Learn to Love the Process

Maintenance tasks for daily living can be tedious and mundane. These tasks produce very little immediate gratification, which makes them hard to stay on top of. Growing up with participation awards I developed a reward seeking behavior for anything that appeared outside of my immediate responsibility. Which translates as the things that aren’t rewarding in and of themselves. I’d like to reframe this reward-seeing behavior and establish a stronger foundation to the way I live.

The phrase “Adulting is Hard” resonates because I still feel 17. At that age I enjoyed many of the freedoms of being older without the responsibilities of living on my own. I would never go back but my daily adult responsibilities can still feel like they belong to someone else. I was praised for completing any of these tasks as a 17 year old. Now at 40 there are just some things I’d rather not do. When I do them I want to be acknowledged and rewarded.

Many of these tasks I would categorize as mundane. They aren’t difficult or complicated. Many of them don’t take a ton of time. They sit right in the sweet spot between I can do this later, and it won’t take very long. Making it prime for procrastination. What I’ve only recently recognized is the maintenance these tasks provide. Like wiping down the sink after the dishes, or chopping a little bit of kindling every weekend. A few minutes spent now take the pain out of the task later on. The reward is not immediate and is only recognized when I’m forced to do the full blown task.

Part of the reason it’s so easy to stay where I am is because it takes the same effort I’m putting in now. No new action = no new reward. The phrase “dress for the job you want” is a metaphor for taking the seemingly unnecessary steps to get to where I want. Dressing up for work takes time and effort and the reward is hard to measure. But there are subtle shifts in how I hold myself, how I approach my day, and they way I think about my work when I take the time to put on an ironed shirt.

Shifting away from seeking reward for these daily tasks reframes as path to success rather than highlighting the barriers to the reward. Moving to a long tail game rather than the short term win.

This is what I think is meant by learning to love the process.