Careful what you get good at
I recently decided to step up my recycling game. It’s not that I wasn’t recycling. I’ve always recycled the obvious things… glass, cardboard, coke cans. I just never took the time to figure out the messy in-between, you know, like hot dog packaging that’s both plastic and cardboard at the same time.
So in this recycling renaissance of my life I spent a lot of time researching trash, landfills, bioplastic, industrial-scale composting conditions... and soon enough I became the de-facto garbage queen of my household.On the daily, my partner would hold up random items and wait for my expert judgement.
A bunch of toothbrushes. Trash? Greasy napkin? Compost, at least in Washington state. A plastic monkey, a million pacifiers, felt flowers, gel pens, flower-shaped lego pieces, tiny wooden hearts, hese random poofy hair things… Is your brain about to explode? Because mine did.
I was making dozens of these tough calls on the daily. Each one making me more and more and MORE irritated at my partner. I care about recycling. Deeply, actually. But I never set out to do it as a full-time thing. I never wanted it to be the center of my household task list.
This whole fiasco made me realize this:
If you start doing something you don’t like because it needs to get done, and you do it so much you get good at it, you could get stuck doing it. People will come to you, depend on you, demand your help, even if you hate every minute of it.
I’ve done this at home and at work. As a marketer I once decided to take on a role that was heavy on analytics. I spent all my time discussing data lakes, cloud computing, predictive modeling. I turned a job I liked into one I didn’t.
Some work just has to get done. Chores don’t just go away. But just because a job or task or chore is important, doesn't mean you have to do it.
Take a look at your to-do list - how many of those tasks do you enjoy? These are your joy tasks. The rest…either eliminate, delegate or share with others.
Protect the work that brings you joy. Do more of the things you like doing. Fill your to-do list with as many joy tasks as you can. This will make you happier and more successful at work, because you’ll be focused on the things that bring you joy and light up your life. Don’t be garbage queen. Or king. Unless you want to.
For more rambly but amusing thoughts on work/life, check out my podcast Work on Joy. Available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
