00:16:04] I would start looking at what can I do not enjoy this task in particular, but for me to find joy and involvement in this. I can look at it. What skill set can performing this task teach me that I can then use for something that I do enjoy?

[00:16:25] Let’s see if I understand. Okay. So what can I learn from this that I could use somewhere else? So the learning would make it feel more meaningful and that would cause more involvement?

[00:16:38] Exactly. So let’s say that something that I feel joy in right now that I want to do more of is I want to be more active on social media.

[00:16:49] That is. Be more active on Instagram and on YouTube. So here writing the articles for the podcast that could teach me writing skills that I can then apply to creating posts on Instagram, for example.

[00:17:04] And when we’re saying writing articles, we mean that with every podcast episode release, we do a blog post episode and articles about it as well.

[00:17:13] Exactly. Yeah. So if I could have a mindset like I’m writing this article with the intention of becoming a better writer, then I think that would add to my involvement in performing the task and I would go in there with more of a master mindset. And if I had the space to go in with an attitude that I want to learn here, I really do think that I would enjoy the task of writing the article.

[00:17:39] And my struggle now has been that I’m going in to write an article would saying I hope I come up, I can do this quickly because I really need to move on. I like getting swamped and me right now. I just want to get this off my desk.

[00:17:55] This reminds me of something you said in a meeting we had earlier this week. E-mail just started doing aqua yoga with his with his girlfriend. And he was so passionate about talking about aqua yoga, which is basically two people doing yoga together, one person lying on the ground and the other person spinning around on their legs in the air. And just because of this interest is added. Oh, it’s so fun to go to the gym right now because it feels like I’m working out with a purpose that suddenly go into the gym, became more fun because you could learn Agrium from it. And that’s basically what you’re saying now, that writing the article would be more fun because you could apply that writing skills somewhere else.

[00:18:37] Exactly. And I think this is a very important productivity hack, at least that I have found useful. And I would like to clarify it.

[00:18:45] But I think we as humans are more motivated by things that will serve ourselves than things that will serve others. And this might make us sound on diary.

[00:18:57] That’s a word. It might matter.

[00:18:59] I would go. It is selfish. It’s an easy way.

[00:19:02] It might it might make us sound selfish.

[00:19:06] So I think that’s something that is generally being shunned, but something that generally might be looked at as a defect in our character. We should be doing things for other people. But but my approach is that knowing that we as human have this bias to wanting to serve ourself, how can I use that to my advantage? So that means that in all tasks that I do, especially the ones that is boring, even tasks where I’m doing things for other people, how can I find some kind of motive for how would this serve me?

[00:19:40] I like that. So how can I look at this? Add me in tasks that I don’t enjoy in a way that I’m selfish. So I’m gonna get the most out of this for myself in that way. Making it more fun. Increasing the involvement then and actually doing the tasks better at the end of the day because you had more fun doing it.

[00:19:59] Exactly. So I think in the end of the day, that is actually probably the most effective way to help other people to find what is your selfish motivation in this and use this human bias to your advantage.

[00:20:15] Ok.

[00:20:16] Let’s get that into some kind of a trick that for you listening, if you have boring tasks to do in your work, someone is telling you to do this, you don’t want to enjoy this. What kind of advice would you give to that person in this scenario if they should ask themselves one question, for example.

[00:20:36] So if you have to do boring things at work, I would say, is there some kind of passion project? Do I see something light up ahead in my life that I really, really want to do?

[00:20:47] And it’s a skill set that I can learn here while being bored going to be useful in the future.

[00:20:54] Will this teach me to be more structured? Will this teach me to increase my willpower to finish tasks? Will this teach me to be better at communicating with other people? The e-mail and see.

[00:21:10] How will this how would this benefit something that I do enjoy?

[00:21:15] I like that.

[00:21:16] So how will this benefit something that I will enjoy in the future? What can I think about here that I will be better at?

[00:21:24] That will take me closer to my personal goals. Exactly. And I have been doing this every time I sit down to do these tasks because I honestly feel like I’m really struggling, like I’m procrastinating. I love sitting down and writing this article. It takes me half an hour of walking around the apartment to get started because I don’t like it. So during that time, I remember. Oh, but if I do, I would like to learn these things for the future. And I’m teaching going against resistance and procrastination right now. That’s what I’m learning. That would be useful in the future to count up. I’m actually doing this with my free will.

[00:22:01] Yeah.

[00:22:02] Hell, like that way of thinking. OK. See, you’ve been feeling a lot of resistance until now that this is really boring in many ways. How how has it felt talking about this with with Beatriz’s and Spiridon that runs the project together with you?

[00:22:22] Are they feeling the same way?

[00:22:24] Yes, they are. But I was the one saying it out loud. Okay. Yeah. So I brought this up. And both weird. I brought this up in a meeting with both of them.

[00:22:37] And I felt like a bad team player doing it. I felt unsorted. Derrick, again, if that’s a word I felt.

[00:22:49] But I was shailesh that I wasn’t willing to perform my tasks when I said, OK. I think this is overwhelming. I think we’re moving so quick that I haven’t. There’s no time for me to build structures. So finding joy in my work. I feel like I’m creating a very negative association with great right now. And I think over time, that is very unhealthy. If I want to stay in this project for a long time and.

[00:23:16] Yet to race these things makes me feel like a super bad team player. Like I’m complaining.

[00:23:25] Yeah, I can definitely see that. So how how did you feel lifting that? What what feelings did you have in your body?

[00:23:36] Well, I was frustrated about the situation in itself, and I’ve. And so I went into the conversation feeling very frustrated and wanting things to change. And I went out of it feeling childish and. Like I was complaining and not doing my part. Did you feel shame? Yeah, totally. Like this like this is an unacceptable thing to do, that if we’re a team, I should just shut up. Except that it’s boring and do my task as they’re doing boring tasks too. And I didn’t hear them complain.

[00:24:15] I can see that. So are you happy with the way you lifted it? Would you like to have done it somewhere else some other way?

[00:24:29] It’s the way I perform the lifting was OK. Like, there’s always room for improvements, but I am happy that I lifted it. We have a policy with great that if something is creating a negative as one of our values, is that we should do our work in a passionate way. And a part of that value is that if we don’t find joy in something we do, we should lift it so we can get assistance and find ways to either find joy in it by thinking of it differently, change our perspective or finding other tasks to do so. That is something to have as a value, and still I haven’t seen it being used that much. And I think. It’s because it takes time to set a culture like that to me. There has to be safety. And at the staff for someone to have the courage to say that I don’t like this. I haven’t find a way to find joy in this. I’m bored. Things like that, because it could bring down the team members down.

[00:25:39] Yeah, definitely. So the first thing that comes to mind to me is that in a regular organization where where this wouldn’t be encouraged to be lifted, it would still come out, but then it would be as she were complaining, or negative energy.

[00:25:58] It’s like when conversation on wants back. Exactly. Or even thinking about. I want to quit and start doing something else. Because you’re not allowed to race your your concerns.

[00:26:13] Someone can go and be frustrated at their work tasks for like two years. And as soon as they get another job offer, they’re out. And the company didn’t even know. And now they lost an employee.

[00:26:25] How I’m feeling into how I’m feeling in this situation, since I’m the one paying your salary and I’m hearing you being bored and frustrated and.

[00:26:39] I think a couple of years ago, I would just I said, shut up. To your thing, work can get this done. I’m paying you to do it. And now I feel genuinely concerned. I’m like, OK, we need to figure out a way to make this fun for everyone’s sake.

[00:26:55] And I think this is. A crucial part of this whole episode. What we’re discussing right now, because you want us to race these things and someone that is running their own company or thinking about running, one might think, why would I want employees to race this? Why? It must be better for me as the owner of this company that I can find a way to make people do the boring tasks. That’s what I’m paying them to do. They should be quiet and not complaining. Why would you want this to be raised? Why would you even want to do something about it? These tasks needs to be done right here.

[00:27:37] So the way I see business, two things come to mind. The first one is that someone who enjoys their tasks are going to do that with a lot more energy, a lot more inspiration. Probably going to do better at it. So even if that means they’re doing the task slower, they might do it more efficiently or they might talk more positively about it outside of the business, or they might just have actually spend more hours doing it because they enjoy it. So they might start thinking about it outside of work or whatever it is that if there is a way to find a joyful way to enjoy boring tasks, that might make it slower in the beginning. But I think if we can find a joyful way to do it, it will make it faster once we get there. So I believe that. A team player and employee. Call it whatever you want. Who enjoy the tasks they’re doing. Will. Stay longer with a team, which means that we will not have to recruit someone else who would do the same kind of headache business because we’ve managed to find a way to enjoy it or a person who is just not enjoying it. You would think this is really boring. A year from now is very likely you would leave. I would have no idea why I would put someone else in the same spot doing the same kind of tasks. They would probably leave a late year later. And if I can find a way, if we can find a way where you enjoy this, you’ll hopefully do them for 25 years.

[00:29:11] I don’t know. We will not have to recruit 24 times. We can have a real and honest conversation about what’s going on. You can feel that I’m caring about you having fun with it, which probably in itself makes it more joyful that you will have less negative associations. Do it because you have a way to ventilate them and you don’t have to. I think most of the time in an organization when you’re having boring talks, you ventilate them to someone else. You have a boring, boring tasks and you get to hear about their boring tasks and you just get infested with boredom instead of the manager hear it. Don’t let the manager hear it. Exactly. Instead of trying to lift it up and feel better, get empathy for it. Because I feel you’re I hate boring tasks and then getting feedback. We want to do something about it. I appreciate you lifting it and. I think that long term, this is creating a work environment where people. Where no one will leave without me actually knowing on it before under understanding why people might still leave. I mean, people get tired. People want to try new things. Employees do that. I think. In most organizations where I’ve been involved, when the good people leave, we had no idea about that. It just happened. They might be angry, frustrated things about stuff for a very long time. They just haven’t felt safe enough to lift it because they haven’t felt that we would do something about it.

[00:30:41] And that’s the key, right? Making someone feel safe enough to say.

[00:30:46] I’m sharing, but I’m struggling here because that’s really what I’m saying. I’m say I’m struggling to find joy in this. I’m not saying I’m not going to do it. I’m just saying I I’m struggling to find a way to put my passion in here and to create an environment where there is enough safety to bring that up.

[00:31:01] So we don’t have to go for a long time building resentment. And that is tricky. I don’t feel like I have that’s feeling completely there yet because I haven’t had enough cases of me doing this. And I have been met with understanding and care like it happened now. But it would have to happen a couple of time before I really build up that safe sense of safety.

[00:31:25] And I completely see that makes a lot of sense.

[00:31:32] And there is there isn’t an easy way to do this. We’re experimenting with us right now. We don’t know how we’re gonna end up if we have tasks that no one want to do, that just gets boring. And what’s the way forward is that if it can’t be automated, whatever it is, I don’t know how to deal with it, but I have a strong feeling that. The solution is to really look for people to enjoy specific things in one extreme case that comes to mind for me as a friend of mine. He’s got a company who fixes iPhones, so broken iPhones, both like the screens, but also all kinds of small things in them. And it’s really mundane and boring task could do the same thing over and over and over again. And he has specialized in getting people with Asberger’s to do things that are really, really good at it, that really enjoy doing it. And that doesn’t want to engage a lot of indifferent as they want mundane tasks. That’s how they that’s where they see their brilliance. Since even in the extreme, you can find someone who is suitable for it. And that and I don’t think there is such a thing as a boring task that no one would enjoy. It just tricky to find the person who would enjoy it, and then you would need to have enough of that boring task to make it a full time job.

[00:32:54] But that’s like the long term dream, I would say totally. And also find what the people that you already have.

[00:33:04] What are what could they find fun about this task and really make them see that that is actually happening. So for me, in this case, for example, I really love building systems and building a system for how to deal with the boring tasks in an as effective way as possible, but actually find a lot of joy. So that put a huge smile on my face. I just didn’t see that. Okay. But you actually get to practice system building here. Oh, that’s right.

[00:33:30] I didn’t think of that just to see what you you’re already doing that you do enjoy in something that is overall right now boring to you can also be very helpful like that.

[00:33:40] And this brings once again value to talking about it because it helps you to direct focus to how to enjoy it, how to look for the things you enjoy in it and might help me to come with it. Image you love system building. How could you apply this here? Yeah. And becomes a real thing about.

[00:33:56] And that’s exactly what happened when I brought this up to the team. And I want to share that just to reinforce what you said about finding the things you love and that someone that feels scene safe and heard will actually put more effort in. So last Wednesday, I brought this up to the team. We have a meeting between 6 and 8 in the evening. I brought this up. I felt a lot of shame. I felt frustration afterwards. I felt like a bad team player. But I also felt very seen and hurt. And the guy smacked me with support. They understood that it’s important and great that we can ventilate these things. It’s important that we don’t build negative associations and them. They made me see. So what do you like about it, too? Like system building. And afterwards I went away seeing more clearly what I like. And I have got to release all of this frustration. I got I got to say it out loud and just saying it out loud. And connecting with, oh, the other guys feel this frustration, too. Now we are at least we are three people together facing the challenge of frustration. It’s not me on my own being the only one that is frustrated. And these guys are better team players than me. So I felt much more connected to my team when I got home from floatable at like ten eleven in the evening where I would normally be super tired.

[00:35:14] I had like this wave of energy and creativity for how to build a system, for how to fix this. So I set up from I think 11:00 in the evening to 1, I was in complete flow state, meaning I was super involved in creating a system for these tasks. And I probably did 10 hours of work in two hours because I was hyper focused and I had this passion from within to create a system that worked for me and use what I’m naturally good at to the benefit of this project.

[00:35:43] I love that.

[00:35:45] I think that summarizes so well what I’m hoping to accomplish with with a feeling of safety and team bittern team that we’re ability here. That’s exactly what I’m hoping to that we will achieve that kind of safety. And I would say we’re in this together. I think that that makes such a big difference when we’re feeling connected to each other in a challenging situation, then when we feel alone in a challenging situation.

[00:36:15] Yeah.

[00:36:16] And to connect. I must pay bills to share. But I’m feeling this way and that. And it’s a vulnerable thing for me to do. I felt that I felt I can be punished by saying this because I’m saying it to you, saying it to my team. This could really be used against me. Some super vulnerable when I’m saying it.

[00:36:37] Ok, so one last thing I’m curious about, and I don’t know if we have a good answer to this is what can someone do then if they’re in a team where they don’t feel safe to lift something like this up? How would you go about it? Let’s say you were feeling the same way. But the culture wouldn’t encourage you to talk about it because that’s probably the way it is for most people having boring tasks in. In an average company, what would you do them?

[00:37:11] I don’t have a super good answer for that. My first approach would be to find that in forensic motivation, the motivation that comes from how can this serve me to make it more bearable? Well, at least I get to do this boring things around people that I like and I get to practice social skills while I get to practice being structured. I get to practice boredom that can be useful for something that I do enjoy in the future. Do you have another answer that we haven’t already talked about?

[00:37:43] One thing that I would have never done, so I don’t know if this would work, but I can imagine it working would be to sit down and just write out my frustration, basically like I were to send a letter to my manager about how frickin boring these things are, but never sending it, but just being able to channel that frustration out a bit. Kind of like you got to do with your team, but you wouldn’t really share it with anyone. And I feel that. I believe that once I’ve done that, it would be easier for me to then look, what do I enjoy about this? If I’m starting from a frustration place like this is really fricking boring. I can’t believe I had to do this. I think it would have a hard time seeing the good pieces, the system building or the things that I would learn and if I could just get that frustration out of me. Even if it’s just in writing letters, I do that every now and then. I just write things that pisses me off. I don’t send it to anyone. I just have it in a word file.

[00:38:44] And I feel that the combination of those to them could be a beneficial approach to. Boring tasks in a in a team environment that doesn’t feel safe enough to talk about it.

[00:38:58] I agree.

[00:39:00] And also would adding that.

[00:39:04] The importance of putting effort into finding a way to enjoy things more. Maybe you can’t completely enjoy it, but I think it’s our responsibility to find. How can I enjoy this as much as possible and look for those solutions? Not only look for completing the task, but look for how can I increase my joy in this?

[00:39:26] Yeah, for our own selfish reasons as well.

[00:39:29] And just to enjoy our life more like don’t be okay with not liking things. Yeah.

[00:39:36] One more thing that came from this involvement investment thing was this guy who did speak. I don’t remember his name. He’s the author of some book. I don’t remember the book so well. We’ll put the link in the description. He said that there was this factory that were closing down in two years time. So we’re gonna close down this department and people were informed that, yeah, you’re not gonna have a job in two years time. And what happened then was that the productivity went down so much for all the workers that they didn’t care anymore. Why should they work for this company that wasn’t caring about them anymore? And this author, he was called in to see if he could fix it. And he started talking with people. And they say that, yeah, but the company doesn’t care about us, so we don’t care about them. And then he asks, OK, are you having more or less fun doing the tasks now than you did before? And like, yeah, I hate doing the tasks. I’m not I’m not engaged. It’s like, okay, so if you were just engaged in it, would you think that you would have more fun? Yeah, probably. Okay. Even if the company doesn’t care about you, maybe for your own sake, for your own selfish reasons. Try to be engaged in it and try to have fun with it and you will probably enjoy it more.

[00:40:57] And the work is really agreed with us like, yeah, I’m doing I’m not doing this for the company, I don’t even care about the company. I’m doing this for me because I’m truly passionate about me and I want to enjoy things. And what happened later? At least according to the author, was that people got so engaged in the things that we’re doing that they increased their productivity so much that when they actually decided to close down this part of the plant, more or less, all of the people who have been working in that part got jobs elsewhere in the same factory because they had been able to keep up their productivity so high even in these hard times. And what I learned from that is I believe that a lot of the time we feel frustrated towards an employer. We feel frustrated that someone makes us do this. And we’re filled with that resentment, as you mentioned. And then we don’t want to do a good job because we don’t want to do a good job for them. And just changing that mindset, too. I want to do a good job for me. I want to enjoy this for me. And getting that selfish energy and a sense into it can make it more fun and everybody wins.

[00:42:03] And it makes her a better team player, too. Yeah, I think that stories summarize what we’ve been talking about today beautifully and I feel done for today.

[00:42:14] You know something? I’m honored.

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[00:43:06] Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting us. And thank you, Jim, and for being here with me today. Thank you, Erik. And I’ll see you next week. Cheerio.