Make it easy

I’m a naturally lazy person, so when something lands on my desk that seems strange or uncomfortable, I instinctively turn to the guiding principles of behavior change to see if I can re-engineer processes to make the work feel easy.

Here are some key questions I ask myself, outlined by James Clear in Atomic Habits: is it obvious? is it attractive? is it easy? is it satisfying?

Once you’ve answered those questions, you can drill into the different aspects of the task to see what you can optimize or maximize to make the task feel more comfortable. (Because who wants to do work that feels uncomfortable? No one. Especially not us lazy folk! )

You might need to create a weekly report to share results and thus increase collective satisfaction? Maybe you need an automated task to appear in your project management software so that your work is more attention-grabbing?

Sometimes the piece of work you’re doing will never be obvious, attractive, easy or satisfying, and, hey, that’s fine—that’s why they call it “work”. But chances are, if you consider the task closely enough, there will be at least one thing, if not seven things, that you can enhance to make your life easier.