Artwork for podcast Joy At Work
Overcoming Procrastination - A Joy At Work Experiment
9th February 2025 • Joy At Work • Lucia Knight
00:00:00 00:06:08

Share Episode

Shownotes

  Assess how feeling career stuck is impacting you across ten areas of life - in 30 minutes.  Then, decide what you want to do about it.

-

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.

[00:30] The Reality of Task Management

[01:41] Embracing Human Flaws

[02:31] Meet Elizabeth: A Procrastination Case Study

[04:24] Your Joy at Work Experiment - Misery Loves Company

Transcripts

Lucia Knight:

You're busy, yeah?

Lucia Knight:

There's never enough time to focus on your future work happiness.

Lucia Knight:

But if you don't focus on it, things just stay the same, don't they?

Lucia Knight:

In these short episodes, I wanna give you some tiny ideas, some mini experiments

Lucia Knight:

to try out this week to either dial down a pain point for you at work or

Lucia Knight:

dial up your potential for joy at work.

Lucia Knight:

Let's dive in.

Lucia Knight:

Let's be honest.

Lucia Knight:

No one moves through their to do list in a logical, most important

Lucia Knight:

to least important order.

Lucia Knight:

We do the urgent stuff first, because we panic.

Lucia Knight:

Then we tackle the fun things, because we like the dopamine hit.

Lucia Knight:

Then we circle back to the important things.

Lucia Knight:

And then we dabble in the less important, but slightly tolerable tasks, and

Lucia Knight:

finally, after much sighing, eye rolling, and possibly reorganising our fridges,

Lucia Knight:

we get to the tasks we really hate.

Lucia Knight:

The dull as dishwater, soul draining, joy sucking, I'd rather watch paint dry tasks.

Lucia Knight:

But we don't just crack into them, oh no, we wait, we resist, we procrastinate,

Lucia Knight:

until the very last possible second, when a looming deadline finally smacks

Lucia Knight:

us in the face and adrenaline kicks in.

Lucia Knight:

And then, we power through in a stress fuelled frenzy, only to collapse

Lucia Knight:

afterwards, emotionally exhausted.

Lucia Knight:

Sound familiar?

Lucia Knight:

You're not broken.

Lucia Knight:

You're just human.

Lucia Knight:

This week, instead of beating yourself up for avoiding the boring but necessary

Lucia Knight:

stuff, let's acknowledge the truth.

Lucia Knight:

You are a flawed yet wonderful human.

Lucia Knight:

And wonderful humans avoid things they don't enjoy.

Lucia Knight:

Even when these things really matter.

Lucia Knight:

Even when avoiding them makes life harder for our colleagues, our

Lucia Knight:

partners, and, well, our future selves.

Lucia Knight:

But, and you knew there was a but coming, sometimes the boring

Lucia Knight:

stuff just has to get done.

Lucia Knight:

Sometimes it's our bloody job to do it.

Lucia Knight:

So, what if, instead of battling the misery alone, we shared it?

Lucia Knight:

Enter Elizabeth.

Lucia Knight:

Elizabeth is brilliant.

Lucia Knight:

She's the kind of person who would run through walls to help you.

Lucia Knight:

She's overflowing with empathy and problem solving tenacity.

Lucia Knight:

She's trained and qualified in multiple complex fields, where most

Lucia Knight:

people struggle to excel in just one.

Lucia Knight:

But despite her impressive brain power, she struggles with certain

Lucia Knight:

parts of her job, the parts that bore the absolute pants off her.

Lucia Knight:

And when I say struggles, I mean, full scale avoidance.

Lucia Knight:

She ignores.

Lucia Knight:

She resists.

Lucia Knight:

She pretends those tasks don't exist.

Lucia Knight:

She waits until a deadline is breathing down her neck.

Lucia Knight:

And even then, she still resists.

Lucia Knight:

And when she finally does knuckle down, she needs days to recover from the ordeal.

Lucia Knight:

Elizabeth is human.

Lucia Knight:

Then one day, in one of our career design sessions, we were

Lucia Knight:

discussing procrastination.

Lucia Knight:

And she shared something her family had started doing together, and

Lucia Knight:

I nearly jumped out of my chair.

Lucia Knight:

She, and her siblings, who are all highly intelligent, And equally

Lucia Knight:

prone to avoiding dull tasks, started logging into a video call to do their

Lucia Knight:

boring but necessary tasks together.

Lucia Knight:

No chatting, no distractions, just a set time for everyone to

Lucia Knight:

suffer productively in silence.

Lucia Knight:

And guess what?

Lucia Knight:

At the end of the call, they were shocked by how much they'd gotten done.

Lucia Knight:

And more importantly, they felt lighter.

Lucia Knight:

Accomplished.

Lucia Knight:

Dare I say?

Lucia Knight:

Pride.

Lucia Knight:

Your joy at work experiment this week is called Misery Loves Company.

Lucia Knight:

This week I want you to steal Elizabeth's brilliant idea.

Lucia Knight:

I've asked her and she's okay with that.

Lucia Knight:

Write down two or three dull but important things you've been avoiding at work.

Lucia Knight:

Find a partner, a colleague, someone from another department.

Lucia Knight:

IT is always a good one.

Lucia Knight:

Or literally any human at work.

Lucia Knight:

Trust me, they all have boring tasks too.

Lucia Knight:

Schedule a one hour misery loves company session, a live call or an in

Lucia Knight:

person work session, where you both tackle your dreaded tasks in silence.

Lucia Knight:

No chitchat, just focused, shared, productive suffering.

Lucia Knight:

I swear, this experiment has movement potential.

Lucia Knight:

Give it a try.

Lucia Knight:

Let me know how it goes.

Lucia Knight:

If we must endure the dull stuff, and we must, we might as well endure it together.

Lucia Knight:

Because misery loves company.

Lucia Knight:

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment.

Lucia Knight:

It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas

Lucia Knight:

of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down.

Lucia Knight:

I call it D Railed.

Lucia Knight:

It's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube