I came across a post on the Simple Dollar today and I thought it had some valuable advice that I wanted to share here. Trent writes about “slog work” (monotonous work that has to be done) and ways to make it more bearable. I think we all have slog work that we have to do, but that we dread doing because it is time consuming and boring.

I bet this miserable looking man would enjoy his work a lot more if he had some rockin' tunes to listen to.

At my previous job it was prepping  and making patient charts. Now that I am a stay at home mom, it is the dishes. In order to make this mundane task more enjoyable, I will often purposefully leave all the dishes until the end of the day and then I will either listen to music or a podcast or I will call someone and chat with them while I am working. Sometimes I bring my laptop in the kitchen and watch a movie. (By leaving the dishes until the end of the day, I actually have enough work to listen to the entire podcast or have a lengthy conversation.) My slog work gets done and I don’t even notice I am doing it AND I get to listen to something enjoyable or talk to someone I care about. This is a positive situation all around.

So I would encourage you to think about tasks that you put off because you dread doing them. Is there some way that you could make them more enjoyable to do? If you work in an office, it might be enjoyable just to put on some headphones and do your task without interruption. (Even if you don’t have music playing, you can still block out distracting chatter.) If it is housework or yard work, load up your iPod with some of your favorite tunes and get busy. The time seems to go much quicker when you don’t have to only focus on the mundane work at hand.