Try to find ways to like what you do

[00:00:00] Well, hello. This is The Daily Five with Aurooba, that's me, where we reflect on creating our best lives a little bit every day. Here we go.

[00:00:15] Okay, today this might really be a short one because there's only so much I can say about this topic. It's very self explanatory. I've been meditating on something I said the other day on the podcast about how you won't like everything you do in life, but you won't stick with things you don't like. The thing about starting small is that when you really start small, it's so easy, and it's so easy, we tend to like it, and if we like it, we stick with it.

[00:00:44] Which makes it easier to build it up until it becomes something much bigger and more consistent. So maybe, yes, it's about starting small, but also maybe it's about finding ways to like what you're doing. Because when you like what you're doing, it's easy to keep doing it, and it's easier to prioritize it.

[00:01:02] An easy example for me would be planning a coworking day once a month. I work from home, and sometimes, not often, but sometimes, I need a change of pace. I don't want it to affect the quality of my output, but I do need to change the pace. So once a month, I plan a coworking day with my spouse. We go to one of our favorite coworking spots in the mountains, work together, and have a nice day.

[00:01:24] For the record, he is not just my favorite human, he is my favorite person to work with as well. And coworking with him from a spot that isn't our home once a month injects a lot of joy into my life. It's one day, but its effects last much longer than a day. Finding a way to like what you do, whatever it may be, a chore, a work thing, a house thing, a kid thing, anything.

[00:01:47] Finding a way to like it has far more long reaching effects, even if the thing you change or start doing to make it more likable seems small. And this is funny, but in the world of development, there is a joke that developers will spend five hours automating something that takes five minutes to do. And this is often used as an argument against automation.

[00:02:11] But first of all, devs love automating things. It's fun. And having fun at a thing you do for seven to eight hours a day, five days a week, is an important thing. You also don't realize how much you can learn when you are doing something and having fun doing it. The value of what you learn when you're having fun is perhaps undervalued.

[00:02:33] And two, the comparison is a total fallacy. If it takes you five minutes to do it and you're never going to do it again, yeah, don't automate it. But if it takes five minutes each time and you have to do it more than one time, Or especially if you have to do it quite often. Then those five hours someone might spend automating it will save you so much time.

[00:02:53] It's gonna save you more than just the time it takes to do it because every time you have to do something, even if it's small, you have to context shift from something else. So the effect of trying to do something small when you could be spending your time on other things is usually longer than how much time it actually takes you to do a thing.

[00:03:12] So, that's a digression totally, and a topic for another day. But, the point is, injecting something you like into what you're doing is important for your productivity. And it benefits not just you, but the people around you. A person who likes what they're doing is a happier person. And happier people are more fun to be around.

[00:03:32] And when we're happy and doing things that are happy, other people like it, and so together you end up producing results and outcomes that reinforce your success. Being happy and it becomes a happy cycle. All because you introduced a little liking into the equation. So, try to see if you can inject something you like into what you do.

[00:03:55] More if you can, but at least a little bit. It probably will have more reaching effects than you realize it might.

[00:04:07] Thanks for listening. Same time tomorrow?