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.
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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
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You're busy, yeah?
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There's never enough time to focus on your future work happiness.
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But if you don't focus on it, things just stay the same, don't they?
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In these short episodes, I wanna give you some tiny ideas, some mini experiments
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to try out this week to either dial down a pain point for you at work or
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dial up your potential for joy at work.
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Let's dive in.
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Let's be honest.
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No one moves through their to do list in a logical, most important
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to least important order.
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We do the urgent stuff first, because we panic.
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Then we tackle the fun things, because we like the dopamine hit.
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Then we circle back to the important things.
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And then we dabble in the less important, but slightly tolerable tasks, and
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finally, after much sighing, eye rolling, and possibly reorganising our fridges,
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we get to the tasks we really hate.
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The dull as dishwater, soul draining, joy sucking, I'd rather watch paint dry tasks.
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But we don't just crack into them, oh no, we wait, we resist, we procrastinate,
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until the very last possible second, when a looming deadline finally smacks
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us in the face and adrenaline kicks in.
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And then, we power through in a stress fuelled frenzy, only to collapse
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afterwards, emotionally exhausted.
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Sound familiar?
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You're not broken.
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You're just human.
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This week, instead of beating yourself up for avoiding the boring but necessary
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stuff, let's acknowledge the truth.
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You are a flawed yet wonderful human.
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And wonderful humans avoid things they don't enjoy.
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Even when these things really matter.
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Even when avoiding them makes life harder for our colleagues, our
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partners, and, well, our future selves.
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But, and you knew there was a but coming, sometimes the boring
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stuff just has to get done.
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Sometimes it's our bloody job to do it.
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So, what if, instead of battling the misery alone, we shared it?
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Enter Elizabeth.
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Elizabeth is brilliant.
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She's the kind of person who would run through walls to help you.
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She's overflowing with empathy and problem solving tenacity.
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She's trained and qualified in multiple complex fields, where most
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people struggle to excel in just one.
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But despite her impressive brain power, she struggles with certain
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parts of her job, the parts that bore the absolute pants off her.
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And when I say struggles, I mean, full scale avoidance.
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She ignores.
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She resists.
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She pretends those tasks don't exist.
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She waits until a deadline is breathing down her neck.
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And even then, she still resists.
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And when she finally does knuckle down, she needs days to recover from the ordeal.
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Elizabeth is human.
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Then one day, in one of our career design sessions, we were
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discussing procrastination.
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And she shared something her family had started doing together, and
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I nearly jumped out of my chair.
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She, and her siblings, who are all highly intelligent, And equally
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prone to avoiding dull tasks, started logging into a video call to do their
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boring but necessary tasks together.
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No chatting, no distractions, just a set time for everyone to
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suffer productively in silence.
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And guess what?
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At the end of the call, they were shocked by how much they'd gotten done.
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And more importantly, they felt lighter.
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Accomplished.
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Dare I say?
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Pride.
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Your joy at work experiment this week is called Misery Loves Company.
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This week I want you to steal Elizabeth's brilliant idea.
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I've asked her and she's okay with that.
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Write down two or three dull but important things you've been avoiding at work.
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Find a partner, a colleague, someone from another department.
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IT is always a good one.
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Or literally any human at work.
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Trust me, they all have boring tasks too.
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Schedule a one hour misery loves company session, a live call or an in
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person work session, where you both tackle your dreaded tasks in silence.
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No chitchat, just focused, shared, productive suffering.
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I swear, this experiment has movement potential.
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Give it a try.
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Let me know how it goes.
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If we must endure the dull stuff, and we must, we might as well endure it together.
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Because misery loves company.
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If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment.
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It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas
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of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down.
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I call it D Railed.
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It's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.