Episode 179: Game-ifying tedious tasks
There are always things that you do not want to do in your business. In today's episode, Fiona shares tips on how to Game-ify your tedious or repetitive tasks and be more productive. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Tomato Timer & other types of timers you can use
Compete with a friend
Grouping tedious tasks with color
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Natasha
Hourglass
Sand timer
Egg timer
Beyonce
Hello and welcome to episode 179 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. My name is Fiona Killackey. I am your host. And today you're listening to a quick tip episode. That's really where I talk about a quick tip tool or tactic that you can implement immediately. And today, it's one that makes me laugh, but it is also something I do all that time. And I'll get into that in a second before I do. I just want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on this beautiful land in which I live and work and record this podcast, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and I pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. And I also pay my respects to any other Aboriginal or indigenous people that may be listening from around the world. I pay my respects to your elders past, present, and emerging. All right, let's get stuck into today's quick tip episode.
All right. So, as I said earlier, I talk about a tip tool or tactic in these quick tip episodes. And today it is a tactic. Well, actually, I'm gonna share four tactics with you that relate to this topic. Now what I'm talking about is, and this always can't help but laugh, cuz it sounds so silly, but it's so impactful. Believe me. So what am I talking about? I am talking about game-ifying and I'm just gonna let you know that I had to re-record that word about four times, Game-ifying, because I just kept saying it incorrectly - Game-ifying the tedious tasks you do not want to do. And believe me, we all have them. I don't care how much you love your business and how great, full of purpose, and amazing that it is. And believe me, I know because I love my business. There are always things that you do not want to do.
There are always tedious tasks. There are always the things that you put off. There are always the things that kind of in my life at least could of build-up because I don't wanna do them. And yes, I have been able to hire some staff that has really helped with those tedious tasks and they love those, but there are still things that I have to do as the person who's running the business. And it's just like, “Ugh.” And instead of avoiding it, which is what a lot of people do. And I have to put my head up there. I do also avoid it. I have found that if I can find a fun way to do those tasks, it just makes it so much easier to actually get them done. So I'm gonna walk through four tactics that I use regularly to do this number one.
And you may have heard me talk about this before. I think I did an entire episode on this, which is using a stopwatch of sorts. Now I use Tomato-timer.com. It's just Tomato-timer.com. Will it link to that in the show notes? And that is, it uses the Pomodoro method. Hence, Pomodoro Italian for tomato and Pomodoro method really is about working in an intense kind of well, not intense, but just working in blocks where you are really focused for either 25 minutes or 45 minutes and then taking a break. So I use the 25-minute timer and I try to look at these tasks. So say I need to, I'm trying to think of a really tedious task. Say I need to review quotes that my OBM has found. Now I don't necessarily mean tedious is boring. It's just sort of repetitive tasks.
Now we have a system for quotes being created in Instagram that my VA finds the quotes and then I approve them. And sometimes I find my own quotes, but I approve of them. And then they get turned into cards which then go into Planoly anyway, this isn't a systems episode, but going through them is sometimes tedious because I might click on the source. I might just check where they're from. I might review who's the actual author. I don't know that name, where they come from and it's just, it can take time and because I have moved away from doing that task myself years ago, I find it kind of like, it's just one of those tedious tasks that you have to do. It's not that I dislike it because sometimes my goodness, I can see the quote and be super inspired.
That's why I love quotes, but it is a task that I have to go into a document. I have to go line by line and there might be like 40 or 50 of them and approve them. And sometimes it's really quick. Sometimes it's not, but it's a task. So I might use the Tomato Timer to put that on, get heaps of stuff done. Or when I was writing my book, I wrote, I had to write like 70,000 words in three months and I had a brand new baby and my dad was passing away and I did not have much time. And so I really had to use my time wisely. And so I would put on a Tomato Timer and I would give myself a word-length deadline, and I would just go for it until that beeper went off. So it'll actually like Bing, it'll beep it'll be like buzz.
That's what it will do. Like it'll make a sound at the end of it going like “beep beep beep.” And you say, you're trying to beat that sound really. You're trying to beat the buzzer. The other thing that you can do with Tomato Timer is if you work with people. So if you have people in your office, you could put a Tomato Timer on for everyone, offer two or three of you to be like, “okay, you need to do that. I need to do this.” Let's go and see who gets it done in 25 minutes or less, or if you wanna make it 40 minutes or whatever the stopwatch is that you wanna do, but you're sort of making it into a game. You're making it into a game and like “let's try and beat the clock kind of thing.”
Or like let's try and beat a friend. And that brings me to the next tactic, which is to beat a friend or compete with a friend. Now, this is friendly. This is not like really getting into serious territory or anything like that. But if you have a tedious task to do and say you have a friend who also, I am sure has tedious tasks to do. You might decide, Hey, let's play a little game. We're gonna phone each other. We're gonna put each other on speakerphones. And for the next 25 minutes, we are just gonna get this thing done. So I used to actually do this with a friend and it wasn't actually a game, but we used to catch up. I think it was like 6:00 AM on Thursdays. We would phone. We would talk for like 10 minutes about what we were going to do.
We put the phone down. So it was on speaker. So I could still hear them. I could hear them typing or doing whatever they could hear me. And we were getting our work done together. And usually, it was a tedious task for me pretty much every time. And then we would get it all done. And we would talk at the end of the time and be like, “how did you go?” And again, it was sort of, it was gamified really. And another way that you might wanna do that is maybe you meet with a friend once a week. So I have another good friend Natasha from Private Practice Alliance and we meet every week and it's not, I guess it's not a game really, but could easily be if you sort of tweaked it slightly. So we meet every week and we kind of talk about the three things we were supposed to do the week prior and the three things we wanna do the next week.
And we talk about our businesses and it's such a good thing. So just an FYI. If anyone's listening has a good friend who works in a similar business, try and do this. It's such a good thing. Anyway, it keeps us accountable that could easily be a game. So you could actually say something at the start of the year. And actually, I might pitch this to Natasha. You could say something at the start of the year and be like, “okay, whoever gets, you know, 60% of their stuff done gets the other person to buy them dinner at the end of the year” or the end of the quarter or whatever it is. And so again, you're game-ifying it. The third tactic is to color in. So I know that when I have occasionally played a game, now I'm not a big one for like video games. My son loves them, but I am someone who likes adult coloring books.
I know it's really strange, but they're so relaxing. And two, I like to see things finished and completed. So if I'm coloring in something and I actually have quite a few mindful coloring in books, but if I'm coloring in something, I like to see it fully colored in. I can't leave a page that is half colored in. And so another thing that you might do is you might just create a sort of little box or something, a visual element. It could be something beautiful. If you're an artist, it could be just something plain. So for me, I might just create a box of say, nine tasks that I need to get done today. And maybe they're a tedious task, or maybe I just need to get them done in the next hour. And so I'll create a nine-box and I'll put all the tasks’ names in that box.
And I might pin that up near my desk and I wanna color them in as they're done. So I want by the end of the day, the thing to be colored in. So again, that is an option for some kind of game-ifying things. And then number four, which is very similar to number one, but is for those people who do not wanna be on a school green, do not wanna be looking at your phone to see what time it is. And also do not want some horrible alarm going off at the end of it. Not that the Tomato-timer.com alarm is that bad, but one of the things that I bought for my desk last year, I don't know, maybe halfway through last year were two. I don't know what they're called, like sand timers, egg timers, and hourglasses.
That is what I think they're called. If you have ever watched days of our lives, they are the thing that is at the start of the credits. I think it's like the sand passes through our fingers. These are the days of our lives. That is probably not the right word. But anyway, I bought two of these last year for my desk and one is half an hour. So I know that the big one when I turn it over, it gives me half an hour. The small one is five minutes long. Now I often use the small one as a meditation device, you know, in between coaching calls or just when I kind of feel like I need to just take a few minutes out and I might put on some soothing music and just turn that one over. Sometimes even just watching it, like watching the sand go through, is quite relaxing, but I have the bigger one for half an hour.
So it's similar to the Tomato Timer. It's a lot nicer, I guess, to just have this going, you can turn off all your screens. So often I will journal or I will, I still use pen and paper quite often to make plans, to do things, to get things out of my head. I am always making mind maps. And so I will use this timer to give myself 30 minutes. So say somebody has contacted me. I'm trying to think of a recent experience. Okay. So, say this person, this company contacted me to kind of create a business program for, for their people. And I was like, “okay, I need to think about what's gonna be in the program.” Who else I might bring into it. And instead of just sort of sitting in front of a blank document on Canva or a blank document on Google drive, I turned everything off, put some music on and I turned my timer over and was like, “okay, give myself half an hour to really think about what do I wanna do.”
What people are gonna get outta this program? Who else should be involved? How long should it be? What kind of content should there be in there? And within half an hour, I was able to map all of that out. Now I also think that this, yes, it's a game and it's kind of fun. Cause it's like, “there are only a few more specs of sand going through the egg timer or the hourglass,” but it also restricts you a little bit because I feel, and lots of people are different. Everyone has their own ways of doing things and learning and just creating things. I like to have a little bit of pressure put on, even if it's just perceived pressure through an egg timer. I feel like I sometimes have my best ideas when I'm kind of like, “okay, you got half an hour.”
Let's go. Of course, other times I like to really think about things, sit on them for a while. But I have found that the egg, I keep calling it an egg timer. I think it's because we had one of these when I was growing up for the eggs, but it's an hourglass, but I will use that half an hour and sort of just make sure that I get it done in that half an hour, which I really love. So those are some tactics for really getting through tedious tasks. I'll just go through them again. Number one, Tomato-timer.com is just really racing against the clock. You can find that at Tomato-timer.com, number two is beating a friend or just having a nice light competition with a friend to kind of go through, can you get this done? Can I get this done?
Who may have a dinner up for grabs. The other person has to pay for that sort of thing. Number three coloring in, so creating some sort of pattern or grid where you put in the tedious tasks and you color them as you go. And you try to get that whole thing colored just as you would with some sort of a game that's online. And then the last one, which I keep calling the egg timer or the sand timer or the hourglass. So again, sort of trying to beat the clock, but really coming, flying and doing that in maybe a little bit more of a calm, I don't know non-digital way. And then number five bonus. The other thing that I love to do, and I just sort of thought about this then, is if I've got something really tedious to do, there are about five songs that are my go-to pump me up, get me ready to just do it.
So I will usually play one of those songs, think about what I need to do, play one of those songs, and literally say out loud to myself, “Alright, Killackey go and I will just get the stuff done.” And I feel like, I don't know, it's kind of like Rocky going out into boxing again, another film I have not actually watched like Days of our lives. I know Days of our lives was a TV show, but Rocky is so in the popular culture sphere that I feel like I know it, even though I've never seen it. I do like the music from it anyway, but that kind of concept is like pumping yourself up to get it done. And I feel like when you put on a great song, your mood shifts, you're in a good mood and it's easier to sort of tackle these tedious tasks.
Like, “okay, come on, let's do it often.” I will play a whole album. Well, not the whole album, but I'll play a number of songs from an album and just get the stuff done. And it's actually really enjoyable because it's not that often that I just get to sit there and listen to an album in its completion. And so, number five, that's just a little bonus for you. And currently, the album that I've gone right back to, and I am loving, I have to say is I am Sasha fierce by Beyonce. I haven't listened to that for a few years. And I got so into it. I just forgot all the other songs. You know how like an album one comes out and you just have the popular songs that you just stay around for years and years and years, but then there are all these other great songs that you forgot about.
Cuz when you first had the album, you listened to it. Anyway, I digress. I hope that these tactics have helped you with any tedious task that you have. And if any of them did, please come on over and say @mydailybusinesscoach on Instagram, send me a DM. Tell me which one worked for you. Or maybe you have your own tactics for dealing with tedious tasks. And in which case, I'd love you for sharing them with me.
All right. That is it. The full transcript of this episode will be available over at mydailybusiness.coach.com/podcast/ 179. If you wanna go through these tactics again, all right, take care. I'll see you next time. Bye. Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you wanna get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram @mydailybusinesscoach.
