This weekend, My Lovely Wife had decreed that we were doing a “massive clean”. We were scrubbing all floors, cleaning all surfaces, dusting all shelves, waxing all cats, etc. etc. And, boy, did she build it up. For days prior to the weekend, all I heard were lines like this:

• Driving home — “Oh, I’m going to work you this weekend…”
• Eating supper — “Don’t make any plans for this weekend, buddy-boy…”
• While sleeping — “I vill break you…”

She was gleefully relentless*.

All this lead to me building up one big ol’ fear for this weekend… because housework eats at my soul like a mongoose on a cobra.

So, Saturday rolled around… and boy did I procrastinate. I lay in bed as long as I could. I made a really elaborate breakfast. I brewed a massive pot of coffee that I decreed I had to finish (”I can’t waste coffee — think of the poor children in Africa without coffee!”). Anything to hold off the inevitable.

And then I realised — this is ridiculous. It’s just housework. Why have I built this up into such an onerous task?

That’s when I saw the feedback loop I had created:

• Become aware of looming chore unit.
• Dread chore unit with every fibre of my soul.
• Perform chore unit as fast as possible, in an effort to get it over with as quickly as possible.
• Imprint on subconscious the difficulty and unpleasantness of the completed chore unit.
• Repeat.

This is not a good cycle, but all of it exists in my head… except for one step. The actual performance of the chore unit.

Why is it so hard and unpleasant? Part of it is the dirtiness and possible uncomfortableness of the actual chore unit… but a large part of the problem is that I put so much effort into doing the task as fast as possible so it will be over as fast as possible. And this makes the job harder. And less pleasant. Thus increasing the dread I feel everytime the chore unit comes around again.

So what did I do? I vacuumed the house and scrubbed the floors. But I took my time. I did it very thoroughly, but I didn’t push myself. I did the jobs with the base effort necessary to do it fully, but not a bit more.

And it was fine. And it got done. And it only took about ten minutes longer than it does when I rush. But my back didn’t hurt and I wasn’t bitching and moaning.

So that’s my new tip. Hard work is all well and good, but next time you have to do a job that you dread, see if your hard work is just making the work hard.

* To alleviate the draconian mental images these statements may have given you of My Lovely Wife, try picturing her saying these while wearing blue flannel pyjamas covered in snowflakes and reindeer. Believe me, she can get away with a lot wearing those.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 13th, 2006 at 12:45 pm and is filed under lifehacks, tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.