Lucia Knight
A Joy At Work Experiment: Overcoming Procrastination
Drowning in dull, soul-sucking tasks at work? You’re not alone—and that’s exactly the problem. In this episode, I share a simple strategy to beat procrastination by tackling boring tasks together. It’s called Misery Loves Company, and it just might be the secret to getting more done—without the struggle.
This week, we’re tackling procrastination—specifically, those dull, soul-draining tasks you keep putting off. You know the ones. Instead of suffering through them alone, I want you to steal a brilliant strategy from Elizabeth, a high-achieving professional who found a way to trick her brain into getting things done. The trick? Misery Loves Company.
The Joy At Work Experiment: Misery Loves Company
1️⃣ Write down two or three dull but important tasks you’ve been avoiding.
2️⃣ Find a partner—a colleague, someone from another department, even IT (trust me, they have boring tasks too).
3️⃣ Schedule a Misery Loves Company session: one hour, no chit-chat, just silent, shared productivity.
4️⃣ Feel the satisfaction of getting things done—together!
Trust me, this works. You’ll be amazed at how much lighter you feel once you finally tackle those dreaded tasks with a bit of built-in accountability.
Next Steps:
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30-minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed and it's a fabulous place to begin a joy-at-work redesign.
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Misery Loves Company
Lucia Knight: You're busy, yeah? There's never enough time to focus on your future work happiness. But if you don't focus on it, things just stay the same, don't they? In these short episodes, I wanna give you some tiny ideas, some mini experiments to try out this week to either dial down a pain point for you at work or dial up your potential for joy at work.
Let's dive in.
The Reality of Task Management
Lucia Knight: Let's be honest. No one moves through their to do list in a logical, most important to least important order. We do the urgent stuff first, because we panic. Then we tackle the fun things, because we like the dopamine hit. Then we circle back to the important things. And then we dabble in the less important, but slightly tolerable tasks, and finally, after much sighing, eye rolling, and possibly reorganising our fridges, we get to the tasks we really hate.
The dull as dishwater, soul draining, joy sucking, I'd rather watch paint dry tasks. But we don't just crack into them, oh no, we wait, we resist, we procrastinate, until the very last possible second, when a looming deadline finally smacks us in the face and adrenaline kicks in. And then, we power through in a stress fuelled frenzy, only to collapse afterwards, emotionally exhausted. Sound familiar?
Embracing Human Flaws
Lucia Knight: You're not broken. You're just human.
This week, instead of beating yourself up for avoiding the boring but necessary stuff, let's acknowledge the truth. You are a flawed yet wonderful human. And wonderful humans avoid things they don't enjoy. Even when these things really matter. Even when avoiding them makes life harder for our colleagues, our partners, and, well, our future selves.
But, and you knew there was a but coming, sometimes the boring stuff just has to get done. Sometimes it's our bloody job to do it. So, what if, instead of battling the misery alone, we shared it?
Meet Elizabeth: A Procrastination Case Study
Lucia Knight: Enter Elizabeth. Elizabeth is brilliant. She's the kind of person who would run through walls to help you. She's overflowing with empathy and problem solving tenacity.
She's trained and qualified in multiple complex fields, where most people struggle to excel in just one.
But despite her impressive brain power, she struggles with certain parts of her job, the parts that bore the absolute pants off her. And when I say struggles, I mean, full scale avoidance. She ignores. She resists. She pretends those tasks don't exist. She waits until a deadline is breathing down her neck.
And even then, she still resists. And when she finally does knuckle down, she needs days to recover from the ordeal. Elizabeth is human.
Then one day, in one of our career design sessions, we were discussing procrastination. And she shared something her family had started doing together, and I nearly jumped out of my chair.
She, and her siblings, who are all highly intelligent, And equally prone to avoiding dull tasks, started logging into a video call to do their boring but necessary tasks together. No chatting, no distractions, just a set time for everyone to suffer productively in silence. And guess what? At the end of the call, they were shocked by how much they'd gotten done.
And more importantly, they felt lighter. Accomplished. Dare I say? Pride.
Your Joy at Work Experiment - Misery Loves Company
Lucia Knight: Your joy at work experiment this week is called Misery Loves Company. This week I want you to steal Elizabeth's brilliant idea. I've asked her and she's okay with that. Write down two or three dull but important things you've been avoiding at work.
Find a partner, a colleague, someone from another department. IT is always a good one. Or literally any human at work. Trust me, they all have boring tasks too. Schedule a one hour misery loves company session, a live call or an in person work session, where you both tackle your dreaded tasks in silence. No chitchat, just focused, shared, productive suffering.
I swear, this experiment has movement potential. Give it a try. Let me know how it goes.
If we must endure the dull stuff, and we must, we might as well endure it together. Because misery loves company.
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed. It's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.
