Episode 409: Do you really not like these tasks in business?
In this episode, Fiona shares a personal experience that led to a valuable lesson about reframing tasks in business. She reconsiders what she might find tedious or enjoyable in her own business routines. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
Personal health scare and hospitalization
Importance of monitoring heart rate
Reflection on task enjoyment and labelling
Reassessing tedious tasks in business
Strategies for making tasks more enjoyable
Encouragement to reconsider task perceptions
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Welcome to episode 409 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today is a quick tip episode and this is a bit of a different angle from the usual quick tip episodes. And I did question whether I wanted to share this stuff, but I thought, no, I'm having conversations with clients about this, so I'm going to share it on the podcast as well. Before we get stuck into that, I want to acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on the land, which I have these conversations and record this podcast. And that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. The other thing I wanted to mention is we do have this book course happening. If you want to write your first book, if you want to know how I've written and landed two great publishing deals, the second book will be out very soon, which is very exciting.
But if you want to know all the behind the scenes, templates, how to find a good publisher, what you should expect for your advance, and all of that, you can sign up at mydailybusiness.com/courses. We will be running that multiple times throughout the year. It's a course and coaching program. You do a little bit in your own time, and then you come for six weeks of live coaching. We also have some fun stuff planned for once you go through that course to just make sure that you keep going and writing a book, getting a book deal, it's hard. It is a long process. Even for my second book from landing the actual book deal, like the email coming in, being like, we would love to offer you this through to it being published in two years. It is not something that just happens overnight as much as people might say on social media. if you want to learn all of that again, just head on over to mydailybusiness.com/courses and you'll see the book course there. Let's get into today's quick tip episode.
About a month ago now, I was at home, I was not feeling well, I'd been coaching all day, and I went to the doctor and he was like, “You have quite a throat infection.” What I want you to do is take these antibiotics. And he was like, get onto them quick sticks today. I don't think he said quick sticks. That's something I say to my kids all the time. But he said get on them. And he said, I also want you to monitor your heart because I'm a little worried about this infection. What happened then was I went home and I was like, let me look at my Apple watch. And I was like, “Whoa.” My heart rate was skyrocketing, and I went for quite a hilly walk. Most mornings it's about five kilometres, and it is a decent workout.
Anyone who knows where I live, I live in North Warrandyte, which is Hill City. It is just up and down hills constantly, and my driveway is very steep too. Even going up a strong hill, my heart rate is not as high as it was. I was sitting down trying to do some deep breathing, and I was like, let me do some more deep breathing and maybe my heart rate will go down. In the end, I had to go to the emergency, and I ended up staying in the hospital for three days. What happened was I had a throat infection, which then spread. My heart rate was skyrocketing, and my body was trying to pump blood everywhere to try and get rid of things. The white blood cell count was crazy high, which is why I had to stay in for so long because they were trying to get that down.
They couldn't understand why it kept going up. Suffice to say, I got better and lessons learned. If I'm feeling unwell, I need to go to the doctor or rest or not just push through as so many of us do, especially I think moms or people with kids who just have to keep going. I mean, all people are like that. Anyway, what this whole soiree in the hospital taught me was to look at my heart rate. I had not been sort of monitoring things. I do look at it and I look at my resting heart rate, and I have an Oura Ring and Apple watch, I have all the things. I got an Oura Ring recently and I have to say it is amazing. Shout out to my friend Marre Smit from Smit Club in Amsterdam who put me on this.
It tells you so much information. One of the things I have been looking at is my heart because I come from a family where on both sides of my family, there has been massive heart disease, heart attacks, quadruple bypass pacemakers, af like a bunch of heart things. I cannot fool myself that I'm in my twenties anymore. I have to look at this stuff. One of the things that I was looking at was to look at my heart rate for a normal, as much as it can be a normal work week for me in my business. I wasn't going crazy into it, I was just monitoring things. And one of the things that I realised was my heart rate on average when I'm coaching is pretty stable and pretty chill. I was like, even in situations where we are diving into some issues or challenges, and it's like, okay.
And I was noticing one day where my head had gone up and I was like, what was I doing around that time? And I was recording a podcast. Now you'll be like, where is this all going? But I will have a point. I was recording a podcast and it was frustrating recording this podcast because I just could not get the words out correctly. In some cases, I record podcasts like that. And what should take 10 minutes to do an intro will take 40 minutes because I'm stopping and starting and stopping and starting and rethinking things. It doesn't happen very often, I have to say. But in my head, I have compartmentalised that podcasting is always enjoyable. I love podcasting. I can talk to the cows, come home. I come from an Irish family, it's part of my DNA, so I love podcasting.
I had not realised that was annoying and frustrating when I was trying to record that episode and I had to stop and start. I was getting frustrated and my heart rate was going up even though I didn't realise it. And then I was thinking about this in terms of what I'm learning from this. It's that we so often in our businesses, all of us have it. And I get to see, I get to have the privilege of seeing so many people in business and the behind-the-scenes and everything else. We can have jobs and tasks in our business that we have labelled fun, and we have other ones that we've labelled annoying, frustrating tedious. I would say that for example, a job like reconciling invoices can be super tedious.
I know I've got lots of clients that will go into bookkeepers because they hate that job so much. Or it might be a job of delegating tasks or ticking things off in some sort of Notion or Clickup. It could be something else that you have labelled boring, or annoying that you don't like. But you want to reframe that because what I was learning was that I have labelled on the flip side, podcasting is always a hundred percent enjoyable, always fun. Wish I could spend my whole time just doing it. And actually what I was looking at with the heart rate was that I wasn't enjoying it at that particular time. And maybe I don't always then not enjoy tasks that I've put under. I don't enjoy this task. Maybe I actually enjoy them more than I think, or maybe they're quite relaxing and I'm not even realising that.
I'm hoping that this makes sense because I'm talking about podcasting, which I love, and I've put in the I love bucket, but there are definitely things in my business that I have told myself I don't like, but maybe they're not as bad as I thought. I think that is the lesson, whether you are looking at your heart rate or not, but to reassess things that maybe you have told yourself for like six years. I hate doing that. I hate showing up on Instagram. I hate sitting down to write an email. I hate trying to connect with my clients, suppliers, stockers or buyers in the post-purchase cycle. I can't, I hate it. I don't think of ideas. I find it annoying. Just a question, write a list of the things that you think you have put under the annoying, frustrating, tedious, don't like it, elements of your business that you haven't yet outsourced, or maybe you haven't got staff that can do that.
Maybe it's just it has to land with you and ask where did that thought come from. Is it something I've just let sit there for years or is there a way of reigniting my interest or my desire to do this task? For example, if I have certain tedious tasks, I often have a playlist that I'll play. I have a wonderful client and he is great. We used to work together for years and we were talking about this and he has a particular playlist that he loves. I was like, “Okay.” I think it was like techno-house music. If he listens, I'm sure he knows who I'm talking about. And he was saying, “But I love this.” I was like, let's not allow you to play that playlist unless you do this tedious task. it worked because he was like, I want to play the playlist.
I want to rock out to these songs, but I'm not going to allow myself to do that unless I'm doing this tedious task. Because then I will create a synapse in the brain of enjoying that task rather than putting it off, putting it off, putting it off. Because you've put it under the, I don't enjoy these tasks bucket. Go through the things that you don't enjoy in your business and think about where that thought comes from. How long have I had that? Is it a stale thing or do I genuinely not like it? And then if I do not like it and I have to do it, it's part of your business and we all have things like that, then how can I make myself enjoy it? Whether it's putting on good music, whether it's dancing around the office while you do it, whatever is going to make that more enjoyable.
Because what my heart rate was telling me was that potentially I've been just putting things under certain buckets where maybe they don't belong. However, I have to also put the caveat that I do enjoy podcasting and maybe my heart rate had gone up because I was engaged and excited. Although I do know that that particular episode I was recording was super frustrating, I was not enjoying it. That is it for today's tip. Just think about how often you are labelling something in your business as annoying, frustrating, or tedious. I hate it, I don't like it. I don't want to be there when maybe that's not the case. Maybe that's not the case at all. That is it for today. If you want to upskill on anything and you want to just go through it at your own pace, we have a bunch of courses and you can find them at mydailybusiness.com/courses. Thanks for reading and see you next time.
