🌰 make your everyday work mundane so you can spend more energy making your exceptional work exceptional

It’s an idea I first saw in Tiago Forte’s review of the book “Work Clean”, but was repeated more clearly in his 2021 Mid-Year Review

It’s similar to the idea behind Steve Jobs wearing the same outfit each day. If your life is full of rote, mundane tasks, you should be able to optimize them, build muscle memory in, etc. Then, in theory, you have more time and energy and willpower saved up for when you need it.

But what if this isn’t true?

Sure there’s research to suggest that decision-fatigue is real. But there’s also research to suggest that the clothes you wear impact the abstractness of your thinking. Put another way: does putting your bills on autopay free up mental energy to be more on-time with other things? Or does putting your bills on autopay remove an axis by which to practice being a more timely person? Or is being timely in one area of your life wholly unrelated to other areas of your life?

• Related to:
  • Setting Up Your Computer to Achieve a Flow State
  • [[🌰 You can set up your workspace to help achieve the flow state]]
  • [[Mise-en-Place for Knowledge Workers 6 Practices for Working Clean]]

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Every post on this blog is a work in progress. Phrasing may be less than ideal, ideas may not yet be fully thought through. Thank you for watching me grow.