What would this look like if it were fun and easy?

I don’t know about you but lately, things have been feeling much harder than I think they should. I’ve been feeling overwhelmed, feeling behind, and honestly feeling unmotivated.

Now don’t get me wrong I work in a creative field so I am still working and producing but it just seems harder.

As a result, I’ve returned to an old favorite of mine and I’ve been looking at each task I do, especially the repetitive ones and asking the question “What would this look like if it were fun and easy?”

With this tiny little way of looking at my work I’ve made tremendous gains over the past few years. A great deal of that has come from several answers. “This would be more fun if I were doing it at the beach.” “This would be easier if I had a repeatable process.” And my personal favorite “This would be fun and easy if someone else was doing it.”

We’ve been basically locked in our little 700 sqft apartment for five months, now we get out as much as we can but there is work to do. One of the reasons we decided to move into such a small space was because of the 29 local and independently owned cafés within walking distance. Three guys in a very tiny space.

So when faced with an abundance of grading the other day I ran that task though the filter of “What would this look like if it were fun and easy?” I decided that momentum would make it easy and while nothing would make the grading fun I could make the entire experience fun by moving to the beach.

So that’s what I did. I packed up my bag, hopped on my bike, and ten minutes later I was at the East End Beach in Portland, sitting under a tree, looking out over Casco Bay, the sailboats, the fort, and the islands.

Consider running your own tasks though that very helpful filter and see what you can do to reshape even the most mundane tasks to be both easy and fun. Or at least push them in that direction.