Coaching practices for How to Do Work That You Don't Want to Do
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Do Work That You Don't Want to Do, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- My days vanish into recurring admin that anyone could do, and the work that only I can do never gets reached
- I spend my weekends slogging through chores I genuinely hate
- There’s one big thing glaring at me from the top of my list that I just won’t touch
- The hard part isn’t spotting the busywork
- There’s this thing I keep avoiding because it’s a slog with no payoff in the moment
Practices that may help
- Outsource personal and business tasks with a virtual assistant
Hand off any recurring task a written process can describe to a skilled assistant.
Lifestyle Design, Made Practical - Buy back your time
Spend money to outsource tasks you dislike, freeing hours for what matters.
Time Affluence, Made Practical - Place an important-seeming but deferrable task at the top of your list
Put a compelling but non-urgent task first, so everything below it gets done in avoidance of it.
Structured Procrastination, Made Practical - Actively cut or delegate the trivial 80%
Systematically reduce or hand off activities in the bottom 80% of your impact distribution.
The Pareto Principle: 80/20 for Personal Productivity - Bundle an immediate pleasure with a deferred obligation
Permit yourself an enjoyable activity only while doing the task you keep avoiding — pair present reward with future-oriented behavior.
Hyperbolic Discounting — Why Future You Always Gets the Short End - Drain the shallows
Aggressively limit and batch low-value shallow work so it doesn’t crowd out deep work.
Deep Work, Made Practical - Connect the aversive task to a genuinely held value
Value context reduces aversion without requiring the task itself to become enjoyable.
Task Aversion and Procrastination - Do the hardest task first
Tackle your single most important, most-dreaded task before anything else in the day.
Eat That Frog, Made Practical - Use the unschedule: schedule leisure before work
Block out guaranteed leisure and social time first, then fit work into what remains.
The Now Habit, Made Practical - Locate the autonomous "why"
Reframe a task until you are doing it from your own values, not external pressure.
Self-Determination Theory, Made Usable
Related concerns
- Completing Avoided Tasks Mood
Schedule one thing you have been avoiding — completing it relieves more energy than the task cost.
Tackle one avoided task per week
- Cut Low Value Tasks
Systematically reduce or hand off activities in the bottom 80% of your impact distribution.
Actively cut or delegate the trivial 80%
- Four Hour Work Week Outsourcing
Hand off any recurring task a written process can describe to a skilled assistant.
Outsource personal and business tasks with a virtual assistant
- How Do I Stop Procrastinating And Actually Get Work Done
Block out guaranteed leisure and social time first, then fit work into what remains.
Use the unschedule: schedule leisure before work
- How To Beat Procrastination
Data on your own procrastination is more useful than guilt about it.
Track procrastination episodes to identify patterns, not to judge yourself
- How To Eliminate Busywork
Systematically reduce or hand off activities in the bottom 80% of your impact distribution.
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.