George Kao shares ways to make challenging productive tasks more enjoyable. He draws on personal experience and invites you to share your own methods for bringing more joy to work that matters.
I have a challenge for you. Bring to mind a project that you know would be productive for your business if you only accomplished it, but you are anxious about it because it's not easy to do. It's hard work. You know that you can do it if you set your mind to it and actually worked on it, but it's not automatically fun for you, but you know, it's productive and impactful if you do it. Now, do you have that project in mind? Okay, now here's my. The part two of my challenge is can you think of a way to bring some more joy to the doing of that task or that project? So the way that we are typically taught to work on productive projects that are not automatically fun is the idea is discipline and hustle, right? Which is work your face off no matter what. Grit your teeth, and you just got to get it done. And actually, I think a lot of people, and maybe you have ingrained this idea without knowing that that's what you've done. So. And there's. There's my dog, Buddy, which I want to show you. He makes my videos more fun. That's one way I bring more joy to the making of these videos, right? So I ask you to take a note of this. When you work on a productive project, that's not automatically fun. What does your face look like? I think that's a real indication. Does your face, like, notice your face the next time you're working on a project that's productive but not automatically fun? Okay. And then the challenge is take a pause and ask yourself the question, how can I bring a bit more joy to this task? So I invite you. Actually, I would love for you to do this. If you wouldn't mind. Write a comment below this video and let me know these two things. I think this will be helpful for me, for you, and for everybody who happens to see the comment. One, what is that project that you know will make an impact in your business, but it's not automatically fun? Okay, so write that down first and then after that write what is one way that I might be able to bring a bit more joy to the doing of this task? It'd be great if you could do that because then as we get more comments, you'll get more ideas from other people as well, and other people will be grateful for your idea. So let me share with you how I did it today. Okay, so today I was working on preparing for my upcoming workshop, which it's going to be the first time I've taught this workshop in years. So there was an automatic sense of performance anxiety, like, oh, I got to do a good job. You know, people already signed up for it. I better do a great job on preparing this. And I felt myself tensing up. And then I realized, wait a second. I'm all about joyful productivity. So I took a pause, and I did this to make the work more fun. First, I did my energy. I call it my energy reboot, which is basically, I took some deep breaths, and as I breathe, I imagine that I'm breathing in molecules of love, of unconditional support, and of complete wisdom. And I actually believe that that's what the universe is made of. I literally believe that I am walking in a universe where every molecule is somehow made of, composed of many things, but including powerful, unconditional love and wisdom. So, anyway, so that's what I did. I took some breaths of that, and automatically I felt more relaxed, at ease, and more confident about my task. The second thing I did was to imagine an ideal audience member, somebody that I could actually picture. Maybe I know their name, and I'm just saying that you might want to try this as well. But I pictured their face. I could see their profile photo on their Facebook, and I know their name. And then this is the person who loves just about everything that I create, loves many of my workshops. It's almost like I can't do any wrong in that person's eyes. Now, if you don't have somebody like that yet, you can imagine that person to exist in your business. Just imagine that. And then I said, oh, I am making this workshop for you. You don't criticize what I do. You. You benefit so much from it, because somehow it's just you and I have a great alignment and energy, and you just get a lot from my content. So I'm making the workshop for you. And so really, almost anything I say about this topic of the workshop is going to be helpful for you. And so that's what I really was writing my workshop for. And that made the doing of it much more joyful than if I was writing the workshop for a faceless, judging audience, which is what I think a lot of us misconception of whom we're writing for. So I hope this is helpful. And again, I invite you to comment below, please, if you don't mind the task or project that you know would be productive and impactful if you did it, but it's not automatically fun for you. And secondly, how is. What's one way you can bring more joy to it now? It doesn't have to be the things I said, right? It could be something totally different. Like maybe you could put on some music that you enjoy that doesn't distract you, that still allows you to do that thing or something else that you do think about when you have made work a bit more fun or a bit more joyful for you. What is that thing? And I'd love for you to comment below. And I think we can all benefit from the comments that are going to be posted. I look forward to it.
